No question about it, India has accomplished great things. This is not like saying Iceland or Ireland has accomplished great things. Small, compact nations with relatively manageable populations can turn things around pretty quickly.
India, on the other hand, juts from the bottom of Asia like an ancient, angry carbuncle, a land mass so big it is called a "subcontinent"—geological evidence suggests it was once separate from Asia. Home to more than 1 billion people, India has, since gaining its independence in 1947, been roiled by sectarian and religious violence and dogged by an image (unfair though it is) as a land of abject poverty whose people sleep on beds of nails, go to the bathroom outdoors, and burn their dead in the open.
Given that stereotype, the nation's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had a task few people in history have faced: how to nudge nearly a billion people into the modern world, remain free from outside exploitation and ultimately become self-sufficient. From 1947 until his death in 1964, the socialist Nehru directed his energies to building or expanding the infrastructure (dams, roads, steel plants) and incrementally strengthening the economy through homegrown industry and clearly defined plans. Without Nehru, the economic we are all marveling at today would probably not exist.
And, indeed, something miraculous did begin to happen in India after he died. Largely due to an embrace of globalization (shutting the door on Nehru's "planned" economy) but also due to the pride, resilience, intelligence, doggedness and diversity of its people, India has in recent years seen annual growth rates of 9 percent. Putting this in perspective, India's middle class has expanded by 300 million people since this "miracle" began—essentially creating a new nation the size of the U.S. within India.
With the economic engine purring so nicely, it is understandable why the blockbuster film Slumdog Millionaire would give India's newly comfortable the willies. Most of the new middle class was not yet born when Nehru died, and the recent changes in India have been so swift that Gandhi seems like history as ancient as the pyramids. Still, the brutality of life at the bottom of India's "miracle" depicted in the film is real, even if Indians choose to ignore or deny it. The numbers don't lie: India has as many people in poverty as the U.S. has people. It would seem, at least to an outsider like myself, that a 9 percent growth rate can't bridge such a gap in income. It also seems to me that many of the new jobs in India are the service jobs that other countries are outsourcing, not the jobs that touch the lives of the bottom dogs in this vast nation. What happens when other countries simply stop outsourcing their own jobs?
Still, who am I to argue with a friend who grew up in New Delhi, who recalls a childhood when there was one state-owned TV channel airing mostly propaganda (along with reruns of I Love Lucy and Star Trek)? While acknowledging that Slumdog Millionaire is regretfully true to life, this friend—like many of the younger generation of Indians—does not spend hours obsessing over the scars of British colonialism or poring over the words and deeds of Mahatma Gandhi to find some pathway to a national future.
"There is no going back," the friend says. "It is not feasible and it is unwise."
When pundits talk about the world's "new economic superpowers," India is often paired with China. There is one key difference, though, between the two nations, and this difference is what makes India so much more fascinating and inspiring. That is, India appears to be a functioning, stable democracy.
Last week, for example, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his ruling coalition won resounding reelection to a second five-year term. This is the first time an incumbent PM has been reelected to a full five-year term. Singh, an Oxford-educated academic, is widely admired for an attribute we would love to be able to ascribe to our own politicians: he's not corrupt.
