Narendra Modi: temptation of the middle class

The sudden ascent of stocky, 62 year old Narendra Modi as a serious contender for the nation’s leadership has taken people by surprise. The general election is still a year away but the average, open minded, middle-of- the-road Indian wonders how to think about the polarizing chief minister of Gujarat. Either you love him or hate him, which is precisely why one must not react with a knee-jerk but try and go beyond the shallow surface of a flawed but remarkable human being.

India today is discontented and troubled as a result of corruption scandals, high inflation, declining growth, and a government in denial. Sick of the drift and paralysis, people desperately seek a strong leader, and insistently ask if Narendra Modi might be the one. Clearly, he has proven the ability to build a vibrant economy and usher in corrupt free governance. Could he be India’s best chance to ungum the bureaucracy, tackle corruption and restore the economy to health? But Modi also has a clear downside: he is dictatorial with communal tendencies. Should one risk India’s precious secular and collaborative traditions for the sake of good governance and prosperity? It is a dreadful moral dilemma between equally important values--a classic dharma-sankat.

No Indian leader in recent times has spoken with such passion about ‘governance’ and ‘development’. His talk of ‘less government and more governance’ resonates with the aspiring young middle class. He has changed the language of politics with words like outcomes, accountability, and unbureaucratic service delivery. Visit a municipal office, he says, and you will only see clerks; but an urbanizing nation needs technical people to solve sanitation, transport and infrastructure problems; so, he hired engineer interns and gave them an opportunity to solve municipal problems in Gujarat. Implementation is his obsession and he compares two canals of equal size--the Sujalam Sufalam Yojana, which he completed in two years while the old Sardar Sarovar canal from Nehru's days is still incomplete.

Every country must protect its environment, he argues, but none stops 750 industrial projects and delays them for years. By covering Gujarat’s canals with solar panels, he is conserving water and has made Gujarat a model of solar power. India’s schools face a serious problem of quality, and the Right to Education Act refuses to measure outcomes; so, he plans to make Gujarat’s schools accountable through continuous, quality testing. He inspires young people, saying ‘IT + IT = IT’ (Indian Talent + Information Technology = India’s Tomorrow.) Not since Jawaharlal Nehru has a politician given people such a sense of possibilities. They see in Modi an underdog, a David challenging the Goliath of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.

But every temptation has a price. Modi is considered anti-Muslim and many cannot forgive him for the events in Gujarat in 2002. He may not have actively connived in the violence, they say, but why doesn’t  he show remorse? After all, it happened under his watch, and he is responsible. By polarizing the country, people fear he might alienate India's Muslims and this might enhance the risk of domestic terror. The temptation to vote for prosperity and good governance must be tempered by the imperative to keep the nation united and secular.

Those who dismiss the middle class’ impact on elections forget that a new generation of voters has joined the middle class after 1991, and it is in a rage over violence against women and children and longs for a leader who is tough against crime. But it also does not want an Indira Gandhi who will subvert the institutions of democracy. Modi is not likeable--Rahul Gandhi is far more affable--but people today seek an effective, not a friendly leader. India's dilemma is that Modi is the most likely candidate to provide corrupt free governance and restore the economy to high growth, create masses of jobs and lift millions into the middle class. But his communal past is a threat. In the end, each voter will have to choose in 2014 between several imperfect candidates and make a trade-off. Those who think corrupt free governance and prosperity are more important will vote for Modi. Those who worry about communal harmony and domestic security, will not vote for him. It is an unhappy but unambiguous choice.

Food security bill: Corruption by another name

On the same day as the central cabinet approved the food security bill two weeks ago, Delhi’s chief minister, Sheila Dixit, stood up courageously to defend the rising price of electric power in the Delhi assembly. She explained patiently to the legislators that you cannot have something for nothing--electricity costs money and those who use it should pay for it. In the end she succeeded. By not raising the power subsidy, Delhi’s chief minister was able to increase investment for roads, public transport, education and health care in Delhi state’s annual budget.

The contrast between the two actions of the centre and the Delhi state could not have been more dramatic. Sheila Dixit’s actions will lead to productive jobs, better skills and long term prosperity of the people. The food security bill, on the other hand, will condemn India’s poor to perpetual poverty.

The proposed food security law plans to distribute grain to two thirds of India’s population at a 90% subsidy, which will cost the nation over Rs 100,000 crores.  Giving people virtually free food will keep them dependent on a ‘mai baap party’, trapping them into a permanent vote bank. It is a brilliant strategy of the Congress Party at the centre—both the voters and the party will thus have a vested interest in keeping people poor and dependent.

If the same Rs 100,000 crores were to be spent in providing public goods--roads, schools, power, and law and order--it would opportunities. It would encourage entrepreneurs to start businesses, which would create sustainable jobs and raise the state’s tax revenues. These taxes, in turn, would make it possible to invest in more public goods. Thus, a virtuous circle would be created and lift the society’s standard of living. But the Congress Party would lose out for people would move out of poverty and the party would lose its vote bank. The party needs for people to remain poor.

There are other serious risks associated with the food security bill. The fact is India just cannot afford this colossal spending. The latest budget of the central government shows how vulnerable are the nation’s finances. This new spending will increase India’s fiscal deficit and could well lead to a downgrade of the country’s sovereign rating to junk status. A downgrade of the rating will raise the cost of money available to India from the world market and also discourage foreign investment at a time when it is much needed.

Moreover, past experience shows that less than half the food in such programs reaches the intended beneficiaries. Hence, half of the 50 million tonnes of grain are likely to get diverted to the black market by this bill, and this could result in another scam which this scam tainted government cannot afford.

Worse, this bill will tempt people to lie about their financial status and weaken public morality even further. For example, 83% of Karnataka’s people call themselves poor based on BPL cards issued. But government records show that less than a quarter of the people in the state are, in fact, poor. West Bengal also discovered last year that forty percent of its BPL cards were fake. In Uttar Pradesh, the situation is much worse. A law that turns people into liars would have horrified our founding fathers. They had a profoundly moral vision of the Indian republic--so much so that they placed the wheel of dharma, the Ashok Chakra, in the nation’s flag. When a government forces its people to become dishonest, it wounds public dharma and undermines the trust between the rulers and the ruled.

When we were young our parents taught us the importance of honest and  hard work. We learned that if you did not work you did not eat. But when the government starts giving people something for nothing, it weakens the work ethic. It undermines the ethic of responsibility and dharma taught to us by our parents. When the government starts giving away to people subsidized food, diesel, cooking gas, NREGA jobs, it sends the wrong message. It teaches them that they can get something without working for it. This is another form of adharma.

The reforms of 1991 were based on an unwritten social contract which created a new basis of trust. The contract was that the government would stop running businesses and focus instead on governance and public goods. Entrepreneurs and markets would do a more efficient job of managing businesses and this would lift the economy’s growth rate. This has, indeed, been happening. As a result of high growth, almost two hundred million people have risen out of poverty and another two hundred million have joined the middle class in the past two decades.

 Thus, the private sector has done its job. But the government has not lived to its side of the bargain. It has done a very poor job of providing infrastructure. Instead of investing in roads, electricity, and other public goods, it has focused on giving ‘bribes for votes’ to the people. These bribes are subsidies on food, electric power, diesel, cooking gas, NREGA jobs etc. Unlike investment, subsidies do not result in production. When spending is not backed by production, it leads to inflation. Thus, ‘bribes for votes’ policy has contributed to inflation in our county

 Giving away virtually free food and power, waiving loans to farmers, creating ‘make work’ jobs, as the UPA government has been doing, has undermined the social contract. Markets meanwhile have helped to accelerate social change and re-shaped public character. A new class of citizens has risen who are now demanding a corruption-free state. They are angry over poor governance and corruption, and this has widened the gap between people’s aspirations and government’s performance.

The UPA’s campaign managers for the 2014 elections may think that India’s vast majority is untouched by the new dharma, but the recent protests against corruption and violence against women have shown otherwise. This cynical food security bill, instead of winning votes, may thus only add to the woes of the UPA, which will discover to its peril in 2014 that voters will think of the food security bill as amounting to corruption by a different name.

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A Budget speech you will never hear

It is Budget time again and next Thursday the finance minister will address  parliament with a speech which you will never hear except from my auto-wallah: 
  

            Madam Speaker, I rise to present the Union Budget for 2013-2014. This is a pre-election year and the people expect give-aways and bribes-for-votes. But this is not going to happen in this Budget. So, here is my advice to citizens. Go home; on the way, pick up the garbage that you threw out the window. Wash the street. Teach your children about their duties, not just their rights. Tell them to spend an hour each week on their neighbourhood, learning democratic ‘habits of the heart’.

 India does not owe you cheap diesel, cooking gas or subsidized food.  Nor does it owe free electricity, make-work jobs, loan waivers, or even reservations. The only thing the state owes is good governance. This begins with law and order, as Nirbhaya has reminded us. Btw, none of you stopped to help her on the road. We also owe you public goods--roads, clean drinking water and other infrastructure; plus, functioning schools and health care. After that, it is up to you to work hard, pull yourself up, pay your taxes and make India a great nation.

            A few years ago India was the envy of the world. We were growing rapidly, creating masses of jobs, and lifting millions out of poverty. All this happened because of our reforms. All governments after 1991 kept reforming, albeit slowly, but even the slow reforms added up to make us the world’s second fastest growing economy. The reforms stopped after the UPA came to power because we made a false trade-off between equity and growth. Instead of investing on growth we started spending on the poor. We also stopped approving new projects. This has led to high inflation, low growth, and an unsustainable fiscal deficit, which threatens our nation’s sovereign rating.

            Madame Speaker, our growth numbers hide real misery that has been inflicted upon the Indian people as growth has plunged from almost 9% to 5%. One percentage point of GDP growth means roughly 15 lakh jobs; each direct job creates three indirect jobs; and each job supports a family of five. If you do the arithmetic, Madam, you will find that a four percentage point drop in GDP has brought pain and suffering to around twelve crore Indians.

            Here are some examples of what went wrong. If we had continued the momentum in road building after we came to power, we might have been looking at a different India. A recent study by Ejaz Ghani and others for the World Bank shows that the highways built or upgraded by the Golden Quadrilateral have brought enormous gains in new manufacturing activity, jobs and productivity within ten km of the new highways. Land acquisition has been a problem. But we have made it worse now. To acquire an acre of land under the new Land Acquisition Bill will “take at least two years as the proposal would have to pass through about a hundred hands.. social assessment would be carried out and its report would be vetted by an Expert Group...there would be an R&R Committee and a National Monitoring Committee to pontificate over the reports of the junior committees...The bill is anti-farmer and anti-growth, but it is certainly pro-civil society,” says a respected member of the National Advisory Council.

            What keeps me awake at night is that many of our policies have corrupted the morals of our people. When we cancelled loans of Rs 60,000 crores in 2008, a farmer who had just repaid his loan, sadly said, ‘What is the use of being honest?’ Human society is based on trust. We learned as children to keep our promises and repay our debts. Tulsidas reminded us, ‘praan jaye par vachan na jaye’. Loan waivers wound our moral universe in the same way as ‘make-work’ jobs, adulteration of diesel with kerosene, and the vast theft of PDS food.

The economic rise of India has been the defining event of our lives. But we let it slip. Today I shall promise to push reforms and try to restore the old magic. With this, I hasten to conclude, Madame Speaker. 

An aspiring young India needs a new liberal party

India is a nation in ferment. People have taken to the streets because they no longer trust the existing political order. The old way of doing politics is under challenge but a new way has not yet been found. No one knows quite what the next eruption will bring. After Anna Hazare, Kejriwal, and Nirbhaya, there will be another outrage and another protest, and this will not stop until the political class learns to cope with the aspirations of a new, young, self confident nation. There were hints of this realization last week at Jaipur but no one had the courage to say so at the Congress conclave, not even Rahul Gandhi.

The aspiring young are about third of the country now, and in a decade or so they will be half. This is the new aam admi and it finds it has no one to vote for in 2014. The existing parties continue to view voters patronizingly as poor, ignorant, grieving masses. So, they resort at election time to the same tired populist formula of bribes and giveaways--free booze, loan waivers, free power and TV sets, caste reservations, subsidized food, NREGA jobs and now cash transfers. The giveaways benefit only a section of the people. But Nirbhaya’s lesson is that people want public goods which benefit all citizens. Everyone gains from efficient law and order, corruption free governance, good roads and schools, whereas only a section gains from reservations, free power, and PDS rice. Everyone benefits where the police quickly file an FIR and the judge gives quick justice.

The aspiring young cannot understand why their tolerant nation, which offers the most astonishing religious and political freedom, fails to give economic freedom. Why must amazingly free India rank 119 on the global freedom index? Why must it reform by stealth? In a country where three out of five people are self-employed, why should it take 42 days to start a business, and the entrepreneur is victim to endless red tape and corrupt inspectors?

India ends up reforming furtively because none of the political parties has explained to the people the difference between being ‘pro-market’ and ‘pro-business’. To be ‘pro-market’ is to believe in competition in the marketplace, which helps keep prices low, raises the quality of products, and leads to a ‘rules based capitalism’. To be ‘pro-business’ means to turn over the market’s authority to politicians and officials, and this leads to ‘crony capitalism’. Competition means that some businesses should be allowed to die because they are poorly managed such as Kingfisher Airlines and Air India, and should not be bailed out. Not making this distinction has led to the false impression that reforms make the rich richer when they actually help the poor. The aspiring young demand rules based capitalism, and to get there will mean shifting our politics away from populism towards the centre.

Protests awaken a people but do not solve the problem. Only the hard work of politics can do that in a democracy. It would be smart for one of the two major national parties to recognize this opportunity and come into tune with the new aspiring, secular aam admi. But that seems a hopeless prospect. The DNA of the BJP is not secular; the DNA of the Congress is statist, populist and socialist. Neither has shown the commitment to drive institutional reform needed for good governance. The regional parties lack a national vision and left parties do not believe in market-based outcomes. The Aam Admi Party could have filled this space but it has illiberal tendencies and does not endorse economic reforms. So, while the last thing India needs is a new party, it is the only alternative.  

A young aspiring, secular India needs a new liberal party of the 21^st century which trusts markets rather than officials for economic outcomes, and relentlessly focuses on the reform of the institutions of governance. Only thus, will the country begin to move away from crony capitalism and towards rules-based capitalism. It may not win votes quickly but it will bring governance reform to centre stage and gradually prove to voters that open markets and rules-based government are the only civilized ways to lift living standards and achieve shared prosperity.

Stop talking, start doing

Ratan Tata is a reticent man. He is 74 and retires this month as chairman after guiding his group to be the country’s number one, $ 100 billion, in revenues. He commands respect not only from his 450,000 employees but from the entire global business community. He is courteous and complains rarely. But earlier this month he spoke out in anguish. “Government inaction is driving investment away from the country,” he said, and this was forcing groups like the Tatas to seek opportunities abroad where you don’t have “a seven or eight year wait to get clearance for a steel plant.” The finance minister, P. Chidambaram, echoed this view, reminding us that over 100 mega projects had been stuck for years because of a lack of approvals. Clearly, this failure of the government is greatly responsible for bringing India’s economy to its knees. 

Not only CEOs but ordinary Indians have been voicing the same complaint for years. Why should it take 12 years to build a road or 10 years to get justice in our country? Our public debate is filled with talk of corruption, about the right to information, of democratic answerability but almost no one speaks about the need for quick decision making or enhancing the capacity of our weak, soft, and ‘flailing’ state. No amount of CAG’s disclosures or ranting about the Lokpal will improve the state’s ability to act or strengthen our crumbling institutions. Is our obsession with accountability and transparency making us forget that the state was, in fact, created for collective action?

Accountability is, of course, important. Over the past decade, campaigns by activists supported by intellectuals have brought significant gains, such as the Right to Information Act. The pressure exerted by Anna Hazare’s movement backed by the media have raised awareness of corruption in high places and even helped in the arrest of powerful people. We are rightly proud of these achievements which have strengthened our democracy. But these laudable steps have not significantly improved services of the state to the citizen. Cases are still stuck in the courts; roads are built at a snail’s pace; police will delay registering an FIR unless influence or money is exchanged; it takes 117 approvals and 7-10 years to build a power plant. The list goes on.

Oddly enough, the push for democratic accountability may have weakened our already feeble state. The average official, always faint hearted and timid, is now even more afraid of putting his pen to paper. This is the other side of our fight against corruption. The modern democratic state has to balance the ability to deliver services on time with accountability to the people. Other democracies have also faced this problem of balance but they have found a way to cope by reforming their institutions. All institutions, in fact, must aim for a balance between accountability and action. A company could not survive if the CEO spent the whole day listening to shareholders. A school would not be effective if its principal spent his time only listening to parents. Already scorned as a “nation of talkers and not doers”, India needs to shift its focus to action.

There is a great deal to be hopeful about India’s future. It is stable, open, and amazingly tolerant. Its economic reforms have put it on a promising path of rapid growth. It is breeding outstanding companies which are more innovative than most in Asia. Its middle class is growing rapidly and its poor will benefit from a more effective welfare system based on cash transfers. But India’s soft underbelly is a soft, weak state, whose institutions of governance—the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the police--are in desperate need of reform. This is one of the reasons why its economy has hit a wall as it approaches the $ 2 trillion GDP mark.

Ratan Tata and P. Chidambaram have focused on one symptom of the disease—paralysis in decision making at the centre. But even the solution--the recently formed cabinet committee on investment—invites scepticism. The issue is not ideological—a big versus a small state. India needs to achieve an effective balance between our government’s ability to act and be accountable to the people. 

To equate capitalism with greed is a mistake

On an evening in early October , the announcer at one of our premier news channels screamed 'greed' while describing the misdeeds of the latest victim of Arvind Kejriwal. Earlier that day, Mr Kejriwal had accused Robert Vadra of receiving favours from the real estate company DLF Ltd. In the next breath, the announcer explained that crony capitalism was at the root of the problem. 

Indeed, not a day goes by when someone does not employ the word 'greed' to describe capitalism. They say that if envy is the sin of socialism , greed is the sin of capitalism. Capitalism is sometimes called a 'system of greed' and is this perhaps a reason why capitalism is finding it difficult to find a comfortable home in India? India is an open, tolerant, liberal democracy, but why is it unable to institutionalize free markets? Why does India have to reform by stealth? Corruption, for example , will not be beaten with a big, new authoritarian bureaucracy, as antigraft protesters want. It will diminish only when discretionary powers are wrested from dodgy bureaucrats and politicians and turned over to transparent, competitive markets. 

To equate 'capitalism' with 'greed' is a mistake. We tend to confuse self-interest in the marketplace with selfishness or greed. At the heart of capitalism is the idea of exchange between ordinary, self-interested human beings, who seek to advance their interests peacefully in the marketplace . Adam Smith called this 'rational self-interest' . It is the same motive that gets one to jump out of bed in the morning or makes one carry an umbrella if it rains—nothing selfish about that. To be human is to be self-interested , and this is what exchange in the market place entails. 

Greed or selfishness, on the other hand, is an excess of self interest and often transgresses on the rights of others. It is present in all of us, but we find it easier to see it in others and difficult to see it in ourselves. Greed can motivate theft, entail himsa—hurting anotherwhose opposite, ahimsa, is a virtue that Mahatma Gandhi extolled. But the other side of greed is ambition, a positive thing, and when rightly directed, is life-affirming . Herein lies the conundrum of human existence: that the same inner forces that result in a vice can just as easily become virtues that can motivate the well-being of our species. 

Those who believe that capitalism has been forced on us by the imperial West are also wrong. Friedrich Hayek, the Noble laureate, called the market a spontaneous order—it is natural for human beings to exchange goods and services, and this is how every society evolved money, laws, conventions and morals to guide behaviour in the marketplace. These are natural products of human endeavour. Competing and cooperating in the marketplace existed in India before the West was imperial or modern. 

Whether we like it or not, India is headed in the direction of some sort of democratic capitalism. After two decades of reforms, hardly anyone in India wants state ownership of production, where the absence of competition corrodes the character even more, as we know too well from the dark days of the 'license raj' . Our animus against capitalism has diminished after communism's fall as people increasingly believe that markets do deliver greater prosperity, but most think that capitalism is not a moral system. They continue to believe that morality must depend on religion. 

Although the market is neither moral nor immoral, human self-interest usually brings about good behaviour in the marketplace. A seller who does not treat his customers with fairness and civility will lose market share. A company that markets defective products will lose customers. A firm that does not promote the most deserving employees will lose talent to its competitors. A buyer who does not respect the market price will not survive. Lying and cheating will ruin a firm's image, making it untouchable to creditors and suppliers. Hence, free markets offer powerful incentives for ethical conduct, but they must be backed by state institutions that enforce contracts and punish criminal behaviour . If the market has an inbuilt morality, why are there so many crooks in the marketplace? The answer is that there are crooked people in every society, and this is why we need effective regulators, policemen and judges. We should design our institutions to catch crooks and not harass innocent people as we do so often. 

The other cause of our grief is to mistake being 'pro-market' with being 'probusiness' . To be 'pro-market' is to believe in competitive markets which help to keep prices low and gradually raise the quality of products . Competition also means that some businesses will die because they are poorly managed and cannot compete. Kingfisher Airlines and Air India should be allowed to die and not be bailed out by the government . Thus, being pro-market leads to 'rules-based capitalism' ; 'pro-business' often leads to 'crony capitalism' . Not to have explained this difference has been the great mistake of our reformers and this has led to the false impression that the reforms only make the rich richer. Crony capitalism exists in India today because of the lack of reforms in sectors such as mining and real estate. To get rid of crony capitalism we need more rather than less reform. 

The doom-mongers , who claim that we are now resigned to live in an age of decaying moral standards, are also wrong. Yes, the new Indian middle class is permissive and indulges enthusiastically in har mless pleasures. Yes, it is materialistic , consumerist and capitalistic. But these impulses are not to be mistaken for greed. Only when one's pleasure hurts another does it become a matter of the law and then, of course, it must be punished. The shared imagination of the new India with its harmless pleasure and victimless vice should not be condemned. Think of ours as a society in transition . Mass wealth is profoundly disturbing but once there is enough, India might again return to its old character of renunciation. 

Instead of religious rules, young Indians are motivated by duties to fellow human beings rather than to gods. Those who accuse them of shallow materialism ignore the injustices that prevailed when religion held a monopoly on morality. They overlook real ethical progress with regard to sexual and caste equality that our secular society has begun to deliver. So, the next time Kejriwal makes an expose and the TV screams 'greed' , do not fall into the trap of believing capitalist culture is morally sick or that we should return to a moral order rooted in socialism or religion.

The loss of inheritance

The approach of another festival season raises the old question of the place of myth and classical culture in our contemporary lives. This is not an idle question—it forces one to confront the difficult problem of what it means to be fully and richly human. For millions of young Indians who have risen in recent years and are now part of the confused, upwardly mobile, post-reform internet generation, the question has a new urgency. With a degree of prosperity has come the luxury of being able to face up to one’s inheritance, even though the answer might be frightening.

Akhilesh Yadav, the young chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, is typical of this generation. Unlike his father, Akhilesh finds no votes in the old bashing of English and “angrezi hatao andolans” especially when English medium schools are flourishing in the poorest Muslim mohallas of U.P. Yes, young Indians are more relaxed about the place of English in their lives, and gone is the earlier anxiety over “Indian-ness” or the belief that one has to read and write in one’s mother bhasha to be authentically Indian. Moreover, no one could have imagined the intellectual ferment that would come with the flowering of Indian writing in English. Yet, despite the new cosmopolitanism, Akhilesh and his generation cannot conceive of exchanging it for a riotous celebration of Dusehra, Diwali, and Ramzan, even though the significance of the festivals has receded from their consciousness.
   

What will shock Akhilesh Yadav and his friends in the political class is the sobering truth that an Indian who seriously wants to study the classics of Sanskrit or ancient regional languages will have to go abroad. “If Indian education and scholarship continue along their current trajectory,” writes Sheldon Pollock, the brilliant professor of Sanskrit at Columbia University, “the number of citizens capable of reading and understanding the texts and documents of the classical era will very soon approach a statistical zero. India is about to become the only major world culture whose literary patrimony, and indeed history, are in the hands of scholars outside the country.”

This is extraordinary in a country with dozens of Sanskrit departments in all major Indian universities, along with network of maths, pathshalas, and vidyapeeths. The ugly truth is that the quality of teaching in these institutions is so poor that not a single graduate is able to think seriously about the past and critically examine ancient texts. They are parrots who can only repeat words without converting them into true knowledge. Politically motivated appointments have also ruined the few centres of excellence that once existed at Pune University, Deccan College, and the Banaras Hindu University. Fifty years ago, India had great scholars like P.V. Kane, V.S. Sukhthankar, S.N. Dasgupta, S. Radhakrishnan and many more. The tradition of pandit learning is also disappearing. Where is India’s soft power when there are fewer and fewer Indians capable of interrogating the texts of Kalidasa or the edicts of Ashoka?

The gift of economic growth is that for the first time parents are beginning to be freed from earlier middle class insecurities and their children are beginning to take risks in the pursuit of unusual careers. One of these is driven by a natural curiosity about one’s past. The proud discipline of making sense of ancient texts is called philology which is practically dead in India. But as academic salaries have improved in recent years, it is increasingly possible once again to make a scholarly career. No one, however, will be able to study in India unless our institutions improve. Akhilesh Yadav and leaders in other states have in their power to stop the rot and reform our third rate institutions so that young Indians can one day help to recover our historical memory. 

To be worthy of being Indian does not mean to stop speaking in English. It means to be able to have an organic connection with our many rich linguistic pasts. To be truly ‘whole’ is to realize that mythical themes are universal and portray eternal truths of mankind, and can help us to cope with life at different stages. What separates man from beast is memory and if we lose historical memory then we surrender it to those who those who will abuse it.