Society and Culture

India’s Miracle: More on the India Story

By Dweep Chanana ⋅ August 3, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

I am usually loathe to repeat stories found elsewhere, but this one is certainly worth mentioning. The British magazine New Statesman has a special issue on India (courtesy New Economist). Titled, India’s Miracle, it has five stories – none of which probably break significant new ground for the accomplished reader. That said, they are each in their own right, interesting, and some such as Moving On, bring an interesting and tangible perspective to how India is modernizing. The articles:

• An unlikely nation: How Churchill was wrong to say that “India is no more a country than the Equator”.
• Moving on: How Delhi’s transport reflects the rich-poor divide, and how the new metro may be bridging it.
• Minority report: How India’s muslims, for all their differences, are still India’s.
• Growing pains: How India’s growth and rise characterize an oddity about India itself – growth coupled with poverty.
• Midnight’s adults: How India has remained a vibrant democracy, despite repeated doomsday predictions to the contrary.

For those wishing to understand India, I suggest reading In spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, and The Argumentative Indian.

A few words from the last essay, which is also a review of Nussbaum and Guha’s recent books:

Nussbaum sees lessons in India’s democratic achievements for the rest of the world, particularly America. Her thesis supports Gandhi’s claim that “the real struggle that democracy must wage is the struggle within the individual self, between the urge to dominate and defile the other, and a willingness to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality”.

It is a tall claim, and few individuals can live up to it, and fewer collective entities like nations can. But India has tried, and as Guha and Nussbaum show, often succeeded. At 60, it is time for India to take a bow.