Unforgiving history of modern India

The democratic system creates the scope for political power to be used for public welfare. But due to their arrogance, lust for power, authoritarianism, nepotism and corruption, the politicians become embroiled in personal and crony interests rather than public welfare. While in power their misdeeds may be covered up by self-promotion and sycophantic adulation, but history is unforgiving and eventually their misdemeanors are laid bare before the people.

These thoughts came to mind while reading Ashoka Mody's 'India is Broken: A People Betrayed, 1947 to Today', recently published by Stanford University. Juggernaut Books has published the Indian edition of the book.

US economist of Indian origin Ashoka and I were post-graduate students at Boston University at the same time. Ashoka Mody is no lightweight or biased intellectual. He studied as an under-grad student at IIT in Madras, India and worked at Bell Lab, the World Bank and IMF. He is now a visiting professor at Princeton University.

In the introduction of the book, Ashoka explains his point of view, "I was born and raised in India but have lived and worked in the United States for nearly forty years. Some years ago I had to give up my Indian citizenship to become a US citizen. When I called my father to tell him of the emotional rupture I felt, he unhesitatingly reassured me, 'You will always be an Indian at heart.' It is that Indian-at-heart you hear in these pages."

Mody explains the title of the book, 'India is Broken', towards the outset, writing of the Hindu-Muslim divide in India in 2020, the egregious economic equalities, the economic desperation in the reverse trek from city to village, the 27-storey home of Mukesh Ambani located just seven miles away from the cramped Dharavi slums of Mumbai, all which revealed that despite decades of economic progress, India was broken for hundreds of millions of Indians.

After the introduction, the book begins with the power struggle between Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel in August 1947. Nehru won this power struggle and became India's first prime minister. Patel joined Nehru's cabinet as deputy prime minister and home minister. According to Gandhi, Nehru was a thinker, and Patel a doer. Nehru was a pure democrat. In 1957 when there was talk of imposing presidential rule in the communist-ruled Kerala, he said that he had no desire or wish for the fall of any government other than through democratic process. In reply to a question of a journalist from 'The Hindu', he said, how will I remove them? What do you want to say? The people elected them. When there was talk of making his daughter Indira Gandhi the president of Congress in 1959, he said that in no way did he want to encourage a dynastic rule.

The democratic Nehru was a dismal failure when it came to running the economy. His socialist rhetoric was fake. Dependence of large industries and planning proved to be an obstacle to India's development. Land reform efforts failed. Resolving problems pertaining to education, health, urban development and unemployment remained neglected. Indecision in determining the foreign currency exchange rate sent India repeatedly turning to IMF.

The best part of Ashoka's book is that he narrated history giving each person his due, backed with evidence and documentation.

Nehru's daughter Indira was completely opposite of her father. She was an autocratic and promoted nepotism and corruption. She imposed the state of emergency, the repressive MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act), restricted the authority of the court and started censorship of the press. MISA later came to be known as the 'Maintenance of Indira and Sanjay Act'. She indulged son Sanjay's corruption. She nationalised banks to supply him with funds. She established black money and muscle power in politics. It was during Indira's rule that Dhirubhai Ambani rose to power. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee helped in his rise. With Pranab's backing, Dhirubhai had a full power in determining the government's policies.

The book gives examples of Indira's autocracy. When asked what the issue of the parliament election was in 1971, Indira Gandhi replied to a Newsweek journalist that she herself was the election issue. This is indicated in the statement of her rival, Jan Sangh leader Atal Behari Vajpayee. He said that even though the opposition had fielded 2,700 candidates all over the country, Congress carried out its election in every constituency with Mrs Gandhi. Reading about Indira Gandhi's rule in this book, it felt like rewinding a cassette and looking at Bangladesh all over again.

After Indira, Rajiv Gandhi emerged on the scene with the 'Mr Clean' image. The book tells us that as a pilot, he would not introduce himself as Gandhi on a flight, but as Rajiv. During his rule, toxic communalism spread. It is learnt that it was with his approval that the Hindu fanatics broke into the Babri Masjid. It was during his rule that the followers of the pioneer of Hindutva Savarkar became active. (Interestingly, Savarkar had said that Hindutva has no relation to the rites and rituals of the Hindu religion). Rajiv initially carried out some economic reforms, but later became embroiled in the Bofors scandal.

The book has high praise for Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri's stern stance against corruption. Similarly, due to Manmohan Singh's economic reforms and being personally free of corruption, Ashoka terms his rule as an 'all-too-brief phase of sanity'.

India has fallen back time and again in the development race due to flawed socioeconomic policies, autocratic politics, nepotism, corruption, back money and muscle power. The race first began with Japan. Hopes ran high, but then India fell back. One by one, Taiwan, South Korea, East Asian countries and finally China all surged ahead, leaving India behind.

The issue of Bangladesh has arisen several times in the book. He described Indira Gandhi's success in breaking Pakistan to create Bangladesh, and quoted The Economist as saying that Pakistan would become a stunted country, and Bangladesh a client state of India. The book also mentions Bangladesh's advancement in the human development index, export of labour intensive products and the success in readymade garment export. These were highlighted as opposed to India's failures in these areas.

Reading this book makes one feel the need for Bangladesh's actual political and economic history to be rewritten. It would be useless to expect the partisan and sycophantic intellectuals of our generation to write such an impartial and factual book on Bangladesh's political history. But we hope that the future generations will come forward to take up this crucial task.

* Muhammad Fouzul Kabir Khan is former secretary and economist

* This column appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Ayesha Kabir