The India that we will have to live through in the near-term will be very different from the one we were living in till just about a month ago. That’s not the India I am asking us to imagine. I want to focus on a slightly longer horizon. What will India be in, say, three to five years?
There are two futures possible.
The first future is one in which the government becomes even more domineering and overpowering. This is a future in which people rely on the government for everything – our food, home, education, house and even our jobs. The politician becomes our God as lives and livelihoods come under the control of the government.
For those in power, this is nirvana – an opportunity that has come after a couple of generations. Even now, a set of people are already deciding who can travel and where, which industry can open, which item is essential, who should get what. Do we really want this kind of micro-management of our daily lives?
This is like the India of the 1950s, 60s and 70s when the licence raj was at its peak, when central planning ruled the roost. Few of us remember that world, but our parents lived through it. For those in power, this is the India that they would love to recreate.
There is a second future possible – where we determine our own destiny, free from the control of the politicians. It is one which we have seen just glimpses of. It is a future some of us experience when we visit free and rich nations like the US, UK, Germany or Hong Kong. It is a future built on the classical liberal principles of limited government, protection of individual freedom, economic freedom, property rights, rule of law and free trade.
Many will tell us that such a future is no longer possible given the human and economic devastation that we are likely to see in India. They are wrong. India can indeed craft such a future – however impossible it may seem today.
Indians, like people everywhere, respond to the rules and incentives. Striving to better one’s own condition is inbuilt in all of us. The question is will we be able to imagine and work towards this future – because that will pit the people against the politicians.
Thus there are two mutually exclusive paths for India. One is the path of planned poverty, the path that the politicians would take us on; the other is the path to pervasive prosperity, the path that we will have to fight for and create ourselves. Which path would you choose?
Tomorrow: India’s Two Futures (Part 3)
