Subterms
What to Know: India’s Local ElectionsHari Kumar📍Reporting from Punjab, IndiaSaumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesIf challengers such as the Aam Aadmi Party, which runs on an anti-corruption platform and is currently in power in India’s capital, Delhi, wins in Punjab, it will embolden other regional parties to push for toppling Congress as the natural leader of the opposition. More
India’s abstention in a recent vote at the UN Security Council over Russian threats to Ukraine raises serious questions over India being a key ally of the West in the years to come. Indian leaders failed to stand up for Ukrainian sovereignty because of India’s close relations with Russia, a major supplier of military equipment.
For anyone who wants to explain away India’s conduct at the United Nations as an act of national interests, there is more to consider. India is sliding deeper into Hindu — as opposed to a diverse Indian — nationalism, diminishing its ability to be a long-term partner for Western nations.
Modi’s India Is Becoming a Farce
READ MORE
India’s slowing economic growth, declining investment in its military capabilities and social unrest have prevented the country from modernizing its army and fulfilling its strategic goals. But it is the ideology of its current leaders that is jeopardizing the notion of India as a dependable partner of the US in the Indo-Pacific region.
Instead of investing in human capital and health care, the focus of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been on rewriting history through crowdsourcing. Instead of further opening the Indian economy through policies and reforms that would boost growth, protectionism and regulatory policies are rising. India is slipping on the global freedom and democracy indices, with Freedom House downgrading it to “partly free.”
“Undivided India”
Leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) continue to mobilize India’s majority Hindus to vote for it by targeting religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians. They describe Hinduism as an Indian religion, while Islam and Christianity are denigrated as “foreign” faiths transplanted onto India’s soil. Extremist Hindu leaders, including some from the ruling party, have even gone so far as to call for genocide against 200 million Indian Muslims.
Embed from Getty Images
A 2021 Pew Survey on “Religion in India” demonstrated that tolerance for other faiths remains strong within Indian society. But a larger number of the majority (Hindus) now see religion as the core of their identity and support calls for a Hindu rashtra (state). This creates a dilemma for relations between India and other countries.
For example, Pushkar Singh Dhami, the chief minister of the state of Uttarakhand, which borders Tibet and Nepal, was embroiled in controversy for something he posted on Twitter six years ago. The tweet showed a map claiming South and Southeast Asia as part of an “undivided India,” known as Akhand Bharat. In December 2021, an Indian broadcaster showed the entire region from the Middle East through South and Southeast Asia as belonging to Akhand Bharat, representing the reunification of territories influenced by India during ancient times.
This undermines India’s projection of itself as a pluralist and open society, where minorities were respected, not just tolerated. For six decades after independence in 1947, India’s pluralism created a groundswell of respect, goodwill and admiration throughout the free world. Even India’s non-alignment during the Cold War did not interfere with its positive image. Most Americans appreciated Indian democracy and diversity and showed understanding when poverty-ridden India preferred not to side with the United States against the Soviet Union.
Things Have Changed
But things have changed since the end of the Cold War. India has made significant progress in reducing poverty. For two decades, there has been talk of India as a rising power. Americans have expected India to boost its economic growth, modernize its military and play a bigger role in confronting China. In 2010, President Barack Obama declared relations between India and the United States as the “defining partnership of the 21st century.”
Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries
That desire keeps getting thwarted by India’s leadership, particularly Prime Minister Modi and his allies in the BJP. Thus, India’s economic growth has slowed down, even before the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is unlikely to recover quickly. More significantly, India continues to expand trade with China, reaching $125 billion in 2021. This is despite China’s military pressure on India along their disputed border. That should lay to rest the expectation of India confronting China anytime soon.
Moreover, the commitment to democracy, human rights and liberal values, which made India a natural Western partner, appear under increasing threat.
Americans who have spent the last few years praising India also need some appraising of India. It might be time to acknowledge that India’s performance has been underwhelming to merit the kind of expectations that have formed the basis of recent US policy.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
Many scholars have spilled much ink on Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. A giant has now waded into the fray and penned a masterpiece.
Ishtiaq Ahmed is a professor emeritus at Stockholm University who first made his name with a pathbreaking book, “The Pakistan Garrison State: Origins, Evolution, Consequences.” He then went on to pen the award-winning “The Punjab Bloodied Partitioned and Cleansed,” a tour de force on the partition of Punjab in 1947. Now, Ahmed has published “Jinnah: His Successes, Failures and Role in History,” a magisterial 800-page tome on Pakistan’s founder.
Is Afghanistan Going to Break Apart?
READ MORE
Ahmed is a meticulous scholar who has conducted exhaustive research on the writings and utterances of Jinnah from the moment he entered public life. Pertinently, Ahmed notes the critical moments when Jinnah “spoke” by choosing to remain quiet, using silence as a powerful form of communication. More importantly, Ahmed has changed our understanding of the history of the Indian subcontinent.
Setting the Record Straight
Until now, scholars like Stanley Wolpert, Hector Bolitho and Ayesha Jalal have painted a pretty picture of Jinnah, putting him on a pedestal and raising him to mythical status. Wolpert wrote, “Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Muhammad Ali Jinnah did all three.” Both Wolpert and Bolitho argued that Jinnah created Pakistan. Jalal has argued that “Jinnah did not want Partition.” She claims Jinnah became the sole spokesman of Muslims and the Congress Party forced partition upon him.
Jalal’s claim has become a powerful myth on both sides of the border. In this myth, the Congress in general and India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in particular opted for partition instead of sharing power with the Muslim League and Jinnah. Jalal makes the case that “Punjab and Bengal would have called the shots” instead of Uttar Pradesh, making the emergence of the Nehru dynasty impossible. Her claim that “the Congress basically cut the Muslim problem down to size through Partition” has cast Jinnah into the role of a tragic hero who had no choice but to forge Indian Muslims into a qaum, a nation, and create Pakistan.
Embed from Getty Images
The trouble with Jalal’s compelling argument is that it is not based on facts. She fails to substantiate her argument with even one of Jinnah’s speeches, statements or messages. Ahmed’s close examination of the historical record demonstrates that Jinnah consistently demanded the partition of British India into India and Pakistan after March 22, 1940. Far from the idea of Nehru forcing partition on a reluctant Jinnah, it was an intransigent Jinnah who pushed partition upon everyone else.
Ahmed goes on to destroy Jalal’s fictitious claim that Nehru engineered the partition of both Punjab and Bengal to establish his dynasty. Punjab’s population was 33.9 million, of which 41% was Hindu and Sikh. Bengal’s population was 70.5 million, of which 48% was Hindu. The population of United Provinces (UP), modern-day Uttar Pradesh, was 102 million, of which Hindus formed an overwhelming 86%. When Bihar, Bombay Presidency, Madras Presidency, Central Provinces, Gujarat and other states are taken into account, the percentage of the Hindu population was overwhelming. In 1941, the total Muslim population of British India was only 24.9%. This means that Nehru would have become prime minister even if India had stayed undivided.
Ahmed attests another fact to buttress his argument that Nehru’s so-called dynastic ambitions had nothing to do with the partition. When Nehru died, Gulzarilal Nanda became interim prime minister before Lal Bahadur Shastri took charge. During this time in power, Nehru did not appoint Indira Gandhi as a minister. It was Kumaraswami Kamaraj, a Congress Party veteran, and other powerful regional satraps who engineered the ascent of Indira Gandhi to the throne. These Congress leaders believed that Nehru’s daughter would be weak, allowing them greater say over party affairs than their eccentric colleague Morarji Desai. Once Indira Gandhi took over, she proved to be authoritarian, ruthless and dynastic. By blaming the father for the sins of the daughter, Jalal demonstrates that she neither understands India’s complex demography nor its complicated history.
To get to “the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” about India’s partition, we have to read Ahmed. This fastidious scholar analyzes everything Jinnah wrote and said from 1906 onward, the year Pakistan’s founder entered into public life. Ahmed identifies four stages in Jinnah’s career. In the first, Jinnah began as an Indian nationalist. In the second, he turned into a Muslim communitarian. In the third, Jinnah transformed himself into a Muslim nationalist. In the fourth and final stage, he emerged as the founder of Pakistan where he is revered as Quaid-i-Azam, the great leader, and Baba-i-Qaum, the father of the nation.
Ahmed is a political scientist by training. Hence, his analysis of each stage of Jinnah’s life is informed both by historical context and political theory. Jinnah’s rise in Indian politics occurred at a time when leaders like Motilal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose were also major players in India’s political life and struggle for freedom. Jinnah’s role in the tortured machinations toward dominion status and then full independence makes for fascinating reading. Ahmed also captures the many ideas that impinged on the Indian imagination in those days from Gandhi’s nonviolence, Jinnah’s religious nationalism and Nehru’s Fabian socialism.
Jinnah’s Tortured Journey
As an Indian nationalist, Jinnah argued that religion had no role in politics. His crowning achievement during these days was the 1916 Lucknow Pact. Together with Congress leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Jinnah forged a Hindu-Muslim agreement that “postulated complete self-government as India’s goal.” That year, Jinnah declared that India was “not to be governed by Hindus, and … it [was] not to be governed by the Muslims either, or certainly not by the English. It must be governed by the people and the sons of this country.” Jinnah advocated constitutionalism, not mass mobilization, as a way to achieve this ideal.
Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries
When the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, Indian Muslims launched a mass movement to save this empire. Among them was Jinnah who sailed to England as part of the Muslim League delegation in 1919 to plead that the Ottoman Empire not be dismembered and famously described the dismemberment of the empire as an attack on Islam.
To support the caliph, Indian Muslim leaders launched the Khilafat Movement. Soon, this turned into a mass movement, which Gandhi joined with much enthusiasm. Indian leaders were blissfully unaware that their movement ran contrary to the nationalistic aspirations of Turks and Arabs themselves.
Later, Islam would emerge as the basis of a rallying cry in Indian politics. The nationalist Jinnah started singing a different tune: He argued that Muslims were a distinct community from Hindus and sought constitutional safeguards to prevent Hindu majoritarianism from dominating. In the 1928 All Parties Conference that decided upon India’s future constitution, Jinnah argued that residuary powers should be vested in the provinces, not the center, in order to prevent Hindu domination of the entire country. Ahmed meticulously documents how the British used a strategy of divide and rule, ensuring that the chasm between the Congress and the Muslim League would become unbridgeable.
As India turned to mass politics under Gandhi, Jinnah retreated to England. After a few quiet years there, he returned to India in 1934 and was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly, the precursor to the parliaments of both India and Pakistan. Jinnah argued that there were four parties in India: the British, the Indian princes, the Hindus and the Muslims. He took the view that the Congress represented the Hindus while the Muslim League spoke for the Muslims.
Importantly, Jinnah now claimed that no one except the Muslim League spoke for the Muslims. This severely undercut Muslim leaders in the Congress. Jinnah had a visceral hatred for the erudite Congress leader Azad, who was half Arab and a classically-trained Islamic scholar with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Quran, the hadith and the various schools of Islamic thought. Furthermore, Azad’s mastery of the Urdu language stood unrivaled. He wrote voluminously in this pan-national Muslim lingua franca. In contrast, Jinnah was an anglicized lawyer who wrote in English and spoke poor Urdu.
Jinnah’s argument that the Muslim League was the only party that could represent Muslims was not only conceptually flawed, but also empirically inaccurate. Muslims in Bengal, Punjab, Sindh and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) supported and voted for regional political parties, not the Muslim League. In fact, voters gave the Muslim League a drubbing in 1937. This hardened Jinnah’s attitude, as did the mass contact program with Muslims that the Congress launched under Nehru. When the Congress broke its gentleman’s agreement with the Muslim League to form a coalition government in United Provinces (UP) after winning an absolute majority, Jinnah turned incandescent.
In retrospect, the decision of the Congress to go it alone in UP was a major blunder. After taking office, the Congress started hoisting its flag instead of the Union Jack and disallowed governors from attending cabinet meetings. Many leaders of the Muslim League joined the Congress, infuriating Jinnah. He drew up a list of Congress actions that he deemed threatening to Islam. These included the Muslim mass contact campaign, the singing of Vande Mataram, Gandhi’s Wardha Scheme of Basic Education and restrictions on cow slaughter. Jinnah came to the fateful decision that he could no longer truck with the Congress and the die was cast for a dark era in Indian history.
The Two-Nation Champion
In March 1940, Jinnah threw down the gauntlet to the Congress. At a speech in Lahore, he argued that India’s unity was artificial, it dated “back only to the British conquest” and was “maintained by the British bayonet.” He asserted that “Hindus and Muslims brought together under a democratic system forced upon the minorities can only mean Hindu Raj.”
Embed from Getty Images
In this speech, Jinnah argued that Hindus and Muslims belonged “to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.” He claimed that Muslims were “a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory, and their state.” Ahmed rightly points out that this speech was Jinnah’s open declaration of his politics of polarization. From now on, Jinnah had set the stage for the division of India.
Ahmed also goes into the claims of Chaudhry Sir Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, popularly known as Sir Zafarullah, an Ahmadi leader who was Pakistan’s first foreign minister. Khan and his admirers have claimed credit for the Muslim League’s Lahore resolution for Pakistan, following Jinnah’s historic speech. It turns out that Khan was implicitly supported by British Viceroy Lord Linlithgow who cultivated Khan and extended his tenure as a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. This indicates that Jinnah’s bid for Pakistan had the support of a canny Scot who wanted Indian participation in World War II, something the Congress was opposed to without the promise of postwar independence.
While Jalal might trumpet Jinnah as the sole spokesman of the Muslims, the historical record reveals a very different picture. Within a month of Jinnah’s Lahore speech, the All India Azad Muslim Conference met in Delhi. Its attendance was five times that of the Muslim League’s Lahore session. This conference opposed partition, repudiated Jinnah’s two-nation theory and made a strong case for a united India.
Others argued for a united India too. Ahmed tells us that Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the towering Dalit social reformer who drafted India’s constitution, reversed his position on partition and on Pakistan. After the Lahore resolution, Ambedkar wrote a 400-page piece titled “Thoughts on Pakistan” that advised Hindus to concede Pakistan to the Muslims. By 1945, Ambedkar had come to the view that “there was already a Pakistan” in the Muslim-majority states. As a Dalit, he also turned against the hierarchy in the Muslim community where the high-born Ashrafs lorded it over the low-born Ajlafs and women had very limited rights.
Jinnah took the haughty view that Muslims were not a large minority but a political nation entitled to self-determination. In 1941, he claimed that Muslims “took India and ruled for 700 years.” So, they were not asking the Hindus for anything. He was making the demand to the British, the rulers of India. Jinnah might have been arrogant but he had a genius for propaganda. He constantly fed the press with stories about impending dangers to Muslims once the Congress took over, fueling insecurities, distrust and division.
While Jinnah was ratcheting up the pressure, the Congress made a series of political blunders. It vacated the political space when World War II broke out in 1939. Gandhi idealistically opposed the British while Jinnah collaborated with them, extracting valuable concessions from his colonial masters. When Field Marshal Archibald Wavell took over from Lord Linlithgow as the Viceroy, Jinnah wormed himself into Wavell’s confidence. It helped that Wavell despised the anti-colonial Congress. Ahmed observes that this British general “wanted to ensure that Britain’s military interest in the form of bases and manpower was secured.” Jinnah offered him that option while Gandhi did not.
Embed from Getty Images
Jinnah was bloody-minded and shrewd but he was also plain lucky. Many of those who could have contested his leadership simply passed away. Sir Mian Muhammad Shafi, an aristocrat from the historic city of Lahore and a founder of the Muslim League, died in 1932. Sir Mian Fazl-i-Husain, a founding member of Punjab’s Unionist Party who served as counselor to the British Viceroy, died in 1936. Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, the towering premier of Punjab, died in December 1942. Allah Baksh Soomro, the premier of Sindh, was assassinated in 1943. Sir Chhotu Ram, the co-founder of the National Unionist Party that dominated Punjab, died in 1945. With such giants of Punjab and Sindh dying, the Gujarati Jinnah gained an opportunity to dominate two Muslim-majority provinces where the Muslim League had struggled to put down roots.
Last-Ditch Efforts to Preserve the Indian Union
It was not all smooth sailing for Jinnah, though. In 1945, the Conservatives led by Winston Churchill lost the general election. Clement Attlee formed a Labour government committed to India’s independence. By this time, Jinnah was in full-fledged confrontation mode. When Wavell convened the 1945 Simla Conference, Jinnah had insisted that the Congress could not appoint any Muslim representatives. As a result, the conference failed and the last chance for a united independent India went up in smoke.
Ironically, Jinnah wanted the partition of India but opposed the partition of Punjab and Bengal. In December 1945, Wavell observed that if Muslims could have their right to self-determination, then non-Muslim minorities in Muslim areas could not be compelled to remain in Pakistan against their will. Therefore, the partition of Punjab and Bengal was inevitable. Jinnah would only get his moth-eaten version of Pakistan.
By now, the British wanted to leave. The 1946 Naval Uprising shook British rule to the core. Weary after World War II, a revolt by naval ratings, soldiers, police personnel and civilians made the British realize that the loyalty of even the armed forces could not be taken for granted. During World War II, large numbers had joined Bose’s Indian National Army and fought against the British. After the 1946 uprising, the writing was on the wall. Soon, the Cabinet Mission arrived to discuss the transfer of power from the British government to Indian political leaders. It proposed provinces, groups of provinces and a federal union. The union was to deal only with foreign affairs, defense and communications, and the power to raise finances for these three areas of government activity. The remaining powers were to be vested in the provinces.
Everyone rejected the Cabinet Mission Plan. Jinnah did not get his beloved Pakistan. The Congress was unwilling to accept such a weak federal government. The Sikhs bridled at the prospect of being “subjected to a perpetual Muslim domination.” Needless to say, the plan was dead on arrival.
Even as deliberations about the transfer of power were going on, members to the Constituent Assembly were elected during July-August. Of a total of 296 seats for the British provinces, the Congress won 208, the Muslim League 73 and independents 15. British India also had 584 princely states that had a quota of 93 seats in the Constituent Assembly. These states decided to stay away from the assembly until their relationship with independent India became clearer. This turned out to be a historic blunder.
Embed from Getty Images
By now, the British had decided to leave. On August 24, 1946, Wavell made a radio announcement that his government was committed to Indian independence and that an interim government would be formed under the leadership of Nehru and that the Muslim League would be invited to join it. Initially, no member of the Muslim League was in the first interim government formed on September 2, but five members joined this government on October 26 that remained in power until India and Pakistan emerged as two independent states.
The Run-up to Partition
Before the two main parties joined the same coalition government, riots broke out across the country. Jinnah called for Direct Action Day on August 16, 1946. Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, experienced the worst violence. SciencesPo estimates that 5,000 to 10,000 died, and some 15,000 were wounded, between August 16 and 19.
At the time, Bengal was the only province with a Muslim League government, whose chief minister was the controversial and colorful Hussain Suhrawardy. During the “Great Calcutta Killing,” his response was less than even-handed, deepening divisions between Hindus and Muslims. To add fuel to the fire, riots broke out in Noakhali, a part of the Chittagong district now in Bangladesh. In a frenzy of violence, Muslims targeted the minority Hindu community, killing thousands, conducting mass rape, and abducting women to convert them to Islam and forcibly marry them.
As riots spread across the country and British troops failed to control the violence, India stood on the brink of anarchy. On June 3, 1947, the new Viceroy Louis Mountbatten announced India would be independent on August 15, chosen symbolically as the date Imperial Japan surrendered and Japanese troops submitted to his lordship in Southeast Asia two years earlier.
Importantly, independent India was to be partitioned into India and Pakistan. While the border was yet to be demarcated, the contours fell along expected lines. Yet partition came as a bolt from the blue for the Sikhs. In the dying days of the British Empire, this community had created a short-lived empire that died only in 1849. Yet the Sikhs were a minority in Punjab and widely dispersed around the state. The British had co-opted the Sikhs by recruiting them into the army in large numbers. The colonial authorities had given retired soldiers land in colonies they had settled near irrigation canals. These canal colonies were dotted around Punjab and Mountbatten noted that “any partition of this province [would] inevitably divide them.”
Ahmed is critical of the way the British planned the partition of Punjab. They assumed that the transfer of power would be peaceful. Mountbatten trusted the Congress, the Muslim League and the Akali leadership of the Sikhs who promised to control their followers. Evan Meredith Jenkins, the British governor of Punjab, did not. He predicted that “bloodbath was inevitable in Punjab unless there were enough British troops to supervise the transfer of power.” History has proved Jenkins right.
Embed from Getty Images
Ahmed’s award-winning earlier work, “The Punjab: Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed” records those macabre days in grim detail. By this time, colonial troops were acting on communal sentiment. In Sheikhupura, the Muslim Baluch regiment participated in the massacre of Hindus and Sikhs. In Jullundur and Ludhiana, Hindu and Sikh soldiers killed Muslims. Even princely states were infected by this toxic communal sentiment. Ian Copland details how troops of Punjab’s princely states, including Patiala and Kapurthala, slaughtered Muslims.
In the orgy of violence that infected Punjab, all sorts of characters from criminals and fanatics to partisan officials and demobilized soldiers got involved. The state machinery broke down. The same was true in Bengal. As a result, independence in 1947 came at a terrible cost.
Jinnah Takes Charge
Right from the outset, India and Pakistan embarked on different trajectories. Mountbatten remained as governor-general of India, a position instituted in 1950 to facilitate the transition to full-fledged Indian rule. In contrast, Jinnah took over as governor-general of Pakistan. This move weakened both Parliament and the prime minister. As the all-powerful head of a Muslim state, Jinnah left no oxygen for the new parliamentary democracy of Pakistan.
Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, an Oxford-educated aristocrat from UP, took charge as prime minister. Yet it was an open secret that Khan had little authority and Jinnah called all the shots. In India, Rajendra Prasad took charge as the president of the Constituent Assembly of India and the Dalit scholar Ambedkar became the chair of the drafting committee. In contrast, Jinnah was elected unanimously as the president of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan that failed to draft a constitution and was acrimoniously dissolved in 1954.
This assembly might not have amounted to much, but a speech by Jinnah lives on in history books and is a subject of much debate. On August 11, 1947, Jinnah declared: “If you change your past and work together in a spirit that every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste, or creed, is first, second, and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges, and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.”
Jinnah summoned his 1916 self that championed Hindu-Muslim unity and blamed the colonization of 400 million souls on internal division. His rhetoric took flight and he claimed that “in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community — because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalees, Madrasis and so on — will vanish.”
Jinnah also made a grand promise to Pakistan’s citizens: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the State.” Toward the end of his speech, Jinnah’s rhetoric soared. He envisioned that “in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus, and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”
Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries
No scholar has analyzed this speech better than Ahmed. This professor emeritus at Stockholm University points out that Jinnah neither mentions Islam nor secularism as a foundational principle of the state. Instead, Jinnah refers to the clash between Roman Catholics and Protestants in England. It seems this London-trained barrister is looking at the constitutionalism of Merry England as the way forward for Pakistan.
Ahmed makes another astute observation. Jinnah’s speech might have been addressed less to his audience in a rubber stamp assembly and more to his counterparts in the Indian government. Jinnah did not want another 30 to 40 million Muslims from Delhi and UP immigrating to Pakistan, adding even more pressure on an already financially stretched state. If these Muslims were driven out in retaliation for what was going on to Sikhs and Hindus in West Punjab and East Pakistan (Bangladesh since 1971), then Pakistan could well have collapsed.
Ahmed’s Evaluation of Jinnah
Jinnah excites much emotion in the Indian subcontinent. For some, he is the devil incarnate. For others, he is a wise prophet. Ahmed evaluates Jinnah in the cold light of the day with reason, judgment and, above all, fairness.
Jinnah was indubitably an impressive character with wit, will and vision. He forged a disparate nation of Balochs, Pashtuns, Sindhis, Punjabis and Muhajirs, the Urdu term for refugees in the name of Islam, including those coming from India in the west and Bengalis in the east. However, Jinnah never attained a status worthy of Thomas Carlyle’s heroes. Unlike Gandhi, Jinnah did not come up with a new way to deal with the existing political situation. Gandhi insisted on ahimsa and satyagraha, non-violence and adherence to truth. He put means before ends. He was a mass leader but was only the first among equals in the Congress Party, which had many towering leaders. Gandhi was outvoted many times and accepted such decisions, strengthening his party’s democratic tradition. On the other hand, Jinnah was determined to be the sole spokesman who put ends before means and did not hesitate to spill blood to achieve his political ambitions.
It is true that Gandhi erred in calling Jinnah a Gujarati Muslim in 1915 when Jinnah would have been preferred to be known as an Indian nationalist. Yet Gandhi genuinely believed that everyone living in India was an Indian and had equal rights as citizens. Jinnah championed the two-nation theory and argued that Muslims in India were a separate nation. For him, religious identity trumped linguistic, ethnic or national identity. Ahmed’s magnum opus might focus on Jinnah but Gandhi emerges as a true hero in his book.
In the short run, Jinnah succeeded. Pakistan was born. Yet Jinnah also left Pakistan with many of its current problems. He centralized all power, reduced states to the level of municipalities and postponed the drafting of a constitution. Even though Jinnah himself neither spoke his native Gujarati or urbane Urdu fluently, he made Urdu the official language of Pakistan. This infuriated East Pakistan, which eventually achieved independence in 1971. As Atul Singh, Vikram Sood and Manu Sharma point out in an article on Fair Observer, the rise of ethnic nationalism threatens the further disintegration of Pakistan for which Jinnah must take some blame.
Embed from Getty Images
Ahmed’s book also brings into the spotlight the role of facts, factlets and factoids. His facts are based on sources that are empirically verifiable. Factlets are interesting asides, which have value in themselves but may or may not have a bearing on the meta narrative. Factoids are just plain lies that are repeated so many times that many people start believing in them. The biggest factoid in the Indian subcontinent about the partition is the assertion that a majority of Muslims in British India wanted Pakistan. Another factoid is the belief that the Congress Party was as keen on Partition as the Muslim League. Ahmed’s book is strong on facts, keeps the readers interested by providing riveting factlets and demolishes several factoids.
Three Takeaways for Today
Ahmed’s masterpiece offers us three important lessons.
First and foremost, facts matter. For a while, myth may obscure facts, narratives might cloud truth, but eventually a scrupulous scholar will ferret out facts. As the English adage goes, “the truth will out sooner or later.”
Second, religion and politics may make a heady cocktail but leave a terrible hangover. At some point, things spin out of control, riots break out on the streets, fanaticism takes over, jihadists go berserk and a garrison state emerges with a logic of its own. Such a state can be deep, oppressive and even somewhat effective but is largely disconnected from the needs and aspirations of civil society. Such a state is also unable to create a dynamic economy and most people remain trapped in poverty.
Last but not the least, the zeal of new converts becomes doubly dangerous when religion and politics mix. These new converts can turn into fanatics who outdo their co-religionists. As the adage goes, they seek to be more Catholic than the pope. The noted Punjabi Hindu leader Lala Lajpat Rai’s father returned to Hinduism after converting to Islam. Master Tara Singh, the champion of an independent Sikh nation, was born a Hindu but converted to Sikhism in his youth.
Jinnah’s grandfather, Premjibhai Meghji Thakkar, was a Bhatia Rajput who converted to Islam after orthodox Hindus excommunicated Thakkar for entering the fishing business. Similarly, Pakistan’s national poet Muhammad Iqbal, who studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and the University of Munich, came from a Kashmiri Brahmin family. Iqbal’s father, Rattan Lal, was a Sapru who reportedly embraced Islam to save his life and was consequently disowned by his family. Pakistan was not created by a Pashtun like Abdul Ghaffar Khan or a half-Arab, blue-blooded sayyid like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad but by a Rajput and a Brahmin who were recent converts. Ironically, this nation now names its ballistic missiles after Turkish invaders, makes it compulsory for its children to learn Arabic and pretends its roots lie in the Middle East instead of the Indian subcontinent.
*[Ishtiaq Ahmed’s book, “Jinnah: His Successes, Failures and Role in History” is published by Penguin Random House and available here. The same book is published in Pakistan by Vanguard Books and is available here.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
From Kremlin leak to sperm counts: our readers’ favourite stories of 2021 Here are 20 articles that may have helped convince people to support the Guardian’s journalismThe Guardian benefited from hundreds of thousands of acts of support from digital readers in 2021 – almost one for every minute of the year. Here we look at the articles from 2021 that had a big hand in convincing readers to support our open, independent journalism.Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House – Luke Harding, Julian Borger and Dan SabbaghExclusive leak reveals Moscow’s deliberations on how it might help Donald Trump win 2016 US presidential race‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’ – Arundhati RoyThe author and activist plumbs the depths of India’s Covid catastrophe and finds much to reproach the prime minister, Narendra Modi, for‘I’m facing a prison sentence’: US Capitol rioters plead with Trump for pardons – Oliver MilmanThe past very quickly catches up with those who ransacked the seat of US democracyClimate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse – Damian CarringtonA shutdown of the Atlantic current circulation system would have catastrophic consequences around the worldAn Afghan woman in Kabul: ‘Now I have to burn everything I achieved’ – A Kabul residentAs the Taliban take the Afghan capital, one woman describes being “a victim of a war that men started”.Plummeting sperm counts, shrinking penises: toxic chemicals threaten humanity – Erin BrockovichA warning from the environmental advocate and author about the damage being wrought by toxic chemicalsPandora papers: biggest ever leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich and powerful – Guardian investigations teamMillions of documents reveal deals and assets of more than 100 billionaires, 30 world leaders and 300 public officialsThe Hill We Climb: the poem that stole the inauguration show – Amanda GormanShe spoke, and millions listened, at Joe Biden’s inaugurationRates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chemical may be to blame – Adrienne MateiIs an epidemic on the horizon? And is an unpronounceable chemical compound to blame?Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction – George MonbiotThe Guardian columnist at his most incandescent‘Take it easy, nothing matters in the end’: William Shatner at 90, on love, loss and Leonard Nimoy – Hadley FreemanThe actor discusses longevity, tragedy, friendship, success and his Star Trek co-star‘Our biggest challenge? Lack of imagination’: the scientists turning the desert green – Steve RoseIn China, scientists have turned vast swathes of arid land into a lush oasis. Now a team of maverick engineers want to do the same to the SinaiOff-road, off-grid: the modern nomads wandering America’s back country – Stevie TrujilloAcross US public lands thousands of people are taking to van lifeThe greatest danger for the US isn’t China. It’s much closer to home – Robert ReichThe columnist and former secretary of labour warns of enemies withinThe rice of the sea: how a tiny grain could change the way humanity eats – Ashifa KassamCelebrated chef discovered something in the seagrass that could transform our understanding of the sea itself – as a vast gardenRevealed: leak uncovers global abuse of cyber-surveillance weapon – Guardian staffThe Guardian teams up with 16 media organisations around the world to investigate hacking software sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO GroupBeware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth – James LovelockLegendary environmentalist argues that Covid-19 may well have been one attempt by the planet to protect itself, and that next time it may try harder with something even nastierThe Rosenbergs were executed for spying in 1953. Can their sons reveal the truth? – Hadley FreemanEthel and Julius Rosenberg were sent to the electric chair for being Soviet spies, but their sons have spent decades trying to clear their mother’s name. Are they close to a breakthrough?Out of thin air: the mystery of the man who fell from the sky – Sirin KaleWho was the stowaway who fell from the wheel well of a Boeing plane into a south London garden in the summer of 2019?The life and tragic death of John Eyers – a fitness fanatic who refused the vaccine – Sirin KaleThe 42-year-old did triathlons, bodybuilding and mountain climbing and became sceptical of the Covid jab. Then he contracted the virusIf these pieces move you to support our independent journalism into 2022, you can do so here:
Make a contribution from just £1
Become a digital subscriber and get something in return for your money
Join as a Patron to fund us at a higher level
TopicsRussiaInside the GuardianDonald TrumpVladimir PutinCoronavirusIndiaUS Capitol attackClimate crisisfeaturesReuse this content More
LAKHIMPUR KHERI, India — The jeep plowed into the protesters, sending bodies tumbling, the windshield cracking against bone. The son of a prominent politician was then accused of murder. Rifle-toting security personnel flooded the area. Tempers flared so hotly that local officials shut down the internet.With that series of events, a yearlong protest by farmers against the Indian government escalated into a dangerous new phase.Frustrated at what they see as intransigence by Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, over a series of new agricultural laws, the farmers have taken a more confrontational approach with the country’s top leaders. They are now shadowing top officials of Mr. Modi’s government as they travel and campaign, ensuring their grievances will be difficult to ignore.The farmers blame government supporters for the jeep incident in early October, which left four of their number dead and killed four others, including a local journalist. But the incident shows that farmers who have camped outside the Indian capital of New Delhi for months are increasingly prepared to take their protest directly to government officials’ doorsteps.Jagdeep Singh talking about his late father, Nachhattar Singh, in Namdar Purva.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesOne of the two vehicles set ablaze after a convoy rammed into protesters.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times“This is now a fight for those who died,” Jagdeep Singh, whose 62-year-old father was among those run over by the jeep, said from the family farm. “And those who are living, this is now a fight for all of us until we die.”Elsewhere, under the harsh light of an LED lamp in an unfinished brick farmhouse, Ramandeep Kaur wept over the loss of her cousin, Lovepreet Singh, a 19-year-old who was studying English in hopes of getting an education and living in Australia.“Until they take back those laws,” she said, “the farmers’ agitation will continue.”The deadly incident took place in a remote corner of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state and a prize in elections to be held early next year. The protesters were shadowing top members of Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., as they began to campaign.The farmers’ goal is not necessarily to defeat the B.J.P., whom polls suggest will cruise to an easy victory. The party’s top elected leader, Yogi Adityanath, is a Hindu monk and protégé of Mr. Modi who is popular with the party’s Hindu base, and the opposition is fragmented. Instead, the farmers aim to draw more national and international attention to their plight.The protesting farmers think that Mr. Modi’s market-friendly overhaul last year of the nation’s agricultural laws will put them out of business. India’s Supreme Court has suspended implementation, and the government has proposed a series of amendments. The farmers balked, saying they would settle for nothing less than their full repeal.Further action could take years, given the court’s full docket, but the farmers fear the suspension will be lifted if they let up.No one disputes that the current system, which incentivizes farmers to grow a huge surplus of grains, needs to be fixed. The protesters fear the speed — the laws were passed in mere weeks — and the breadth of the changes will send the price of crops plunging. Mr. Modi’s government argues that introducing market forces will help fix the system.Lovepreet Singh’s family, including his mother, Satwinder Kaur, and father, Satnam Singh, mourning his death.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesLovepreet Singh’s father displaying his son’s photograph.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times“The composition of farming has to somewhat change,” said Gopal Krishna Agarwal, a B.J.P. spokesman on economic issues. “The farm sector needs heavy investment, and that can come from the private sector.”Mr. Modi has responded to the protesters by waiting them out, a strategy apparently driven by the calculation that their movement does not represent a coherent political threat. Many of the protesters come from India’s minority Sikh community, while the B.J.P. draws its political power from rallying the country’s Hindu majority.“‘Farmers’ is not a category that the B.J.P. uses,” said Gilles Verniers, a political science professor at Ashoka University. “They talk about the poor and they speak the language of caste and obviously the language of religion.”Farmers have sought to get not only the B.J.P.’s attention, but the attention of the nation. A series of confrontations with B.J.P. leaders since September may not sway the election in Uttar Pradesh, but it could revive support across India and even globally for a protest movement that appeared to have been running out of steam, Mr. Verniers said.Though the protests have been largely peaceful, they have spurred occasional bouts of violence. In January protesters and the police clashed after some farmers drove their tractors into New Delhi. Protest leaders have distanced themselves from a shocking incident earlier this month at the farmer protest camp outside New Delhi, in which a group from a Sikh warrior sect killed and cut off the hand of a lower-caste Sikh, a Dalit, who they accused of desecrating a holy book.The B.J.P. needs the campaign in Uttar Pradesh to go without a hitch, despite the party’s lead in the polls. The party is trying to bounce back from the coronavirus’s second wave, which hit after Mr. Modi declared victory over the pandemic and showed the country’s lack of preparedness. Uttar Pradesh was hit particularly hard, with bodies of suspected victims washing up on the banks of India’s sacred Ganges River.Police officers standing guard outside the house of Raman Kashyap, a journalist who was killed in the violence in Lakhimpur Kheri.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesRam Dulare Kashyap, right, father of Raman Kashyap, speaking with reporters about the death of his son.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesWhile Mr. Modi, normally voluble, has said little about the farmers, other leaders in his party have embraced a language of force to rally supporters against them.In Haryana, a state neighboring Uttar Pradesh that is also governed by the B.J.P., a local official was captured on video ordering the police to use violence to break up one gathering. Farmers responded by breaking through police barricades outside a government office. The tensions eased only after the government agreed to investigate the official’s conduct.A week later, in Uttar Pradesh, Rakesh Tikait, a 59-year-old farm union leader, rallied tens of thousands of farmers, declaring an all-out campaign against the B.J.P.Earlier this month, farmers gathered again in Haryana and surrounded the site of a planned visit by the state’s top elected official, forcing him to cancel.Days before the incident in Uttar Pradesh, Ajay Mishra, Mr. Modi’s junior minister of home affairs, warned farmers in a speech to “behave, or we will teach you how to behave. It will take just two minutes.”Outraged, a group of farmers stood on a one-lane road in the village of Tikunia, carrying black flags they planned to wave at Mr. Mishra, who was visiting his constituency with his son, Ashish Mishra, and other party members.Farmers protested by driving their tractors toward New Delhi in January.Dinesh Joshi/Associated PressRakesh Tikait, a leader of the protesting farmers and spokesman for the Bhartiya Kisan Union, met with supporters in February to discuss the farm reforms proposed by India’s government.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesThe farmers received word that Mr. Mishra’s plans had changed and started to disperse when Ashish Mishra’s convoy came hurtling at them from behind, according to video footage and police officials. After the jeep rammed into the crowd, the farmers attacked the convoy with bamboo sticks and set two of the vehicles ablaze. By the end of the day, eight people were dead, including three people in the convoy.The farmers claim that they saw Ashish Mishra, known to villagers as Monu, in the convoy and blamed him for the incident. The minister has denied his family’s involvement. The police arrested Ashish Mishra, saying he failed to cooperate with the investigation, along with nine others in the murder case.The victims’ families said they have little hope of justice. “Long live Monu,” village walls proclaimed in graffiti next to a brightly painted lotus flower, the B.J.P. symbol. The Mishra family home, a sprawling compound hidden behind high walls and flowering bougainvillea, hovers over shanties.Opposition leaders have tried to capitalize on the moment, but many were prevented or delayed from reaching the victims’ families. Some, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, a leader of the Congress party, were detained.“All I can say is if, as a nation, we have a conscience,” she said, “then we cannot forget this.”The remains of burnt wood from the cremation of Lovepreet Singh in the field outside his house.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times More
US news‘Free and open’: Quad leaders call for ‘stable’ Indo-Pacific in veiled China digJoe Biden meets leaders of Australia, India and Japan in latest effort to cement US leadership in Asia A More
The British government was accused of “discrimination” for forcing mandatory quarantine, even for completely vaccinated people arriving from India, UAE and other countries under their newly changed Covid-19 related travel guidelines.India’s foreign ministry on Tuesday described Britain’s decision to not recognise ‘Covishield’ — the Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and manufacture by Serum Institute of India (SII) in Pune as “discriminatory”. Harsh Varshan Shringla, India foreign secretary warned that the country is within its rights to “take reciprocal measures” if the matter was not resolved.”The non-recognition of Covishield is a discriminating policy and impacts our citizens travelling to the UK. The external affairs minister has raised the issue strongly with the new UK foreign secretary. I am told that certain assurances have been given that this issue will be resolved,” Mr Shringla said in New Delhi.Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar raised the issue with his British counterpart Liz Truss in New York and reportedly urged her to remove the quarantine requirement for vaccinated Indians. “Urged early resolution of quarantine issue in mutual interest,” Mr Jaishankar said in a tweet.“We have offered our partner countries of mutual recognition of vaccines. But these are reciprocal actions. If we don’t get satisfaction we will be well within our rights to impose reciprocal measures,” the ministry said in a statement.According to the rules in the UK, travellers who have received both doses of the Covishield vaccine will have to quarantine for 10 days. The new rules will take effect from 4 October and is an attempt to streamline the present “red, amber, green traffic light system” to a single red list of countries.However, according to New Delhi, India provided 4 million doses of Covishield vaccine to the UK at their request. “The basic issue is that the vaccine called Covishield, of which the original manufacturer is in the UK. This has been used by their health system,” the statement added.Besides India, several other countries in the Middle East, South America, Africa and Russia are upset over the change in Britain’s travel policy. Meanwhile, author and opposition MP, Shashi Tharoor, pulled out of a planned book tour of UK in protest against the quarantine rules. In a tweet on Monday, he wrote: “It is offensive to ask fully vaccinated Indians to quarantine. The Brits are reviewing”.Another lawmaker from India Jairam Ramesh said “This smacks of racism”. “Absolutely bizarre considering Covishield was originally developed in the UK and The Serum Institute, Pune has supplied to that country too,” he added.Covishield and Covaxin are the two India-made coronavirus vaccines that have been administered to millions of Indians so far. More
The COVID-19 pandemic is increasing inequality globally and even advanced economies have not been spared. Before the pandemic began in 2020, inequality was on the rise. Decades of globalization, loose monetary policy and the rise of oligopolies have contributed to this phenomenon. In many ways, globalization has kept inflation down. When Walmart imports Chinese goods, Americans get more for less.
China can manufacture cheaply because labor costs are low. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also runs an authoritarian regime. The regime has repressive land and labor laws with scant regard for human rights. Legally, the CCP owns all the land in China and can appropriate any property it wants. Similarly, workers have little recourse to courts and sometimes work in slave-like conditions.
360° Context: The State of the Indian Republic
READ MORE
A rising China is challenging the postwar global order. Democracies, including the United States, are finding it difficult to meet the challenge for two reasons. First, loose monetary policies in recent years have brought back the specter of inflation. Second, no economy other than China’s can meet the supply needs of advanced economies. From laptops to toys, most goods are made in China.
Labor arbitrage has defined globalization from its early years. Companies set up factories where wages tend to be lower. This increases revenues and profits, making consumers and shareholders happy. Given rising inflationary expectations, advanced economies need labor arbitrage to keep costs of goods down. At the same time, these democratic societies want to decouple their supply chain from China.
With the size of its young workforce, India has a unique opportunity to become the new workshop of the world and emerge as a stabilizing global force in a multipolar world. To grasp this historic opportunity, it has to liberalize its economy wisely.
The Legacy of the Past
India could do well to heed the lessons of the past. The Soviet Union, Western Europe and the US emerged as strong economies after World War II by leveraging their manufacturing base. The war economy had led to a relentless focus on infrastructure, mass production and industrialization. In the case of Western Europe, the Marshall Plan helped put shattered economies back on track.
Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries
Over time, these advanced economies deindustrialized and production started shifting to emerging economies. China’s rapprochement with the US allowed it to enter the postwar Western economic system. Reforms in 1978 were critical to its success. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 created a brave new world where companies chased cheap production. China, with its size, scale and speedy centralized decision-making, emerged as the big winner.
As production moved to China, workers lost jobs in advanced economies and other industries did not emerge to retrain and employ them. The Rust Belt in the US has become a synonym for down-at-heel places left behind by globalization. Even as workers grew poorer, shareholders grew wealthier, exacerbating inequality.
Today, the United States finds itself in a complicated position with China. On the one hand, the Middle Kingdom steals intellectual property, transgresses international law and challenges the US. On the other hand, it supplies American consumers with cheap goods they need. America’s economic stimulus during the pandemic has, in fact, reinforced the country’s dependency on China. So, Washington cannot hold China’s feet to the fire and penalize its bad behavior. Beijing follows its policy of pinpricks short of outright conflict.
The US dollar is the reserve currency of the world. Since the days of Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve has followed a loose monetary policy. After the 2007-08 financial crisis, the US adopted the Japanese playbook from the 1990s and introduced quantitative easing. In practice, this means buying treasury and even corporate bonds to release money into the economy after interest rates touch zero. Such increased liquidity in the US has led to bloated company valuations and allowed the likes of Amazon or Uber to expand their operations. The cost of capital has been so low that profitability in the short or even medium run matters little.
Loose monetary policy has enabled the US to counter China’s state-subsidized companies to some degree. Yet both policies have distorted the market. The US can only continue with loose monetary policy as long as inflation is low. Should inflation rise, interest rates would also have to rise. This might trigger a stock market collapse, increase the cost of capital for its companies and weaken the global dominance of the US economy.
Embed from Getty Images
To persist with its economic model and simultaneously contain China, the US needs to curb inflation. This is only possible by shifting some if not all production away from China. Mexico, Vietnam and Bangladesh are possible alternatives. Mexico has a major drug, violence and governance problem. Vietnam and Bangladesh benefit from huge Chinese investment. Therefore, they might not be the best hedge for securing supply chains from the Middle Kingdom, especially if the companies manufacturing in these countries are Chinese.
As a vibrant democracy with a formidable military, India offers the US and the West a unique hedge against China. For geopolitical reasons alone, manufacturing in India makes sense. However, doing business in the country continues to be difficult because of red tape, corruption, erratic policymaking, a colonial bureaucracy with a socialistic culture and more.
India’s Nehruvian past still hobbles the nation’s economy. The country adopted socialist command-and-control policies using a colonial-era bureaucracy that prevented the economy from achieving high economic growth. Manufacturing suffered the most. To start a factory, any entrepreneur needed multiple licenses that cost time, money and energy. Poor infrastructure made it difficult for manufacturers to compete with their East Asian counterparts. While wages were low in India, the cost of doing business made many manufacturers uncompetitive.
Acquiring land in India is still a challenge. The experience of the Tata group in Singur revealed both political and legal risks that still exist. Similarly, convoluted labor laws made hiring and firing onerous, rendering companies inflexible and unable to respond quickly to market demand. Liberalization in 1991 improved matters, but the state continues to choke the supply side of the Indian economy.
In the second half of the 1990s, liberalization lost momentum. Coalition governments supported by strong interest groups stalled reforms. In fact, India drifted back to left-leaning policies starting 2004 and this severely limited economic growth. For instance, many industrial and infrastructure projects were killed by ministers to protect the environment. India’s toxic legacy of Nehruvian socialism persisted in terms of continuing state intervention. The country never meaningfully transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial economy and still suffers from low productivity. This in turn has constrained consumption and slowed down growth.
Embed from Getty Images
India’s much-heralded information technology sector only grew because it was new. The government did not exactly know what was going on and, as a result, there were fewer regulations to constrain this sector. Fewer regulations meant that the likes of Infosys and Wipro had greater autonomy in decision-making and fewer bribes to pay.
Reduce Red Tape
The first thing that India needs is an overhaul of its colonial-era bureaucracy that resolutely strives to occupy the commanding heights of the economy. It foists endless red tape on business, strangles entrepreneurship and takes too long to make most decisions. Government service is seen as lifelong employment. Once people become bureaucrats, they have little incentive to perform. Like their colonial predecessors, they lord over citizens instead of serving them. Rarely do they craft sensible policies. Even when a government comes up with a good policy, bureaucrats implement it poorly when they are not sabotaging it actively. This must change. Bureaucrats must be accountable to citizens. Performance-linked promotions and dismissal for underperformance are long overdue.
Over the years, politicians have tried to deliver benefits and services to citizens to win reelection. To get around a corrupt, colonial and dysfunctional bureaucracy, they instituted direct benefit transfers for welfare schemes, emulating other emerging economies like Brazil. This move is necessary but not sufficient. India needs sound economic policymaking directed by domain experts in each administrative department.
Only members of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) occupy key positions in the finance ministry. Instead, India needs economists, chartered accountants, finance professionals and those with varied skill sets in this ministry. The treasuries of the US, Britain, Germany and almost every advanced economies have this diversity of talent in their upper echelons.
There is no reason why economic policymaking in 21st-century India should be monopolized by an archaic IAS. The government has made noise about the lateral entry of professionals into policymaking, but tangible results have been few and far between.
If the bureaucracy holds India back, so does the judiciary. Nearly 37 million cases are pending in the courts. It takes around six years for a case to be resolved in a subordinate court, over three years in the high courts and another three years in the supreme court. A case that goes all the way to the supreme court takes an average of 10 years to resolve. Many cases get stuck for 20 to 30 years or more.
Embed from Getty Images
India needs to reform its judicial system if its economy is to thrive. Justice is invariably delayed, if not denied, and it also costs an arm and a leg. Not only does it add to transaction costs, but it also undermines business confidence. Virtual courts have already shown the way forward during the pandemic. A higher number of judges using both in-person and online technology could reduce the seemingly unending number of pending cases.
Create Efficient Markets
To improve labor productivity and consumption, the government must reduce inflation and improve purchasing power. For decades after independence in 1947, India was united politically but divided economically. Producers in one state could not sell in other states without paying taxes and, in some cases, bribes. In agricultural markets, they could not even sell in other districts. India’s new goods and services tax (GST) might be imperfect, but it has already made a difference. Even during a pandemic, interstate goods movement rose by 20% and menu costs, a term in economics used for the costs of adapting to changing prices or taxes, dropped because tax filings were done online.
The 2016 Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code has led to major efficiency gains. Now, lenders can recover their debt more speedily. Bankruptcy proceedings are now much simpler even if haircuts remain high. Unsurprisingly, India has risen in the World Bank Doing Business rankings from 130 in 2016 to 63 in 2020.
As Atul Singh and Manu Sharma explained in an article on Fair Observer in 2018, non-performing assets of Indian banks have led to a financial crisis. The government could do well to adopt some if not all the reforms the authors suggested. Given rising inflationary pressures because of rising oil prices, India’s central bank can no longer cut rates. So, the government has to be creative in tackling its banking issues and free up liquidity for Indian businesses with great potential to grow. Banks burnt by poor lending in the past and fearful of corruption charges as well must discover the judgment and appetite to lend to deserving businesses in a fast-growing economy that needs credit for capital formation.
A little-noticed need of the Indian economy is to strengthen its own credit rating systems and agencies. Capital flows are aided by accurate corporate and political risk assessment. The US enjoys a global comparative advantage in attracting investments thanks to the big three homegrown agencies: S&P, Moody’s and Fitch. These agencies tend to fall short in their India assessment. The standards they set give American companies an advantage over Indian ones.
Therefore, both the private sector and the government must strengthen Indian rating agencies such as CRISIL and ICRA. These agencies are improving continuously. They now have access to increased digital high-frequency data, which they can interpret in the domestic context. As a result, Indian agencies can benchmark corporate or sovereign risk better than their American counterparts for domestic markets. A better benchmarking of risk is likely to deepen the bond market and cause a multiplier effect by enabling companies to raise money for increased capital expenditure.
Embed from Getty Images
For decades, India followed a socialist model of agriculture, doling out large unsustainable subsidies. As Singh and Sharma explained in a separate article, the Soviet model was the inspiration for the Indian one. Indian agriculture denuded groundwater, emptied government coffers and lowered farm productivity. The current reforms allow farmers to grow what they want and sell wherever they want to bypass parasitic middlemen. The new legislation emulates the US farm bills and promises to boost agricultural production, lower inflation and increase exports. This legislation might also lower rural hunger and improve India’s human capital in the long term.
India has to transition hundreds of millions from agriculture to industry. Currently, 58% of the country’s population is dependent on agriculture and contributes just 20% to gross domestic product (GDP). All advanced and industrialized economies have a much lower percentage of their populations engaged in agriculture. In the US, the figure is 1.3% and in Vietnam, 43% work in agriculture. The last time the US had 50% of its population engaged in agriculture was in 1870.
Improve Infrastructure
To facilitate movement from agriculture to industry, India must invest in infrastructure and urbanization. For decades, its infrastructure has been woefully inadequate. Indian cities are known to be chaotic and do not provide basic services to their citizens. Recently, India launched a $1.9-trillion National Infrastructure Pipeline that is engaged in a rollout of road, rail, seaport and airports to connect centers of manufacturing with points of export. This focus on infrastructure has to be consistent and relentless.
India could emulate Chinese cities like Chongqing and Shenzhen that could be home to industry and hubs of trade, both domestic and international. Projects like the smart city in Dholera, 80 kilometers from Gujarat’s capital of Ahmedabad, are the way forward. Similarly, the new Production Linked Incentive scheme is the sort of policy India needs. The Tatas are setting up a plant to manufacture lithium-ion batteries under this scheme. Not only could Indian industry meet the needs of a fast-growing market, but it could also be a source of cheap imports for many other countries.
India must not only focus on metropolises, but also smaller cities and towns where the cost of living is lower. Digitalization of work will allow people to stay in such urban areas. Of course, they will need investment and organization for which India must tap capital and talent not only nationally but internationally. For instance, pension funds in North America and Europe are seeking growth to meet their increasing liabilities. If India could get its act together, investment into Indian markets could be significant.
A key part of infrastructure that needs reform in a low energy consumption society is the power sector. Gujarat’s growth is underpinned by increased production and improved distribution of electricity. The rest of the country must emulate this westernmost state and Gujarat itself must bring in further reforms. Renewable energy sources such as gas, solar, wind and hydro must grow further. A nationwide energy market would bring in efficiency gains and boost growth.
Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries
A focus on renewable energy also brings risks and opportunities. Currently, China controls critical metals and rare earths required in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing. Beijing has an effective monopoly over 80% of the world’s cobalt, 50% of lithium, 85% of rare earth oxides and 90% of rare earth metals. A decarbonized future cannot be intrinsically linked to an authoritarian state that has a history of not playing by free market rules.
India’s $1.1-billion “Deep Ocean Mission” offers a unique opportunity for the country to provide energy security to democratic nations in North America, Europe and elsewhere. As they transition to clean technologies, India can provide a safer, more reliable and benign alternative to an increasingly belligerent China.
In 2021, India has a historic opportunity to enter a new economic arc. The global conditions could not be more favorable. Advanced economies are looking to decouple from China without triggering inflation. India is the only country with the size and the scale to be an alternative. Its large youth population and rising middle class are powerful tailwinds for high economic growth. Indeed, India owes it not only to its citizens, but also to the rest of the world to get its act together and become a force for global stability at a time of much volatility and uncertainty.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
