The phoenix, of course, rises from its ashes. Myth has it that this bird of exotic plumage but no acknowledged parentage, a bird like no other bird, rises to fly every 500 years though some accounts time the clock to a thousand years. India, as we know her today, on the other hand, has a pretty short history of 60 odd years carrying the baggage of 2000-plus years, most of it dead, and rotten.
There has been change, profound and much of it positive too, in these 60 odd years but the question is: Are these changes enough for the phoenix to rise, to fly in formation with the dragon and the eagle? There are signs that proclaim so. But these are a matter of interpretation and Dipankar Gupta in The Caged Phoenix — Can India Fly? comes up with his set of theories, interpretations, and conclusions. He dumps the ‘booming India’ version with disdain, demolishes it with facts, figures, a dash of world history and reason backed with logic.
For instance, is Bangalore India? Are the booms in the IT and information technology enabled services (ITES) sectors real indicators of India’s rise to prominence? Or, are they red herrings let loose by vested interests? The IT sector numbers only 3 million people, a drop in the ocean that is India, and if these are the ones who give the idea that India is just 1-2-3 steps away from global economic dominance, and her millions will step out of abject poverty and fly to elevating prosperity, then it is just that, an idea — an impression, the wrong one at that. What India is witnessing today is growth, not development. On the ‘Human Development Index’, her record is pathetic, deploringly so. There is no hiding the fact.
Gupta knows this. He cites the sweeping shifts that are taking a toll in the Indian countryside, and how these changes challenge India’s ‘growth story’. Like a sculptor he chips away at the edges and exposes the dangerous curves. What we see emerging is the invisible-for-all-purposes ‘merchant producer’ — he who populates the humongous and largely unaccountable unorganised sector — the ‘entrepreneur’ with his gluttony for riches at the expense of the vast majority, the parasite who takes advantage of the shifting demographics brought about by changes in the ‘idyllic village’ and the so-called ‘booming cities’ coupled with a breakdown of enterprise in the developed West, to make his heap. He pays a pittance to labour he hires on contract and walks off with the loot, the ‘labour’ quite content with the ‘pittance’ because, pitted against what he would have made in his village, it is a fortune. While at that, Gupta brings out the symbiotic relationship between the merchant producer and the poor, who are ever on the move looking for that elusive rainbow, the ‘mobility’ the ace up the merchant producer’s sleeve.
So, how do we help the phoenix fly? Gupta goes over the head of contemporary thinking — and calls for demolishing every ‘ivory tower in the vicinity’. He places at the vanguard, the intellectuals, majority of who sadly opt to be ‘political journeymen’ rather than agents of real change. Gupta’s advice to intellectuals: Dump the popular myths, the rise in usage of cell-phones and cars on the road as signs of development on the roll, the more recent ones. He questions the existence of a middle class in India, and asks the intellectuals — economists, sociologists and scientists — to acknowledge that the so-called ‘middle-class’ thrives only because of the huge ‘class’ of the urban and rural ‘poor’, and the yawning gap between the two is not only in their earnings but also in their expectations. Add the nexus between the politician, bureaucrat, labour contractor and merchant producer, and the picture is dismal, far different from that of the ‘development’ bragged about in drawing rooms in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai.
Gupta asks the intellectuals to “realize the many problems and constraints of things as they are”, if they want to make a difference in the lives of the one billion plus Indians. Stand up and point out the limitations, he exhorts in the book, which, while written in an easy and engaging style, is radical and original in its contents. The Caged Phoenix is a slap on the faces of those who prosper amidst sickening poverty. For the majority of ‘Them’, Louis Armstrong’s evergreen ‘What a Wonderful World’ will never be, despite and in spite of the so-called ‘boom’. It will take time, and lots of defining decisions, for ‘Them’ — the real India — The Caged Phoenix — to fly.
—sushil@epmltd.com