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The following excerpt is from the book's introduction.
The ascent of a country from poverty to prosperity, from tradition to modernity, is a great and fascinating enterprise. India has recently emerged as a vibrant free-market democracy after the economic reforms in 1991, and it has begun to flex its muscles in the global information economy. The old centralized bureaucratic state, which killed our industrial revolution at birth, has begun a subtle but definite decline. With the rule of democracy the lower castes have gradually risen. This economic and social transformation is one of the themes of this book. The struggle of one-sixth of humanity for dignity and prosperity seems to me a drama of the highest order and of great consequence for the future of the world. It has meaning for all of humanity and sheds new light on the future of liberalism in the world.
The story I will be telling is soft drama. It is taking place quietly and profoundly in the heart of Indian society. It unfolds every day, in small increments barely visible to the naked eye, and is more difficult to grasp than hard drama, which is more dramatic and captures the headlines. Most people instinctively grasp the spirituality and poverty of India. But the significance of this quiet social and economic revolution eludes them. The change is partially based on the rise of social democracy, but more importantly on the sustained 5 to 7 percent annual economic growth that India has experienced for the past two decades, which has tripled the size of the middle class. Although the middle class is still only 18 percent of India's one billion population, it is expected to become 50 percent within a generation. In the end, this "silent revolution" is more significant historically than the constantly changing fortunes of political leaders and parties which so absorb Indians.
The struggle of one-sixth of humanity for dignity and prosperity seems to me a drama of the highest order and of great consequence for the future of the world. | |
Gurcharan Das |
I have followed, I find, the method of Defoe's Memoirs of a Cavalier, in which the author hangs the chronicle of great political and social events upon the thread of an individual's personal experience. However, this is not autobiography. I have decided to tell the story in the first person because I believe that one person's experience, honestly captured, even on the sidelines, not only is unique but is the only certain data of history that we possess as human beings. I did not, besides, wish this account of national competitiveness to be dry and didactic; I wished to breathe life into the clash of economic and social ideas.
When I was young, we passionately believed in Jawaharlal Nehru's dream of a modern and just India. But as the years went by we discovered that Nehru's economic path was taking us to a dead end, and the dream soured. Having set out to create socialism, we found that we had instead created statism. As a practicing manager in the 1960s I found myself caught in the thick jungle of Kafkaesque bureaucratic controls. Our sense of disillusionment reached its peak during Mrs. Gandhi's autocratic rule in the seventies. There was a glimmer of hope when Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister, but it quickly died when we discovered that he did not have what it takes. It was not until July 1991 that our mood of despair finally lifted, with the announcement of sweeping liberalization by the minority government of P. V. Narasimha Rao. It opened the economy to foreign investment and trade; it dismantled import controls, lowered customs duties, and devalued the currency; it virtually abolished licensing controls on private investment, dropped tax rates, and broke public sector monopolies. As a result, growth picked up to 7.5 percent a year in the mid-nineties, inflation came down from 13 percent to 6 percent by 1993, exchange reserves shot up from 1 billion to 20 billion.*
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The Economist has been trying, with some frustration, to paint stripes on India since 1991 It doesn't realize that India will never be a tiger. It is an elephant that has begun to lumber and move ahead. It will never have speed, but it will always have stamina. A Buddhist text says, "The elephant is the wisest of all animals/the only one who remembers his former lives/and he remains motionless for long periods of time/meditating thereon." The inversion between capitalism and democracy suggests that India might have a more stable, peaceful, and negotiated transition into the future than, say, China. It will also avoid some of the harmful side effects of an unprepared capitalist society, such as Russia. Although slower, India is more likely to preserve its way of life and its civilization of diversity, tolerance, and spirituality against the onslaught of the global culture. If it does, then it is perhaps a wise elephant.
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Five questions for Gurcharan Das
Gurcharan Das corresponded with Baker Library Business Information Librarian Carol Elsen about India Unbound, and about what's next for India.
Elsen: You argue in your book that India has undergone an economic revolution over the last fifty yearsand it certainly has had a significant impact on the development of the information economy. Looking ahead, will India's influence grow in this area? How significant a player can it become in the development of the information age?
Das: Yes, India's influence should grow dramatically in the information economy in the coming years. Because of its intellectual capital India will be one of the major players in the development of the information age.
Q: Most of our readers are business executives and managers. What would interest them most in your book?
A: Chapter 8 in my book"Bazaar Power"will interest your readers the most. It's about how I helped make the Vicks business in India the largest in the world.
Q: What surprised you the most in researching your book? What did you learn that you didn't expect?
A: The biggest surprise was how much the Indian economy has changed in the last ten years and how robust it is today. My biggest learning is that a new mindset has emerged among India's youtha "can do" attitude pervades the nation.
Q: Do you have another book in the works? Where is your research leading you these days?
A: My next book is called The Indian Way. The Indian Way picks up where India Unbound left off. It asks the question whether the Indian way of life will survive the onslaught of the global culture. To answer that question one has to ask, I think, what is the Indian way of life? Is there a common glue that unites all Indians, whether Hindu or Muslim, whether from Kerala or Kashmir? In India Unbound I examined the economic history to explain it. In The Indian Way I shall examine the cultural reality of contemporary India and go back to intellectual history to understand if there are basic underlying principles that help explain it.
I concluded in India Unbound that it is now possible to believe that India will soon solve its economic problem. The problem, of course, is our age-old worry that there is not enough to go around. For the first time in history, Indians would also emerge from the struggle against want and hunger. The question is: then what? Once the anxiety about making ends meet diminishes, people's thoughts will turn elsewhereto culture, perhaps.
Some believe that by then, India, like the rest of the world, will have turned into "McWorld," the phony and fictitious global culture of consumerism. Others argue that the Indian way is robust and durablethat it has been built into our psyche over the centuries. They believe that the antiquity of Indian tradition is less impressive than its extraordinary continuity, and this is because it has been able to adapt to alien virtues. They think that the Indian way survived the Mughals, the British, and it out to survive Coca-Cola, even though the latter's challenge is far stronger.
Q: Did you take away anything from your Advanced Management Program (AMP) here at HBS that helped you in developing this book?
A: The AMP was a wonderful experience. It made me see a national economy in an organic, holistic manner, and in this way helped me to write India Unbound.