In his pathbreaking book ‘Accidental India A History of the Nation’s Passage through Crisis and Change’, well-known journalist Shankkar Aiyar looks at seven turning points in India’s history that were result of crises that had to be resolved. He tells Ravi Shankar that change demands imagination, articulation and courage — scarcely visible in today’s political landscape.
Accidental India is over 1.25 lakh words and packed with the statistical analysis your columns are known for. Yet the book is almost a racy-read, rather like a political whodunit. Is the style intentional, to attract younger readers?
Form must follow content. Not vice versa. Not, at any rate, in a work of non-fiction. I’m glad that the book found its own voice.
The book has received warm pre-pub reviews: “fiercely-beating Indian heart”, “compassionate critique”, “a must-read for policy-makers and those who want to catalyse positive change”.
I am grateful for the endorsement of the research and investigation in the book. May I point to another review which says “Dangerous patterns, while fascinating in themselves, have serious implications for India”. It is time our politicians understand that progress cannot be based on “jugaad”.
Why this book now?
Six decades after Independence, India continues to lurch from crisis to crisis. Good governance is trapped in conflicting populist compulsions. The country faces a litany of competing crises. Change seems to come only in the wake of crises.
But isn’t crisis a change agent the world over?
True. And like everywhere else the existence of problems and the solutions is debated and documented. What sets India apart is that successive governments follow a baffling “stare-at-the- solutions-approach” till the problem becomes a crisis. The list is long. Yet recurring failure on many fronts has not changed the way governments think and act. Just one example: every hour 200 children die of malnutrition. Governments have been pretending to address this national shame for a quarter of a century.
So why does change await crises in this country?
There is a systemic bias for status quo because public interest is subjugated by private political interests. Change demands imagination, articulation and courage — scarcely visible in today’s political landscape. A nation of a billion people deserve better.
Surely there have been successes, change which came without a crisis...
Success in space and nuclear programmes — certainly. Atal Bihari Vajpayee enabled connectivity with the highways and rural roads programme. But really, such exceptions prove the rule.
You have departed, somewhat, from the style of the book in one chapter, by going from event-narration to personality-led, which has Dr Verghese Kurien’s last interview.
I look at it differently. Change in India has been driven by individual courage amidst institutional failure. The premise of the book propels each of the seven chapters and establishes that crisis is a prefix for change. Let us not forget that Dr Kurien was India’s “accidental milkman”, he never wanted to go to Anand, nor did he like the taste of milk. He transformed the lives of millions of people and deserves the Bharat Ratna, even if posthumously.
South Indians play defining roles at turning points in almost every chapter of ‘Accidental India...’
(Grins) They do, rather serendipitously.
Excerpts from the book:
The genesis of this book can betraced to an afternoon in July 1991 when crates of gold were beingfurtively unloaded from dull-grey vans intothe loading bays of a heavy-bellied cargo aircraft. The country had only enoughforeign exchange to pay for seven days of imports and had therefore secretlypledged forty-seven tons of gold from its reserves with the Bank of England toborrow $400 million to pay its creditors. I scooped the news of the emergencygold lift for The Indian Express.The news shocked a nation, the pawning was seen as public humiliation and wokepeople up to the enormity of the crisis. Even as I filed follow-up reports, Ithought subconsciously: was this thebest the country could do—pledge its gold to pay creditors? Why do we alwayswait for a crisis to act?
It’s not as if India has not been blessed with iconic political leadership. Whatever theirfailings, it is indisputable that our leaders were forces for lasting andbeneficial change. Mahatma Gandhi united a fractious country under the idea offreedom. India owes every shred of modernity it now boasts, be itdemocratic tradition or scientificoutlook, to Jawaharlal Nehru. The diminutive Lal Bahadur Shastri was courageousduring the 1965 war; he displayed equal strength in his decision to support C. Subramaniam’s idea of the GreenRevolution. Indira Gandhi democratised capital by nationalising banks andcapitalized nationalism by creating Bangladesh. Rajiv Gandhi put technology onthe map. Narasimha Rao presided over the repair of a broken economy, AtalBihari Vajpayee worked to bring various strands of the economy together.
Yet, India falters. It often teeters on the brink ofcatastrophe. Why do Indian leaders notanticipate adversity and act before being engulfed by catastrophe? Whatprevents them from operating with foresight — the exigencies of their term; themind-set of their peers or perhaps even their subjects; the compromises ofpolitics?
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Work on the budget was proceeding at a furious pace.The package was ready in terms of the commitments to the lenders but it had tobe made politically palatable. Entrenched interests — politicians on pelf rowand big business nurtured on licence-permit-quota raj — marshalled all their resources to prevent long term damage to theirinterests. The policy change wouldresult in dismantling the Nehruvian way that the Congress had worshipped for decades. So Narasimha Raoadvised the team to present the package to the public and the high priests of socialism in theCongress as a minor detour and not game-changing disruption.
Once a final version was ready, Rao and P. Chidambaram — whospearheaded the liberalisation of the trade policies — injected a political message.Obeisance was paid to the pantheon of the Congress leadership in the newindustrial policy and the budget. On 24 July 1991, India honoured the promissory note it had presented to the lenders who had bailed the country out.The new policy was unveiled by PrimeMinister Rao, dismantling the licence-quota-permit raj of four decades. FinanceMinister Manmohan Singh said in his budget speech, quoting Victor Hugo,‘No power on earth can stop an ideawhose time has come.’
In 2012, it appears the lessonsof 1991 have scarcely been learnt.Licence raj has been replaced by clearance raj. It takes three to five years before the scissormeets the ribbon for industry to start. Survival still requiresnavigational skills of the politicalkind, the inspector raj has to be kept well fed. The next strategic steps ofreforms have been sacrificed at the altar of tactical politics. Victor Hugowould be baffled.