Pity anyone who tries to persuade people in the capitals of the West that the India story is still on track.
Over the last month, I have argued the case for India in such cities as New York, Paris and London. In each city, my arguments have been received with polite disdain or outright skepticism.
In circles where they would once hyphenate India and China, they speak only of China now. India remains a mystery to foreign observers: a country that can offer so much and yet, deliver so little.
One measure of India’s decline is the value of the rupee. When Manmohan Singh first became Prime Minister the rupee was roughly Rs 41 to the dollar. Today, that figure is nudging Rs 60 to the dollar, an effective devaluation of nearly Rs 20 on that original Rs 41.
This has many consequences. Not only does it mean that most of us in the middle class must now think carefully before going abroad (or buying something if we do go abroad), it also means that oil, our largest import, is much more expensive, that our balance of payments deficit widens, and that cost-push inflation on all imports eats away at the real value of our incomes.
But the fall in the value of the rupee is also a metaphor for today’s India and its diminished status in the world. A currency decline reflects several factors including domestic inflation and a fall in the rate of growth. Most of all, however, it demonstrates that extent to which foreigners have lost faith in our prospects. They would rather pull their money out than invest further in India’s future. The cycle is self-perpetuating: the less stable the rupee is, the less likely people are to invest in India for fear that the value of their investments will be eroded by currency depreciation.
Meanwhile, Indians who have illegally stashed their money abroad have made windfall profits as the dollar has gained against the rupee. That is the reality of Manmohan Singh’s India. If you hide your money abroad, you will get a higher return from currency depreciation than you would if you had invested productively in our own country.
| "But, of course, Western liberals cannot understand the dilemma of educated Indians, frustrated by the venality of our politicians and beggared by the economic collapse." |
The economic gloom is matched by political pessimism. There is little hope we can offer foreign investors. We can’t even promise that the next election will throw up a stable government. At present, the most likely outcome is a volatile coalition of parties based on caste, region and identity, with no clear worldview or economic philosophy.
Western liberals are even more disapproving. They say they are surprised by our political choices. How, they ask, can Narendra Modi, a man the US will not even grant a visa to, become such a middle-class icon? Is India abandoning its secular, liberal traditions? Why, for instance, is the middle class largely unconcerned about such human rights issues as the Ishrat Jahan encounter?
It is hard to explain to the critics that while the secular and liberal beliefs of educated Indians are largely intact, cynicism and desperation are growing. A government headed by a man renowned for his skills as an economist and his incorruptibility has given us economic collapse and the biggest corruption scandals in history. Worse still, there is no visible leadership and the government is paralyzed into inaction.
These failures have given secularism a bad name. When a corrupt, non-performing government asks us to support it only because it is the secular alternative, then we begin to see secularism as a flag of convenience, as an excuse to appeal to the minority vote and to seem loftier than the opposition. Nobody questions Manmohan Singh’s secularism. But then, we don’t question his integrity either. And yet, he has presided over corruption scandal after scandal. So, just as his integrity has proved to be meaningless, his secularism is starting to count for less and less.
But, of course, Western liberals cannot understand the dilemma of educated Indians, frustrated by the venality of our politicians and beggared by the economic collapse. Westerners see us as a country that has lost its way and thrown away its future. No Indian can afford to admit they are right. But if India is to rise above this crisis, it is up to all of us to keep the dream alive.
Because the world has already begun to look away.
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