’s renunciation of power ten years ago is still fresh in the minds of . Her rejection of��the prime ministership, and her selection of��a non-political, Oxford-educated yes-man in����to run , allowed her to invent an unconventional mode of exercising power. Singh acted as the official head of government for a decade, but Gandhi and her children held the actual reins of power. In India, the prime minister’s office has never been minimized to that degree. But after the election of Prime Minister��, who is despised by Gandhi’s��, a sense of tragedy has descended upon��the traditional ruling class.

Modi represents a marked contrast to the family. He worked as a tea vendor and, as a politician, sidelined more senior officials��to reach the top post. The Indian prime minister��represents an unapologetic face of nationalism, coupled with a Western brand of market economics. On the other hand, the Gandhis embody elitism and privilege; they have never had to struggle for power (except when Gandhi pushed out ��as the Congress Party leader in 1998). They stand for and a -style, centrally-planned economy. Therefore, Modi’s position as prime minister makes the Nehru-Gandhi clan feel very insecure.

On��November 14, during��a Congress Party conference celebrating the 125^th anniversary of ’s birth, Gandhi launched a scathing attack on Modi, accusing him of being the primary destroyer of ��������’s legacy. Such commemorative occasions are meant to unite India, but she chose to use it as an opportunity to bash her political opponent.

Why does Gandhi see fit to use Nehru as a political weapon against Modi? Does she actually believe the antiquated Nehruvian apparatus is relevant in modern India? Does Gandhi��really have the right, as a poster child for dynastic politics, to claim ��������’s legacy as a ?

Why Nehru?

Gandhi stands��at the most difficult crossroad of her political journey. The challenges she faces are quite clear, but the means to fight them are not. The difficulty of her task is compounded by��the fact that things are hardly in her favor. In his��second term in power, Prime Minister Singh’s government (controlled by Gandhi) was responsible for inflation, a rudderless economy and a directionless and national policy. The government proved to be the most spectacular wreck of and incompetence the country had ever seen. So, not only does the Congress Party lack the credibility to criticize the incumbent government, but the party’s attacks also lack teeth because Modi has a good record of growth and governance in his home state of . Now, no option is left for the Congress Party but to bring back the narrative around the old, dual ideology of secular and non-secular politics. The narrative of secularism is the most appealing idea to the average Indian because of the character of India’s founding as a democratic nation.

Sonia Gandhi / Flickr

As the longest serving leader of the oldest and largest national party, Nehru is the natural symbol of Indian secularism. The Oxbridge intellectuals of , who came of age under Nehru and , have kept him��alive and relevant in the public consciousness.

The world changed. The ended and India embraced in 1991. It hardly made any difference to the Gandhi family or to Delhi intellectuals — both remained devoted to secularism. Through various government welfare projects, the Gandhis��made sure that Nehru would��always remain alive in the Indian mind. But as many great national heroes, his political ideas have become obsolete.

Political ideologies, even ones created by giants, come and go. Few today would accept ’s staunch support for�� imperialism. The same is true of ’s ideas of French independence and “grandeur,” and ‘s��extreme and idiosyncratic brand of . But this doesn’t mean the extraordinary gifts of historical giants to their respective countries are unappreciated. citizens remember the heroic acts of Gen. de Gaulle during the occupation, and Churchill has been consistently ranked as the greatest Briton. However, all these leaders were creations of their own time. As the years pass, the relevance of their political ideas fade.

Today, ��������’s economic and foreign policies have hardly any followers in his own party. , a celebrated author and former foreign minister under Congress, questioned ��������’s vision of foreign relations. Time has relegated ��������’s foreign and economic policy irrelevant. So, why do the Congress Party and Gandhi still seek to prop up an old dead legend?

Dynasty and Democracy

��������’s to democracy in India is to his lasting honor. However, it was his own daughter, Indira Gandhi, who buried his��legacy. She launched dynastic politics by bringing her sons into the corridors of power. As renowned Indian historian Ramachandra��Guha said: “Nehru had hardly any idea that his quiet, self-effacing daughter Indira would rise up to occupy his chair.” Being a democrat, he would have never allowed a single family��to dominate public life��in a country he had worked so hard to liberate. So, by continuing with Indira Gandhi’s dynastic politics, Sonia Gandhi has done a great disservice to ��������’s legacy.

The 2014 elections showed that Sonia Gandhi’s son, , has lost the game. So now, all hope lies with her daughter, . Congress loyalists and much of the Indian press see Vadra��as a reincarnated Indira Gandhi who can save the ailing party. If she fails, it will put a final stop to the family’s generational rule. Her success or failure depends partly on how Modi governs and partly on whether today’s Indians allow themselves to be limited by the political relics of secularism and Fabian economics. The current era is crucial for Indian democracy because it will decide whether or not the Congress Party will also be discarded as a relic of the past.

*[A version of this article was originally published by .]

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The victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India’s elections is being hailed in some Western media as a hopeful sign for US-Indian trade and for Indian business. But like the US Tea Party movement, it is rent by internal contradictions that could derail such aspirations.

The BJP has many resemblances to the American Tea Party movement. It is xenophobic (especially disliking Muslims); it is imbued by religious fundamentalism and often anti-science; it is hawkish in foreign policy; and it is an advocate for the business classes and critical of government programs. Despite the latter position, the BJP may not be as good for the Indian business sector as many observers assume.

1. The Hindu nationalism of the BJP is exclusivist and intolerant. Contemporary business requires a tolerant and cosmopolitan atmosphere. You want to maximize customers. American Tea partiers hated Coca Cola’s ad this February which showed “America the Beautiful” sung in Spanish as well as English. But Coca Cola walked off with more Latino customers.

The Hindu nationalists have conducted pogroms against Muslims (12% of the population) on several occasions, as well as against other religious minorities. What kind of business atmosphere is that creating — whether for investors or consumers? The new prime minister, Narendra Modi, himself has been on a US travel ban because as chief minister of Gujarat State he was felt to have done too little to halt one such pogrom.

Sociologists of India have already found that when they sent in resumes applying for advertised jobs with Muslim names on them, the turn-down rate was much higher than for those with Hindu names. This sort of discrimination is likely to get worse now.

2. Contemporary business success requires investment in science. The BJP is militantly against scientific findings that contradict its fundamentalist orthodoxies. It supports an indigenous form of homeopathic medicine over scientific medicine. Although the BJP a good game about scientific innovation, it makes no pledges of increased government investment in real science and technology, which India desperately needs. Its energy policy is favorable to renewables, but is really more of an “all of the above” approach that is not good for fighting global warming.

The BJP’s attitude will stultify critical thought of a sort on which robust science depends upon. It maintains that Sanskrit developed in India rather than spreading into the country from the north. The party opposes the academic study of religion and its findings. Already, the books of Chicago Sanskritologist Wendy Doniger have been banned in India, and this sort of thing will now get worse.

The BJP favors neoliberal policies that will privatize institutions and favor market mechanisms. But these policies have resulted in vastly increased inequality wherever they have been implemented.

3. Economic prosperity is hurt by concentration of wealth at the top of society. Because of the Congress party’s redistributive , India is a much less unequal society than the US, and over 100 million people have been lifted out of poverty in the past decade.

The BJP favors neoliberal policies that will privatize institutions and favor market mechanisms. But these policies have resulted in vastly increased inequality wherever they have been implemented, hurting working- and middle-class purchasing power and creating a rootless business class that often turns abroad for investment and profits, abandoning the home country to stagnation and inequality.

4. Economic prosperity benefits from peace. The US economic crises of 1975-82 and 2008-present had a great deal to do with wars (Vietnam and Iraq). The last time the BJP was in power, it almost went to war with Muslim-majority Pakistan, coming close twice in 2002 alone. Since India and Pakistan are both nuclear states, such a war would have been a catastrophe of cosmic proportions.

Although the current leadership of the BJP is less hawkish in foreign affairs and more focused on the domestic economy, it remains to be seen if the rank and file of angry Hindu fundamentalists can pressure the government to take a hard-line with Islamabad.

5. Contrary to what many pundits assume, it is not clear that a fundamentalist nationalist party such as the BJP will be very welcoming to foreign capital. Because of its nationalism and ties to Indian small businessmen, the BJP is unlikely to substantially increase foreign investment, especially in the retail sector, where its leaders are about retaining relatively strict rules for foreign direct��investment.

Many outsiders are celebrating the BJP victory because they assume it will lead to better trade and economic relations between India and, for example, the US. They do not seem to realize that India has just elected the equivalent of a Sarah Palin or Ted Cruz. It seems that the only question is whether the party, now that it is in power, will become more pragmatic and less intolerant just in order to rule. One dark cloud on that horizon is that it attained an absolute majority in parliament and so does not need more moderate coalition partners.

*[This article was originally published on Juan Cole’s��.]

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Indian Finance Minister and Congress leader P. Chidambaram recently declared that opposition prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s knowledge of economics can be written on the back of a postage stamp. Under Modi, Gujarat has recorded double-digit growth rates, developed roads, generated power, improved industrial production, transformed agriculture and generated employment. Modi’s economic record is impressive and is the why people are supporting him.

On the other hand, Chidambaram’s record at the helm of the Indian economy is disastrous. Chidambaram has presided over populist schemes, runaway inflation and rising unemployment. His performance at the annual World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) meetings have been pathetic, where he has been unable to hold a candle to the likes of Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega. While has taken on both the US and the European Union to protect interests of emerging economies, Chidambaram has largely deferred to the West and said nothing of note on the world economy.�� Furthermore, he is despised for his arrogance, reviled because he has a reputation for corruption, and feared because of his of intimidation.

Insecurity is behind Chidambaram’s bitter outburst. So far, left-leaning Oxbridge and Ivy League elites have presided over India. They have been courtiers of the Nehru dynasty that runs an empire of patronage and has destroyed most institutions in India’s young democracy. More importantly, these elites have been enamored of short-term populism and have jettisoned long-term economic growth. The rise of Modi threatens their apple cart and has implications that go far-beyond India’s shores. India’s foreign policy that has long been misguided or sputtered along aimlessly will change dramatically, if Modi comes to power. Under his charge, Indian foreign policy will primarily serve the country’s economic interests.

Casting Off the Poisoned Chalice of the Past

So far, India’s foreign policy is disconnected from India’s economic interests.�� First, Indian diplomats are far too often illiterate about business, trade and economics. Second, Foreign and Finance Ministries spend little time interacting with each other. Third, just as the Chidambaram-led Finance Ministry has bungled India’s economy, the Salman Khurshid-led Foreign Ministry has destroyed Indian diplomacy. Oxford-educated Khurshid has been embroiled in a corruption scandal where he is of stealing funds meant for the disabled. Under his reign, it is rumored that a threadbare team of barely 700 odd diplomats spends more time chilling champagne for visiting dignitaries than defending India’s interests.

Modi is markedly different to prime ministerial candidates of the past. He hails from Gujarat, the western most state of India, which has long been home to trade, commerce and entrepreneurial activity. Unlike semi-feudal states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Gujarat does not obsess about politics or the administration. Its most talented students do not waste their time and energy preparing for the Civil Services Examinations that guarantee a lifetime of comfort and often corruption to those who enter India’s exalted bureaucratic realms. Gujaratis go into business and can be found from Kenya to Canada, plying some trade or another. In the US, people often joke about Patels owning motels. Gujarati entrepreneurs have flooded into this sector and are now expanding into many others.

Modi himself comes from entrepreneurial roots. He is a tea-seller who has come up from the grassroots and understands business very differently to politicians from Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. In an earlier era, Gujarati leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel had markedly different economic visions than Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi. They wanted India to be an entrepreneurial country with little red tape. The Planning Commission and the license-control raj were ��������’s ideas. Nehru left India as a teenager to study at Harrow, the same boarding school as Winston Churchill. He then went to Cambridge and became a Fabian Socialist. He was what many would derisively call a “coconut” — brown on the outside but white inside.

��������’s foreign policy was predicated on notions of greatness, both personal and national. The nonaligned movement was more about abstract principles than economic interests. In fact, Nehru failed to push trade ties even with India’s closest neighbors. A patrician Brahmin with the airs of an upper-class Englishman, Nehru disdained business, trade and merchants. Born into wealth, he had the snobbish attitude of a champagne socialist toward money. Unsurprisingly, Indian diplomats failed to look after their businessmen operating in strange shores or to further their country’s economic interests.

“It’s the Economy, Stupid”

Every leader since independence has followed the Nehruvian foreign policy paradigm. For the first time, Modi represents a break from the Nehru doctrine. He has taken a leaf out of Deng Xiaopeng’s book by betting on rapid economic growth as a solution to many of India’s seemingly insurmountable problems.

To increase growth in Gujarat, Modi has been courting investment not only from India but from around the world.�� Under his aegis, the Vibrant Gujarat Summits have attracted hundreds of billions of dollars as investment. Countries like Canada, Japan, Mozambique and even the United Kingdom have flocked to invest in the state. Modi has also led business delegations to Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. With China, Japan and Singapore, Modi has established close relations and he has endeavored to emulate these nations in developing Gujarat’s infrastructure.

India’s economic ties with emerging economies outside Asia are also likely to improve. A huge Gujarati Diaspora lives in Africa. Lest we forget, Gandhi began his political career in South Africa. This Diaspora has long been underutilized by incompetent and arrogant diplomats. This will change under Modi.

Closer relations with African economies from Kenya to South Africa will most likely be forged. Similar developments can be expected in Latin America. Whilst there may be no Indian Diaspora in the region, Chile and Brazil are seeking to increase their exports to India. Chile has also been boosting entrepreneurship in a big way and is running innovative programs such as . It is seeking Indian talent to grow its own IT industry. Modi’s focus on the economy is likely to go down well with a region that has long lived in the shadow of the US, while its biggest trading partner is now China.

Even in the Middle East, relations with some nations are likely to improve. Gujarat has imported Iranian oil in the past and a Modi government will be less likely to support US efforts to isolate Iran. An oil deal with Iran would be a win-win for both Tehran and Delhi. Iran needs cash and a growing Indian economy needs cheap oil. Besides, both countries have common strategic interests in Afghanistan in countering both Pakistan and the Taliban.

Finally, unlike the US, most Asian countries are looking forward to a Modi-led India. Southeast Asian countries have been deeply influenced by India and have long craved Delhi’s attention. The biggest Hindu temple is in Cambodia, the largest Buddhist stupa is in Indonesia and the Thais still enact the Ramayana, one of India’s two great epics.

More prosaically, Asian countries are seeking to increase trade ties, boost economic growth and generate employment. Already, China is India’s biggest trading partner and Japan gives the most aid to the country. Modi has already been emulating many Chinese policies. His futuristic vision for is uncannily similar to Zhu Rongji’s vision for Pudong. India’s trade potential with Asian economies is enormous and these countries are looking forward to an Indian leader who will look east and put business first.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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India’s Hindu Right is associated with the color saffron. The saffron flag, or��bhagwa dhwaj, adorns the offices of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS or Sangh for short), which is at the core of the Hindu nationalist movement. The Sangh stands for an India of “one nation, one culture, one people.” Under this philosophy, the Muslims and Christians of multi-religious, multi-cultural India must either depart the country’s shores, or live as second-class citizens under Hindu supremacy.

Now, India is a large country. Its billion-plus citizens harbor all manner of beliefs. Under normal circumstances, the extreme positions of the RSS would be as unremarkable as those of fringe Muslim or Christian organizations that vociferously oppose homosexuality, or women working outside the home.

However, today, the RSS finds itself in the spotlight. Narendra Modi, the man projected as India’s future prime minister by opinion polls and analysts, learned the political ropes as an RSS��pracharak��or preacher-organizer.

As campaigning for the national elections reaches fever pitch, everyone in politics-mad India has an opinion on Modi. As they say, you can love him, you can hate him, but you cannot ignore him.

Modi: 2002 vs. 2014

For critics, Modi, the current chief minister of the western state of Gujarat, presided over one of India’s worst massacres of Muslims in 2002. But according to his supporters, 2002 is well in the past. The Modi of today stands for governance and development.

So are Modi Version 2002 and Modi Version 2014 any different? In 2002, few had heard of Narendrabhai, as he is popularly known. On the directives of the RSS, he had been deputed to Hindu nationalism’s political arm: the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, or Indian People’s Party).

In 2001, when that party suffered a crisis of leadership in Gujarat, the RSS catapulted Modi to the post of chief minister. Being a hierarchical, authoritarian organization, it did not see the irony of democratically elected BJP legislators and councilors being led by a man who had never fought a democratic election in his life.

One of Modi’s early tasks as chief minister was to condemn the death of 59 Hindu pilgrims, who he alleges were torched by a mob of Muslims at Godhra train station in February 2002. He then went on to condone the massacre of up to 2,000 Muslims that followed the Godhra incident. Cadres of the Hindu Right led from the front in this violence.

Ironically, Modi’s minister of Women and Child Welfare, Maya Kodnani, was convicted by the courts and jailed for leading the mob in one such attack. As for the chief minister, in an interview, he controversially cited Newton’s Third Law, indicating that every action has an equal and opposite reaction (kriya pratikriya ki chain chal rahi hai). By this logic, Muslims deserved to die, whether or not they had been involved in the train burning.

Undoubtedly, the period around 2002 is Modi’s saffron phase. A saffron outfit had put him in power and he needed to show his commitment to their pet causes. Sartorially, he was regularly seen wearing��kurtas��(a long shirt worn by Indian men) and turbans of that color, and was often photographed with Hindu preachers, godmen and Hindu nationalist leaders, who wear saffron as a form of identity.

But people do move on. By the time of his second term as Gujarat chief minister in 2007, Modi was keen to be known as a��vikas purush, a man of development. His reputation was sealed in 2008 when Tata Motors, India’s largest automobile manufacturer, moved its Nano car factory from West Bengal to Gujarat, rejecting the bids of several other competing states in the process. Under Modi, the government of Gujarat provided the Tatas with land and other infrastructure almost overnight, making the company’s chairman declare publicly: “It is stupid if you are not in Gujarat.”

Today, on the gleaming highways of Gujarat, billboards claiming that Modi’s state is the “Number One” in India are common. Modi touts himself as the number one chief minister, the leader of a state where investors can, in quotes, “sow a rupee and reap a dollar.” This, then, is green Gujarat, not in its friendliness toward the environment, but in its welcoming of private investment, Indian and foreign.

On the way from saffron to green, Modi has also tried to fly the white flag of neutrality and peace. In 2012, he undertook a Sadbhavna mission, where he fasted for inter-religious harmony, dressed, significantly, in white.

Ten years after the 2002 violence, Modi had trained his sights on national politics. Getting rid of the stigma of 2002 was key to his national ascent. As the would-be Prime Minister Modi campaigns today, one never hears an anti-Muslim or anti-Christian utterance from him. Gone is the man who used to rail against Christian missionaries and western NGOs, with their apparently undue influence on poor Hindus. Instead, a more dignified, statesman-like Modi spouts the mantras of��su-raj��or good governance.

The Poster Boy

So what is good governance according to Modi? If he does get a term as PM, will his leadership be characterized by good and fair administration, as opposed to partisanship? While we cannot look into the future, we can examine Modi’s recent record of governance to see whether it is saffron, white or green.

If we go by the book, good governance implies public administration that is democratic, accountable to citizens, participatory or consensual in decision-making, transparent, and decentralized.

In Modi’s Gujarat, however, democracy has been upended in the chief minister’s Samras Gram Scheme. Under this, villages that elect their councils unanimously — without an electoral contest — are given government incentives. Samras literally means of one color. There is little doubt about the composition of this color in Gujarat, where 90% of the population is Hindu. In fact, the scheme’s web page on the Gujarat government website states that it is a tribute to Arya, that is, Hindu culture.

Transparency and accountability are hardly Modi’s forte. The much-publicized Nano car coup, for instance, was conducted in secrecy. Even the main opposition party failed to get details of the deal that had been struck with Tata Motors to set up their factory in Gujarat. Rumors of huge tax concessions, highly subsidized land, and pollution control waivers are still doing the rounds.

Modi’s record in decentralized governance also fails to impress. While a leader is supposed to guide by example, Modi is actually the epitome of centralizing power around himself. Despite his busy schedule on the national campaign trail, he is currently in charge of ten ministries in Gujarat, including the crucial ones of Home or Internal Affairs and Industry. His politics appears no different. In Gujarat, he has no second-in-command, and his current and former Cabinet colleagues have gone on record to call him “authoritarian,” with some even likening him to Adolf Hitler. Given this past performance, it is characteristic that the build-up to the national election centers on Modi. Voters have no idea who will be in his ministerial team, and what their views are likely to be.

As the media hype around Modi builds, officials and politicians who have worked with him in Gujarat over the past decade look on. Ask them about their boss’ good governance credentials and one of them says: “Modi was trained in an RSS��shakha, and he runs government as if it were one.” A shakha is a branch of the Hindu nationalist organization where men practice calisthenics to build their bodies for the protection of the Hindu nation. Each shakha is led by a pracharak, who brooks absolutely no dissent.

Modi is eager to have his political palette identified with white for peace, and green for economic development. But, at heart, he remains Hindu nationalism’s poster boy. This leopard is not likely to change his saffron spots.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Foreign policy seldom occupies an important position in political agendas during electoral campaigns, and 2014 in India is hardly any different. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial candidate has, however, evoked a little more interest from various sections. One reason for this abnormal curiosity is that anything Narendra Modi does attracts attention.

Another reason is the refusal by the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States to grant Modi a diplomatic visa because his alleged role in the 2002 Gujarat riots makes him an even more interesting prime ministerial candidate, especially given his apparent popularity with large swathes of the Indian people. Conversely, the Gujarat chief minister has enjoyed much success in his foreign visits to China, Japan and Singapore.

Modi himself has said little about the shape his foreign policy would take but his actions as chief minister belie a strong emphasis on trade, particularly with Asia and the countries of the Indian Ocean rim. Yet commercial links alone do not dictate foreign relations and, in this era of the global village, Modi must think on several interconnected factors that will affect the security and esteem of India.

Structural Issues

The making and study of foreign policy is beset with difficulties at several levels. First, there are structural issues — despite scores of its own languages, India is predominantly an English-speaking state and moves in Anglophone circles. The dominant views in this system are set by the US and, to a lesser extent, Britain.

This is largely due to the presence of hundreds of well-staffed and well-funded think-tanks who see the world through Anglophone eyes. Issues such as non-proliferation, global warming and terrorism are defined, unchallenged, by American interests. Multilingual historians are often surprised by the diversity of debate in other languages, even when there is broad national consensus.

The Anglophone discourse is a result not of some master conspiracy, but of a failure to empathize with rationalities other than one’s own. India’s best response to the present situation would be to open its own national archives to ��and encourage its universities to produce policy experts in the plethora of fields that governments usually interfere in. A narrative informed by the history of Indian policymaking is the first step in generating superior inputs to current policymakers.

A second challenge India faces in its international relations is infrastructure: the lack of energy, transportation, public safety, health, and a sound legal system make the country����to foreign investment.

It is telling that an Egypt still recovering from the turmoil of the Arab Spring saw more tourists in 2013 than India did. Though infrastructure does not strictly fall in the realm of external affairs, it makes an enormous difference in attracting valuable partners and forming strong ties with them.

A third question Modi must ponder on is the structure of��, the stick or hard power of foreign policy. What sort of force structure is required for the nature of tomorrow’s conflicts?

With the proliferation of nuclear weapons in South Asia, it is unlikely that India’s neighbors will engage in 20th century-style conflicts over land with India. Rather, they will rely on asymmetric warfare and/or well-trained fast and mobile units with heavy firepower, good lines of communication, and a high degree of stealth. India will need to be able to deploy force in a variety of theatres — maritime anti-piracy operations, mountainous border engagements, thrusts across the desert and others.

Remedying these fundamental deficiencies will give India a stronger hand, despite its understaffed Foreign Service, with which to project its views and defend��its interests in the international community.

Central & South Asia

A state’s immediate neighbors are always of the greatest concern. India has seen its influence slip considerably in recent years or, at least, has had its impotence exposed. With smaller states who can pose no military threat on their own like the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, India must be generous in its development aid and facilitate closer ties via education, cultural exchanges and easier travel regulations.

However, India must be careful to avoid the tail wagging the dog — preferential treatment must be reciprocated by good faith. Modi must see to it that Indian officials do not come off as overbearing and condescending to the neighborhood as they have been����of in the past. Instead, they must walk that fine line between arrogant regional power and regional locus of power.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will shift some of the����of keeping the Central Asian country free from Taliban rule onto India. It is more logical for Afghans to fight the Taliban for their own country than for India to follow in the erroneous footsteps of imperial Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States.

India must act in concert with other regional powers with ��— Russia and Iran — to help Afghanistan repel the Taliban and rebuild its society and economy. Any less of a commitment would irredeemably jeopardize Indian economic and security interests. The challenge would be to strangle the Taliban’s flow of aid from Pakistan. Modi must keep international attention and condemnation on Pakistan’s aid to the Islamists in Afghanistan, while cobbling together a coalition to provide military and financial aid to the non-theocratic forces in Kabul.

Iran can be another important regional partner for India. Both countries have somewhat similar interests in Afghanistan, and Iran is also the last stop on the proposed International North-South Trade Corridor (INSTC) that would connect the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea and serve Turkey, the Caucasus, Afghanistan and��. Iran would be a vital partner in this project as well as in providing security to Afghanistan against the Taliban.

Although Iran does not look to India as a major��, there are, nonetheless, several projects of bilateral interest that India must push to develop quickly. Among these are the much-talked about development of Chabahar port, its attendant road, rail and pipeline infrastructure, and oil and gas pipelines between the two countries. Modi must put Iran toward the top of his foreign policy agenda not only to capture a new, post-sanctions Iranian market, but also for the ripple effect the INSTC can have for trade in the region.

Over the years, Pakistan has elevated itself from a nuisance to a threat with its support of terrorism from behind its nuclear shield. Endless summits have failed to silence the guns in Kashmir, let alone bring peace to the region. In fact, all evidence still points to support of terrorist cells by various arms of the Pakistani government, while men like Malik Ishaq and Hafiz Saeed roam free.

At this low juncture, one option left to Modi is to����and downgrade diplomatic relations to the consular level. In the past, India has shown itself as too willing to talk regardless of provocations and dishonored commitments by the other side. A concerted effort to highlight, internationally, Pakistan’s links to terrorism must be mounted. India must try to throttle foreign aid to Pakistan or affix conditions that demand aid be��sanitized from contact with terrorism via sub-contractors, finance, labor and so on.

Any talks that do take place between the two states must only be via a third party. Modi must be bold — but not reckless — and explore��other strategies to put pressure on Islamabad, be it via Afghanistan, Balochistan or along the Line of Control (LoC).

*[Read the final part . A version of this article was originally published on Jaideep Prabhu’s .]

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The political arena is heating up in India as the next general election draws near. The performance of the current ruling coalition government, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), has been far below expectations. There is widespread disappointment with the Congress Party as reflected by numerous media surveys and recent state election results.

The Indian government has been struck with policy paralyses, indecisiveness, and numerous large-scale corruption charges. There is a general sense that the Congress Party has serious credibility issues and has lost touch with the people.  

And the Lineup is…

National politics in India primarily involve three coalition groups: Congress-led UPA; the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA); and the third front consisting of various regional parties unwilling to sit with either Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

There can be a fourth front led by the left parties and other regional ones who find it difficult to sit with either of the first three coalition groups; but this group is unlikely to have significant numbers as per the current trend.

Notably, the third front does not have a clear leader and projects a politically unstable formation. Also, the third front is highly unlikely to be in a position to form a government without support from Congress or the BJP.

Therefore, given Congress' dire state, theoretically, it should have been easy for the main opposition party, the BJP, to claim for a clear mandate in the upcoming elections.

All the BJP had to do was to find someone who projected three traits: clear policy-driven governance, decisiveness, and a non-corrupt image.

However, the BJP went ahead an extra-mile and projected Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate, who not only projected those three traits but also brought in the baggage of the 2002 communal riots.

Though no court has found any direct role of Modi in the rioting, his opponents have targeted him for more than a decade now as he served as the chief minister during riots in which two-thirds of the victims were Muslims in a Hindu-majority state.

In addition, the BJP’s claim as a party of the incorruptible has limited takers, as many of its politicians have been charged in big corruption scandals. This created a political vacuum for a party with absolute anti-corruption and secular credentials. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), or the Common Man Party, is addressing this gap.

The AAP was formed last year by a group of anti-corruption activists led by Arvind Kejriwal. In its political debut, it triumphed and formed a government in Delhi. Though the party is in a nascent stage, it hopes to make the most of the political vacuum discussed above.

Both the Indian media and established political players hyperbolize and sensationalize the AAP’s positives and negatives. In Delhi, Congress has given outside support to the AAP; and is happy to shoot at the BJP from the AAP’s shoulder with election 2014 in sight.

While it is a real possibility that the AAP will cut down a few vital BJP seats, making government formation an uphill task for Modi, it poses a greater threat to Congress. Though the AAP consists of individuals with varied worldviews, its overall outlook seems center-left with elements of a direct democracy governance model. 

Ideologically, there is little difference between the AAP and Congress. Apart from its legacy, Congress has little to offer what the AAP cannot. But the AAP can offer a non-corrupt, non-dynastic and non-nepotistic profile, while Congress cannot.

The AAP has already influenced the national political discourse. There is a clear swing in favor of anti-corruption and more transparency in governance. Many politicians across parties have adapted to austerity.

Nonetheless, the AAP has a long way to go before it actually challenges any of the established parties at the center.

Most importantly, it has to develop a party cadre at the grassroots level across the nation, and demonstrate acumen of governance and the ability to work with other parties. If it succeeds nationally, it will, at best, be able to challenge the BJP and substitute for Congress in the long-run.

Right-Wing Followers: A Potential Spoiler?

The BJP is primarily banking on the Modi wave. The AAP has certainly made things difficult, but Modi’s political acuteness is still unparalleled.

Modi’s words and actions set issues and agenda for national political debates. A fairly significant section of people, especially youth, consists of those who do not identify with the camp of religious hardliners and who cannot tolerate misgovernance, inefficiency and rampant corruption.

It seems that Modi has grasped this issue long back. For the past few years, he has been trying hard to reach out. He talks about governance, economy, technology, environment and developmental issues.

However, Modi's biggest challenge is to control his right-wing followers from ruining his efforts to accommodate potential voters who buy his governance and "India First" credentials. (Modi defines secularism as India First. It is a rhetoric, but the basic idea is that the policies should be in the interest of all Indians and not just certain sections of caste/religion.)

It is difficult to say if Modi’s right-wing hardliners are destroying his potential vote bank of liberal youth across religious lines, rather than consolidating his Hindu vote bank. Educated youth may find it difficult to sit in the same camp with religious hardliners, who tend to impose their world-view on others. It will be interesting to see how Modi performs this balancing-act in the future.

Only time will tell over whether the Indians create the BJP’s Modi wave, the AAP’s political revolution, or maintain Congress’ grand-old Nehru-Gandhi dynasty rule. We will have to wait, but not for long.   

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India is a country that has a plethora of descriptions: "The world’s largest democracy," "Land of spirituality," and "Land of tigers and elephants" are just a few to name. A nation that exhibits uniqueness in every aspect of its existence, celebrated its 66th anniversary earlier today. The birth of modern India was accompanied by bloodshed and chaos. The partition of British India into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India led to one of the largest mass migrations in history. Indeed, neither governments were prepared to face the upheaval of partition. This resulted in countless causalities and homeless families. Thus began the life of independent India, which has for years been tormented by a policy of "divide and rule," initially by the British and then by the political class in the name of "Vote bank politics."

Fast-Forward to the Present

Today, India is a bustling republic with nearly 48% of its population below the age of 21. Ranked amongst the top five in terms of GDP, its successful space and nuclear missile programs make it a regional player to be reckoned with.

As a global player, India has principally remained independent where foreign policy is concerned. India’s non-alignment policy during the Cold War-era and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty (NPT) are testaments to this.

Yet poor foreign policies have plagued India in the last decade. The border disputes with China and Pakistan have never been further from being resolved. The alleged "incursion" by Chinese troops into disputed territory near the de facto border, as well as  frequent skirmishes near the Indo-Pakistan border, are not healthy signs for the region.

In the last couple of weeks alone, five Indian soldiers were killed and the ceasefire was violated thrice by Pakistan. Cross border terrorism has broken peace talks from time to time. The attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 and the 2008 Mumbai attacks had derailed peace talks during that period. It would be futile to argue over the existence of safe havens for terrorists in Pakistan, and would augur well for India if it bolstered its security and enhanced its intelligence wing. Relations with the West have gained momentum since 2001. The favorable response from the West towards the successful launch of India’s intercontinental ballistic missile, Agni-V, reiterates the existence of strong ties.

An is fueling urbanization throughout the country. Villages and towns have been grossly in India’s economic growth story. In 2010, an article in an brought notice to the fact that nearly overa quarter of a million farmers committed suicide between 1995 and 2010. Death and draught were likely causes; yet the lack of will by the government to diffuse this potential catastrophe cannot be ignored. For a predominantly agrarian country, this is a baffling reality.

Despite ranking amongst the in terms of the number of dollar-billionaires in the world, India still in Human Development. The imbalance can largely be associated with government policies or the lack of will to implement them carefully. The dearth of willfulness by the government to take necessary actions to retrieve illegal money stashed in foreign countries has angered the public at large.The steady rise in gas prices and growing inflation have not eased the pain of the common man either.

The political class lives in a world of its own, totally disconnected from the pulse of the nation. "Leadership" is a term that is used generously but exhibited rarely by the political class. There seems to be a clandestine competition between the existing ministers in terms of whose scam is valued the most. The nation as a whole is dangerously close to accepting corruption as an inevitable part of everyday life. According to the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), India ranks 94 out of 176 nations this year. In spite of  the unfavorable scenario, global organizations have been trying to woo the Indian markets for a long time; yet it takes more than just lobbying to secure a share of this pie. The world’s largest retailer, Walmart, couldn’t launch in India due to its inability to meet the government’s "30% local sourcing" guideline. The large population of India alone is enough for giant corporations to want to invest in the country, but the government has been highly successful in stalling that. Brand India certainly takes a hit due to the doddering support for entrepreneurial ventures, coupled with corruption.

Good Governance: The Holy Grail

India lacks neither the man power, nor the willingness to achieve greatness. The land that gave birth to Buddha and Gandhi certainly needs no moral compass.. What then prevents this country from becoming a true global power?

The political class is squarely to be blamed for this state of affairs. The commoner has tried his best to taste success. It is time that people become happy because of the political setup rather than in spite of it. It would be unfair to blame a single political party but the Indian National Congress (INC) takes the cake. In the last few years alone, numerous scams worth millions of dollars have been credited to the existing batch of ministers. The prime minister is but a pseudo center of power. Rarely have we seen the prime minister voice his opinion, and if he does, it is in support of his tainted ministers. When one part of the country is torn by protests demanding separate statehood, it is Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress Party,  who makes the decision rather than the cabinet of ministers the prime minister, or the president. The Congress is indeed the leading player in an existing coalition government. But to assume that it is the government is a fatal error of judgment. The existing opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is not all that pristine either, which makes the scenario exponentially worse. Given that the natural response for any crisis is a heated exchange of words between these two heavyweights, the common man is but forgotten altogether.

The Way Forward

The Indian struggle for  independence is a legendary tale with Mahatma Gandhi at its helm. Gandhi’s vision introduced the concept of peaceful and non-violent resistance to a world torn by war. A land once christened as the "jewel in the crown" of the British Empire has so far failed to live up to its potential.

Indians must choose wisely while electing representatives to government. General elections are not far off and to vote the existing government out of power is the first step towards recovery. In a country of more than a billion people, it is not impossible to congregate thousands against a cause. Leaders who can make decisions aimed at taking India forward, are the need of the hour. There is every chance that this style of leadership would lead to short-term resistance, but it is the price we must pay to undo the deeds of the past. It is imperative that all Indians exercise their right to vote, even if the ideal candidate seems elusive. The lesser of two evils is the choice at the moment and in years to come, better options will emerge.

Every nation in the world has had its testing times, and what differentiates the great from the rest is the will to make tough decisions. The question is, can we as a nation make those choices? The second struggle for independence is brewing passively and the mood of the country is heading towards transformation. A new and truly independent India is right around the corner.

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When India became independent, it had a clear idea of its destiny. Gandhi had set India on a course that was democratic, egalitarian and plural. In keeping with India’s syncretism, people speaking a multitude of languages, practicing widely different spiritual traditions, and living widely different lives came together to forge a nation state that celebrated its 66^th birthday today. India is now better fed, better clothed, and more prosperous than it was under the British. Yet Indians have painfully discovered that throwing out a foreign oppressor is much easier than building a thriving nation. Today, India has lost its way. It has no moral compass, no clear identity, and it does not know where it is heading.

On Independence Day, the Indian prime minister mounts the ramparts of Delhi’s Red Fort and addresses the nation. The people have long stopped paying heed to such rituals. In the case of the current prime minister, it is widely regarded that he is a puppet. Hence, the ritual has even less meaning than usual. Like the decaying Mughal Empire of the 18^th century that operated out of the Red Fort, the Indian state is crumbling. Bit by bit, all institutions have corroded. Under Indira Gandhi, the bureaucracy and the police were subordinated to the whims of their political bosses. The military and judiciary were also targeted and since then have been in decline.

Rule of Law

India no longer has any rule of law. Victims of crime cannot register a case with the police unless they are rich or powerful. If the police do lodge the case, nothing happens thereafter. If the police investigate and the case proceeds to trial, it takes ten years or more for it to be heard. Thousands of cases are pending in lower courts and India is a text book example of justice denied through delay. This gives ample opportunity for any criminal to doctor evidence, intimidate witnesses, and bribe officials. Because the state has failed, people turn to organized crime for protection and justice. In tribal areas, the Naxalites — local communist guerillas — are active in a third of the districts of the country. This does not even include Kashmir and northeast India, where insurgency has flourished for decades. In fact, India ranks 89 on the below such stalwarts such as Russia and Lebanon.

Part of the reason India does not have rule of law is because most of India’s laws do not make sense. As Dr. M. Krishnamurthy , India’s basic laws such as the Indian Penal Code, Indian Police Act, Indian Railways Act, Indian Posts and Telegraphs Act, and Land Acquisition Act were all drafted by the British Parliament to perpetuate colonial rule and exploit India’s resources. Similarly, India’s bureaucracy was largely devised by people like , who lost to George Washington but redeemed himself by establishing control over India, and , the legendary Master of Balliol College, Oxford in the 19^th century. India declared its independence, but did not change its colonial laws or reform its rapacious bureaucracy.

Corruption at its Peak

India’s political system is dysfunctional. The system is nominally federal but too much power rests with the center. Taxes flow to Delhi, then to Swiss bank accounts, and only then to the rest of the country. Indians hold more money than Russians in Swiss accounts, giving some idea of the scale of corruption. Such corruption is possible because too much power vests with people in power. Furthermore, decision making is still notoriously opaque.

While India’s political system is centralized, its politics is highly fragmented. Politics is entirely based around identity. To a certain degree this happens in any diverse country. Most African Americans voted for Barack Obama but he still stands for certain principles. In India, elections are won largely on cobbling together a winning coalition of castes and communities that vote as a block. A country of 1.2 billion people is represented by a mere 545 members of parliament, making elections an expensive proposition. Only dynasts from established political families or entrepreneurial bosses of criminal syndicates are able to run for office. The name of the game is patronage. In an era of coalitions, the Nehru family is still in power but it has to share more of the loot with others just as the Mughals had to when they became weaker.

Economic liberalization has followed a path more similar to Russia than to China. Unlike the latter, India is yet to invest in infrastructure or education. Its bureaucracy remains byzantine and does more harm than good. As in Russia, the Indian political elite has sold off the country’s natural resources to cronies through rigged auctions. The $30 billion demonstrates the impunity with which India’s political elite operates. The social contract for economic liberalization in India has been large bribes from big business to the political elite in return for control over natural resources. The biggest racket within India is in property. Anyone in this business has to get in bed with the politicians, and Sonia Gandhi's obnoxious son-in-law has reportedly amassed billions of dollars through that apart from causing a circus in parliament are leading to precious little. The fact is that most politicians are feeding off the land gravy train, including those in the opposition. No one really wants a true investigation. Little surprise though that tribes who suddenly find themselves dispossessed without due process or adequate compensation, turn to Naxalites through despair.

Yet even this contract between government and industry is being broken. Just as the Russian bureaucracy under Putin reasserted control over oligarchs, the Indian state has been tightening the screws on industry. India presents the illusion of judicial activism with a highly visible Supreme Court. The reality is that government moulds prosecution. There are no independent investigators who can torment the powerful in the way prosecutors tormented Clinton and Nixon. The powerful cannot be touched. The industry is being emaciated as the Congress reverts to its socialist roots. Under Indira, India declared itself a . Now it is doling welfare through spurious schemes that incur massive leakage. It is also increasing the regulatory burden on business, which just means bureaucrats and politicians can indulge in more extortion or, in more polite words, “rent seeking.”

More Authoritarian than China

The CIA is optimistic about India just as it was bullish about the Shah’s Iran. It sees India as a democracy that might one day be a counterweight to authoritarian China. However, as MIT’s Yasheng Huang , democratic India can be a lot more authoritarian than autocratic China. The greatest challenge India faces is not the state of the country but the apathy of its citizens. Indians have been seduced by conspicuous consumption and rampant materialism. The ends justify the means. Corruption has become a way of life and people are fine with paying bribes for basic services such as driving licences and birth certificates.

During the Gandhian era, the enemy was clear and visible. It was the sanctimonious Englishman taxing the starving Indian till the pips squeaked. Even salt was not exempt. Gandhi marched to the sea to break salt laws and kick off the . After independence, the waters have become much more muddy. As India’s population has shot up from 300 million to 1.2 billion since independence, the struggle for survival has become fiercer. The economy has largely been strangled by red tape for most of the period since independence. Laws and systems are out of sync with daily realities. People get around them through corruption. The cousin who is a high flying bureaucrat is admired for having cleared a tough exam and for getting things done for relatives. The fact that he might be stealing from the state exchequer is shrugged off. In India, the operative assumption is that every system is corrupt and everyone has a price. The lack of belief in fighting for things as they should be is the scariest aspect of the country.

Popular culture as reflected in Bollywood, cricket, or the media is disconcerting for people who remember times when there was still vestiges of idealism in the country. When Indira declared , a number of political leaders were willing to go to jail, students were willing to protest, and some members of the press spoke out the truth. What was not achieved through coercion has been attained through co-option. Indians have accepted that the system is beyond repair and cannot change. They try to work around it. Few criticize the government as they used to. The intellectual climate in the country is dead, there is no courage of conviction and, for all the flag waving during cricket matches, Indians have lost their sense of identity. Few affluent young people in metro areas speak in their native tongue or have any clue about their history. to educate a people who cannot “be educated by means of their mother tongue” has been achieved.

Inequality worldwide has increased but, in India, it is at its starkest. From Ambani’s opulent , one can behold Dharavi — one of the largest slums in the world. In the words of V.S. Naipaul, India has a million mutinies now. Yet the country eschews a serious conversation on any issue. The media serves the standard fare of celebrities and scandal. Cricket and Bollywood are the modern counterparts to the Roman Coliseum. India now has with over 50% of the population below the age of 25. This demographic is disproportionately male and ferociously dissatisfied. Under the surface, tensions are simmering. India is a volcano about to explode.

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On August 11, when Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) campaign committee chief as well as the party's prime ministerial aspirant, sounded the poll bugle for the 2014 Indian general elections with a phrase borrowed from US President Barack Obama’s “Yes, We Can,” it was not just an inspirational sentiment he was recreating but instead an articulation of the hopes and aspirations of a young India. With more than 65% of India's population under the age of 35, Modi was trying to nudge this young segment against the gerontocracy and dynastic rule that has been a characteristic of the political leadership.

This article is not about dissecting Modi or his policies or whether he is the right choice put forward by India’s biggest opposition party to lead the country. Instead, today, as India turns 66 on August 15, it will be a youthful India taking on the world — its working age population is rising by approximately 12 million annually — with its dreams, ambitions and expectations that are bereft of the “isms” and chasms of temple-mosque politics.

Old India, Young India

In the 2009 polls, 43 million new voters exercised their franchise and sent 79 members to the 15^th Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament), all below 40 years of age. And in 2014, a new clutch of voters will be added to this 43 million, who will cast their ballots for the first time and the young MPs mark may even cross a hundred. The idea was that young members of parliament will echo their voice in the corridors of power and bring in change, write out and deliver policies for a tomorrow that will take them to the next level when old India will pass into posterity. Instead, it is still the old India setting the directives for a tomorrow which it will never see, creating disconnect with what young India perceives.

One of the news magazines, Outlook, in a recent article pointed out that even after four years, as many as 36 of these young MPs, including Rahul Gandhi — the son, grandson and great-grandson of India’s prime ministers — are yet to ask a question, while as many as 12 MPs are yet to participate in a debate. It came as no surprise that in 2011, when the youth rallied under the banner of the anti-corruption crusader, Anna Hazare, as he embarked on a hunger strike for Jan Lok Pal — a law that in pure and simple terms would bring to book the corrupt, irrespective of the office of power they hold. For a nation deluged by scams, scandals and corruption, this 76-year-old man from a remote village in Maharashtra became the voice of young India, as he took on the political class, even threatening to lay siege to parliament.

Familial Legacy

Even as the country stood behind this Gandhi-topi wearing crusader as he went on a fast at Delhi’s Ram Lila grounds, these very parliamentarians, elected and sent to represent them, remained aloof, keeping their lips sealed. There was disappointment, disillusionment and disgust, even a sense of betrayal as the youth came out on the streets waving the national tricolor. It was not about a party or a leader; they all wished for one simple thing — change. But what the young India failed to understand and realize when they sent one among them to parliament, was that each one of them was carrying baggage: They were from political families, promoting a legacy.

Be it the youth icon that Congress is popularizing, Rahul Gandhi — carrying the Nehru-Gandhi legacy — or Jyotiraditya Scinda, Jitin Prasada, Milind Deora or Sachin Pilot, they all have their father’s armband on their sleeves with the symbol of Congress firmly etched over generations.

But it isn't just the Congress: Anurag Thakur of the BJP, the party’s young star and answer to Rahul Gandhi and son of former Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal; Supriya Sule, daughter of Maratha strongman and NCP Chief Sharad Pawar; Harsimrat Kaur Badal, wife of Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal; and Dimple Yadav, wife of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav — to name a few — have all derived their lineage from political families, having made it to parliament by virtue of being either the son, daughter or daughter-in-law of the party leader.

So, it is no wonder today that these young parliamentarians who were supposed to be outspoken, and come up with out-of-the-box ideas, have remained silent rather than having tried to justify their party’s stand. When the whole nation rose in unison against the brutal gang-rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi in December last year and came out braving the water cannons and batons unleashed on them by the government, these young scions chose to shy away, retreating to the plush confines of their interiors. Forget giving support and strength, they did not even utter a word for the girl who mirrored the aspirations of the country’s youth.

The anger and angst witnessed on the streets is a manifestation of government policies and a paternalistic attitude towards select constituencies that have not kept in step with the changing times. These young MPs, instead of changing the stride and steering the policies towards a new India, have stayed behind with the old guard, dragging the country into an abyss of deprivation and moral turpitude.

A case in point is the action of the youngest chief minister of India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, the 40-year-old Akhilesh Yadav, who decided to suspend a 28-year-old IAS The ruse to suspend her was based on the claim that she pulled down a wall of a religious structure. But the distortion became clear when an official report concluded that it was the villagers themselves who took down the illegal construction, declaring Nagpal to be blame-free. Akhilesh came to power on the promise of changing the caste-ridden state of its old age notions and fast-tracking it on the path of development. But after 17 months in power, Akhilesh has all the trappings of his father, Mulayam Singh Yadav. The state has witnessed the highest number of riots, a complete law and order failure, and the young Yadav scion appears to be just another cog in the Samajwadi Party wheel that his father controls.

For India to get on to the next growth phase, a young workforce alone will not be sufficient. It has to have a definite roadmap to tackle rising prices, corruption, job creation, law and order, education and health. And the complacency of old India is not going to help. There has to be a sense of urgency for the reforms — be it economic or political. For the youth of India know that they can bring about the change, and even as the old men dream of coming back to power, it is the young India that will decide the future course of action.

*[The author wishes to remain anonymous and has used a pseudonym.]

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Dear Citizens of Bharat (i.e. India),

As you celebrate my 66^th birthday, allow me to narrate a story. I realize that in this era of 140 character updates, people do not have time for stories. But once you are 5,000 years old (India might be 66 years of age, but Bharat is around 5,000 years old, you see), you tend to become a nuisance and narrate stories which no one is interested in. Nevertheless, like an old hag, you carry on.

In circa 1 AD, there existed a kingdom known as Youngistan. Surrounded by mountains on one side and oceans on the other three, the kingdom was rich in natural resources. Numerous rivers originating in the glaciers in the mountains provided the kingdom with fertile land. The people were God loving and generally amiable in nature. God appeared to have blessed the land.

The citizens had evolved a mechanism to run the affairs of the kingdom. Although the kingdom was under the benign suzerainty of an Empress — aka the Queen Mother — it used to elect a leader known as the Pradhan Mantri to run the kingdom for a period of five years. Mantris were appointed to assist the Pradhan Mantri. It was a predecessor of modern day democracy.

Pradhan Mantri or no Pradhan Mantri, the Queen Mother’s family believed that it had an inalienable right to rule the kingdom.

In contrast, the neighboring kingdom of Confusedistan was bereft of any mode of governance. In fact, nobody knew the identity of the person in charge. Some believed in a king, some thought that the army or the secret service was in charge, and some paid obeisance to the religious leaders who were more political than religious. Some even believed that Long Beard, who lived in the caves, ran the show.

The founding fathers had named Confusedistan aptly. The common agenda which bound together the kingdom was its pathological animosity towards Youngistan. Everybody, since we do not know who ruled the place, utilized the services of Long Beard and his cohorts to surreptitiously send in armed criminals into Youngistan to kill and maim people.

Confusedistan was under the patronage of the rulers of a distant kingdom which could only be reached after traveling for months on horseback and ships. This kingdom known as Policestan, considered itself to be the world's policeman. Previously ruled by the great warrior Alexander Dubya, it was now under the rule of O’Ma. O’Ma had confused his people with his "Yes you can" war cry. The people of Policestan thought that it referred to their ability to rule the world. As if on cue, they started picking up fights with all and sundry. Long Beard could only rant and rave from his cave hideout.

Policestan had, however, recently been troubled by a canary. Vickyleaks, as this canary was named, had a proclivity to eavesdrop into conversations between the rulers of the kingdom. One fine day it suddenly decided to reveal all the overheard secrets. Since Vickyleaks had made a mammoth tree as its abode, it could not be brought to book and sung along merrily. With the passage of time this canary gave birth to the saying, "singing like a canary." O’Ma was indeed a worried man.

But since this is a story of Youngistan, we will stick to it.

The supporters of the Queen Mother had a slap as their symbol. Since this group was tightly knit around the royal family and adored partying, they were referred to as the "One Tight Slap Party."

The system of governance in Youngistan ensured that everyone apart from the Queen Mother, nurtured a desire to be the Pradhan Mantri. The Queen Mother was an epitome of renunciation and silence. A few nasty people talked about her renunciation as a pretense for self-preservation, since she could not govern anyway. They said that she believed in the dictum, “better stay silent and let people think that you are a fool, rather than open your mouth and confirm.” They also said that she wanted to ensure the anointment of her son, Yuvraj, as the Pradhan Mantri. Nobody, however, paid any heed to them.

Yuvraj was an enigma. His academic background was a secret unknown even to Vickyleaks. Some said that he had gone to Policestan to study, others would say that he had run away from the kingdom to avoid academics. But Yuvraj would not reveal anything. Like his mother, he too was pretty averse to putting pressure on his vocal chords.

There were some other groups of people who opposed the Queen Mother, and wanted to be Pradhan Mantri themselves.

The larger amongst the opposing groups was known as the "Saffrons."

There was another major opposition group known as the "Reds." They abhorred everything indigenous and worshipped foreign Gods who had been forgotten even in their land of origin. The "Reds" had, however, become peripheral after being abandoned by the Queen Mother who had once utilized them to prop up her rule. Not for nothing was she also known as the Queen Bee.

"To bee or not to bee" had, however, become a burning question for Yuvraj.

Queen Mother had anointed her loyalist, Silent Assassin, to keep the throne warm till Yuvraj became mature enough to become the Pradhan Mantri. Like a true loyalist, Silent Assassin never cast a covetous eye on the throne, although his opponents said that his unblinking eyes epitomized that he had an eye for the throne. They were perhaps ignorant of the fact that Silent Assassin was a world champion at staying physically inert and his eyes had been attuned accordingly.

But with the passage of time it became evident that maturity was as alien to Yuvraj as speaking or activity was to the Silent Assassin.

Yuvraj had developed a propensity to break into the poor people’s homes in the night and forcibly eat their dinner. The poor, frightened out of their wits at the sight of Yuvraj’s massive security contingent, would pretend that they had been blessed by the Lord’s silent visit. They would murmur, “better to sleep hungry than die hungry.”

The silence of the triumvirate of the "One Tight Slap Party" did, however, have positive side-effects. Scientists discovered the sign language to communicate with the triumvirate. Telepathy was also established as a science during this period. Dumb charades were declared the national sport.

God, however, has a nasty sense of humor. 

Silent Assassin, apart from his unflinching loyalty to the Queen Mother, had another quality which had made him a prize asset for the "One Tight Slap Party." He was supposed to be excellent at bartering goods (remember, 1 AD!) to the benefit of the kingdom.

“He will bring prosperity to Youngistan,” the loyalists roared. “God bless the Queen Mother for this choice” as the sycophants had raised a cacophony during his appointment. True to their nature, the sycophants had once even worshipped the Queen Mother for forcing God to create the Universe.

Initially, the Silent Assassin did his job. Not only of keeping the throne warm but also of maintaining the bartering prices at a reasonable rate. You could barter a bag of wheat for one goat. You could exchange the prized Som Ras intoxicant from Policestan for ten cows (alcohol never had competition from milk, you see).

But then things started to go horribly wrong. The barter price of daily items started increasing — initially slowly, and then sharply. A bag of wheat now got two healthy cows. Vegetables were worth a large tract of land. And people had to cough up 60 cows for Som Ras.

A stage soon arrived where the poor established watch towers for prior warnings regarding the impending approach of Yuvraj during his nocturnal eating sojourns. In the age of inflation, as this malaise was called, they could not let Yuvraj take away their food, security contingent be damned!

Worried at the possibility of Yuvraj going hungry, the Queen Mother frowned at Pradhan Mantri, who in turn frowned at his flunkies (i.e. the Mantris). “We have to secure food for Yuvraj,” they roared in unison. “Then let’s issue the Food Security Code,” spoke the Pradhan Mantri for once. “Now not even the throne but even the belly of Yuvraj will be secure forever,” the sycophants said with tears in their eyes.

The Queen Mother smiled.

The people, however, were becoming disgruntled. They were exasperated with the silence of the Queen Mother and Pradhan Mantri. The silence, they believed, was a fig leaf to cover up their inadequacies.

The principal opponents, the Saffrons, smelt an opportunity. But they were themselves a disoriented lot.

Their principal leader had been a master charioteer during his halcyon days. But innumerable chariot rides around the kingdom had put his mind and body under a lot of strain. Though his mind was still willing, his body would not acquiesce. “One last chariot race and the throne will be mine,” he used to think.

But time and chariots wait for no one.

White Beard was gradually assuming charge of the Saffron group. A brave heart, he would ride a tiger whereas others rode on their bedecked chariots. Dismounting from the tiger was a problem, but then brave hearts perhaps find their way. White Beard had developed a massive following in the kingdom.

Witnessing White Beard riding a tiger raised the apprehensions of the Queen Mother. "The Apocalypse" was now the focal theme in the dumb charades in the party.

Troubles also seldom travel solitarily.

Youngistan was now struck by a mysterious malady called "Sickularism." No medical practitioner could decipher the reasons behind this dreadful disease. The symptoms were, however, common. A person (mostly the leaders) suffering from Sickularism would prefer to remain idle and abhor work. Occasionally, he would praise the fighters sent by Long Beard from Confusedistan to kill and maim citizens of Youngistan. There was another telltale symptom of this disease. Anyone who asked a leader suffering from Sickularism to do some work for the people would be called "Komunal." Sickularism became a leitmotif for non-performance and non-accountability. 

Even the Cockatoos, who had become the playthings for the leaders because of their natural ability for rumor mongering, were not spared from this malaise. The Cockatoos in those days did not have the harsh voice they have in the present times. Their sweet voice was known as Tweet.

The Cockatoos of leaders suffering from Sickularism also developed symptoms of the disease. Overhearing their masters harangue the "Komunalists" (usually the Saffrons), they would Tweet about Komunalists who were apparently hell bent on destroying the kingdom. The Tweets gradually started being referred to as the Tweeter.  

One wasteful sycophant of the Queen Mother who ingratiated her by taking digs at White Beard and the Komunalists, became the most sought after Tweeter. Yuvraj lovingly referred to him as Digs because of his ability to take digs at the Saffrons. Digs would deny with alacrity any Tweet from his Cockatoos. “That is my Cockatoos' opinion, not mine” he would say. Then he would repeat the same Tweeter story next day.

Queen Mother would smile at the Tweeter gems from Digs and his Cockatoos.

People disparagingly said that she would display the same smile when her son-outlaw, Robber Bhagliya, would show her the gems and jewels he was pilfering from the royal treasury. But the gentlemen apart from the Komunalists did not believe in this gem of a story. Whoever did, was a Komunalist anyway. Silent Assassin did, however, notice the shrinking of gems and jewels in the treasury. But as was his wont, he preferred silence. “It ain’t my crown, so why should I bother about the Jewels in the crown,” he would think.

The "Sickularists," as people suffering from Sickularism came to be known, did not only depend on Tweeter to combat White Beard. They went to O’Ma with folded hands: "Sir, please, please, do something about the White Beard. He is more of a nuisance to us than Long Beard or Vickyleaks are to you." Digs’ Cockatoos even Tweeted: “Is O’Ma afraid of using his fire tipped arrows against White Beard?” “Dubya would have sent White Beard to the stone ages with his fire arrows,” was the next Tweet from Digs’ bird. 

The common people were aghast, but were scared of voicing their concern, lest they be termed Komunal.

The din raised by Digs and Tweeter became so loud that people forgot the real issues. Nobody would ask questions as to why Youngistan did not have universities like Nalanda and Takshasila in Bharat (in 1 AD, remember, I was still Bharat). Nobody would ask why children were being fed poisoned food in schools; nobody would ask why the youth were jumping ship and scampering to Policestan to earn a living; nobody would ask why Youngistan could not put Confusedistan in its rightful place. Bloody hell, nobody would ask anything! For if they did, the Tweeter would start Tweeting, "Komunal, Komunal!" 

The Queen Mother would only smile.

The citizens now had a sneaking suspicion that the Queen Mother was, in fact, smiling at their worsening condition. But even then they would not speak out. Being called Komunal was a slur they desperately wanted to avoid.

The barter prices kept rising. Long Beard’s criminals were having a field day. If even one of them was brought to task by the security forces, the Tweets would spew venom about the security forces being Komunal. With the security forces on the defensive, Confusedistan gained the psychological edge. Given the mental status of leaders like Yuvraj, that was not the most difficult of tasks in any case.

Youngistan was ablaze. Whoever survived the warriors of Long Beard, succumbed to the malaise of sky high bartering rates anyway.

Youngistan was breaking apart. Queen Mother was still smiling.

Moral of the story: Do not wait for others to tell you the moral of the story. If you remain silent when the ignorant speak, you could yourself become a story that no one likes to narrate.

Thank you for bearing with me, we the people of Bharat (i.e. India).

Love,

Bharat

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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“We are citizens of a great country, on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard” —  Jawaharlal Nehru, on the eve of Indian independence.

India exemplifies Adam Smith’s classic observation about there being “a great deal of ruin in a nation.” Jawaharlal Nehru might have had this in mind as he delivered his memorable address, greeting the end of the British Raj and the birth of modern India. Even as he heralded “the day appointed by destiny,” he acknowledged that the overwhelming bulk of the Indian population was in the grip of “poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.” He alluded to the communal fires then aflame throughout the country and confessed that much work lay ahead in building “the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.” But he also looked beyond, holding out a vision of India as a rising star in the east and an exemplar for the rest of the world. 

Nehru provided no details in his “Tryst with Destiny” address about the external role he intended for the new India. But about a year before the British withdrawal from South Asia, he stated that "India is today among the four great powers of the world: [the] other three being America, Russia, and China. But in point of resources India has greater potential than China." 

This latter contention invites amusement today, given where India and China have ended up so far in the global power sweepstakes. But as recent as the early 1990s, the countries were in similar economic circumstances. Whatever else now ails India, it has – a major reason why the British hung around for so long. Yet distilling it into real strategic power has always been a problem for Nehru and his successors. 

The World’s Most Unnatural Nation

An important part of this difficulty is, in truth, due to a large set of sui generis constraints. Unlike the case in China, the Indian state throughout history has been a highly decentralized creature, with the result that its modern incarnation lacks administrative machinery, capable of efficiently mobilizing the country’s dormant resources in a purposive direction. Add to this the political fragmentation arising from mind-boggling ethnic, linguistic, religious and social diversity of the type no other large country confronts. It is not for nothing that historian Ramachandra Guha the Indian Republic “the world’s most unnatural nation.” “Never before,” he points out, “had a single political unit been created out of so many diverse parts.” For all the aspirations about playing on the center stage of global politics, it remains  of whether India possesses a grand strategy worthy of the name – or even a geopolitical tradition capable of formulating one. 

Moreover, the tragic circumstances of modern India’s birth have proven vexatious to larger ambitions. It has the misfortune of residing in a highly volatile neighborhood, surrounded by weak, unstable, and often hostile countries that perennially top various failed-states indices. Pakistan, in particular, is a never-ending thorn in India’s side. The problematic regional environment saps precious national resources (including the armed forces) and constantly diverts the attention of those leaders who prefer to look to the global arena. It also creates a paradox: India yearns for a place in the first ranks of world power and yet, cannot establish much sway over its own region. Despite the common civilizational and historical links that permeate South Asia, New Delhi has been unable to integrate the area in the same way that Beijing has economically stitched together the much more culturally diverse and geographically dispersed East Asian region. 

Still, for all of the inherent factors hampering India’s power trajectory, the caliber of national leadership has also been decisive. As Nehru put it in another context: “Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.” The manner by which Nehru and his successors have operated has left much to be desired, as the strategies they pursued in attempting to build up Indian power often ended up having the opposite effect. The “Hindu rate of growth,” to which the country seemed perpetually condemned while others in Asia soared during the 1970s and 1980s, only reinforced India’s image as the epitome of what Third World meant: decrepit, destitute and pitiable. Ultimately, these policies led to the economic debacle of 1991, when India was forced to pawn its gold reserves in order to secure desperately-needed international financing. By then, many observers believed the country was on the brink of tragedy. The New York Times Magazine published  detailing “India’s descent into confusion and despair,” while the newspaper’s editorial writers  to “pity India” because the country was at risk of dissolving. 

Pivot to Asia

Of course, things have changed dramatically for the better since the nadir of 1991, with the size of the national economy more than quadrupling since then. True, the last few years have cast doubt on all of the what with the country now disgorging foreign capital, the value of the rupee being pounded to new lows, and international ratings agencies the sovereign credit rating to “junk” status. 

Still, even with all of the country’s cumulating distress, largely self-inflicted, it’s worth bearing in mind that India is far from alone in stumbling economically. All of the BRIC luminaries have fallen off their pedestal, including the once high-flying China; Japan, the economic superstar of the 1980s, is only now climbing out of a two decade-deep hole of bad debt and deflation; America is experiencing a recovery that is uncertain at best; and Europe is (hopefully) just emerging from its longest recession since the Second World War. All of this doesn’t excuse shoddy policymaking in New Delhi (good commentaries on this point , and ), but it does add perspective to the current travails.

It deserves to be pointed out that India retains its endowment of raw potential. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that the country, even with its current decade-low growth rate of five percent, has likely moved past Japan as the world’s third-largest economy and the second largest in Asia. It adds that by the end of this decade, India may even have supplanted China as the world’s fastest-growing major economy and that over the next half-century, the country’s GDP per capita will increase more than eight-fold. The US National Intelligence Council that by 2030, “India will be the rising economic powerhouse that China is seen to be today.” India has even managed to emerge as an , assiduously romanced by America, China and Japan.

So all is far from lost. That said, India is clearly in need of a stirring talk this Independence Day that can galvanize political sentiment to the many challenges ahead. By tradition, the prime minister commemorates the occasion by giving a speech atop Red Fort, the Mughal-era historical landmark in Delhi. This year, though, Manmohan Singh might try a different tack by forgoing his own remarks. Instead, he ought to broadcast the “Tryst with Destiny” address and ask the political class to rededicate itself to the ideals Nehru set forth. The gesture would be far more noteworthy than anything the taciturn Singh himself could utter. And Nehru’s words about far-sighted leadership, national aspiration and historical destiny might even have an impact upon a dispirited country.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Will India tackle its teeming challenges or will it be overwhelmed by them?

Background

India, to borrow Mark Twain’s 1897 quote, is older even than legend. It has a continuous cultural tradition that goes back thousands of years. In the 6^th century BC, legends such as Gautam Buddh and Mahavir walked the land, establishing Buddhism and Jainism, religions that continue to survive today. India came up with the decimal system, profound spiritual traditions and established universities such as Nalanda, which was open to anyone from around the world, centuries before Oxford opened up to non-Anglican students, and long before it admitted non-Christians.

While Europe compromised its Greco-Roman heritage and converted to Christianity, India has retained its native cultural traditions to the present day. Despite conquest by Muslim and Christian invaders, India has preserved its intrinsic cultural identity. The plasticity of the Indian mind, its genius for dealing with plurality and its ability to absorb seemingly diverse cultures is unique.

The Indian state as it exists today is a British creation. Unlike China, India’s default settingis that of regional kingdoms. Empires, such as those established by the Mauryas in 3^rdcentury BC, and the Mughals in the 16^th century AD, brought together modern-day Pakistan, Bangladesh and the bulk of North India under one rule, but none of them ever controlled the southern tip or the northeastern part of the country.

India inherited its territory, its laws and system of government from the British. Its constitution, drafted by a constituent assembly that proclaimed fundamental rights for its citizens such as individual liberty, still incongruously retained the 1861 Police Act, drafted four years after what the British called the Sepoy Mutiny.

Despite nearly seven decades of independence, India is still ruled by the Nehru dynasty, with other mini-dynasties acting as feudatories to India’s de facto royalty. Lower castes no longer face the same discrimination as before. The Indian economy is growing but Indian institutions are collapsing and corruption is rife.

India is still far from becoming the global power that it aspires to be and, while many of its citizens are succeeding on the global stage, the country is going through a profound crisis because its leaders are drifting and lack a vision for the future.

Why is India's Independence Day Relevant?

There are five reasons why the 66^th anniversary of India’s independence is relevant to the world.

First, India’s freedom marks the beginning of the shift in the global balance of power that is ongoing today. Prior to this day, the British Empire was at its zenith. It had engaged in the greatest wealth transfer in history, exploiting colonies around the world ruthlessly. India’s independence started the unraveling of the European empires. Soon, other countries in Asia and Africa were free, and today, these countries are called “emerging economies” instead of developing countries.

Second, India’s freedom marks the perils of creating new nation states on the ruins of empires. Decades of the British policy of divide and rule bore fruit in the division of the country into India and Pakistan. The two neighbors have been at loggerheads and fought many wars. Pakistan has since been further divided into Bangladesh. Identity politics bedevils these young nations and insurgencies abound. Kashmir continues to be a flashpoint.

These pains are not unique to India. The arbitrary boundaries in the Middle East are largely a consequence of Sykes-Picot, the cynical Anglo-French agreement to divide the spoils of the Ottoman Empire. Africa is dealing with colonial borders that are completely out of sync with tribal realities. The modern nation state is a European creation. Perhaps it is time to think more creatively when it comes to designating territories and designing institutions for governance.

Third, after 66 years of independence, India clearly demonstrates that overthrowing an oppressor is the easy task. Figuring out what to do when the oppressor has left is the greater challenge. Egypt is already finding that out but so, after all these years, is India. In a country where Gandhi was outvoted twice, the Nehru dynasty rules with impunity. Corruption has reached exponential levels and institutions have collapsed.

Fourth, India’s independence raises a profound philosophical question. India owes its freedom in no small measure to the genius of Gandhi. Einstein was right in pointing out that of all the great political men of the 20^th century, Gandhi’s contribution was the most profound. Essentially, Gandhi stood for a more just, transparent and free society. At a time of historic inequality and increased power of the state, this is a good occasion to remember what Gandhi spent his life fighting for.

Finally, this is a good time to put in stark focus the future of India. On the one hand, this nation of 1.2 billion people is home to some of the most intelligent, entrepreneurial and innovative people on the planet. On the other, it is a country of heart rending poverty, inhuman inequality and gross injustice. Worryingly, it is bereft of any leadership. Will India tackle its teeming challenges or will it be overwhelmed by them? That is the multibillion dollar question for the country and the world.

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Ishrat Jahan, a Mumbai college student, was killed on June 15, 2004, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat. Three other individuals, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana, and Zeeshan Johar, were killed along with her. Gujarat’s police claimed that they belonged to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a dreaded terrorist organization headquartered in Pakistan. Their mission was to assassinate Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat. Rana and Johar, both Pakistani citizens were LeT operatives. Ghazwa Times, a Lahore-based mouthpiece for the LeT, hailed the martyrdom of Ishrat and her accomplices. It proclaimed the deceased as their operatives and castigated the police for removing Ishrat’s veil, violating Islamic custom. The government of India, in an affidavit submitted in 2007, confirmed the legitimacy of the encounter.

Since then, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the political wing of LeT, has apologized to Ishrat’s family retracting its statement that Ishrat was their operative. The Indian government has since recanted its affidavit. India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has termed the encounter, the word used by police in India when they are involved in gun battles, as fake.

The controversy surrounding Ishrat Jahan highlights three major issues. First, India is confronted with the collapse of its legal machinery. Second, India’s political leadership views national security issues through the prism of electoral politics and sacrifices national security to gain votes. Finally, India’s political class has started using institutions to launch political vendettas, setting a dangerous precedent and undermining the credibility of its institutions.

Failed Legal Machinery

India’s legal machinery has long been creaking. Now it has collapsed. Police are not trained to investigate or collect evidence. The 19th century colonial laws, which the police are supposed to uphold and which governs their functioning, are out of sync with the realities of a nation of over 1.2 billion. The judicial system is tardy and corrupt. Cases are usually pending for years if not decades. This means that criminals and terrorists get plenty of time to to tamper with evidence by intimidating witnesses or bribing them. The police, the prosecuting lawyers, and even the judges are all amenable to pecuniary gain or political influence, making conviction a near impossible goal.

Even for honest police officers, killing a criminal boss or a dreaded terrorist is often the only option. The alternative is to watch these characters continue to run their operations with impunity or even out of prison. Obviously, these killings are extra-judicial. In India, they have come to be known as “encounters” and are an unstated instrument of state policy. They are India’s answer to the US policy of eliminating enemies through drone strikes, except that they take place within India’s borders instead of in far-flung foreign nations.

Like many of India’s pernicious policies, encounters came into fashion under Indira Gandhi, India’s authoritarian prime minister, who at one point threw all her political enemies into prison. Radical communists, who have since become known as Naxalites, began a violent movement against the Indian state. Initially, their goal was to achieve justice in the form of land reform and some equity in rural power structures. Later, they degenerated into armed gangs and rivaled the police in imposing terror on the countryside. Indira’s acolyte, Siddharth Shankar Ray, the chief minister of West Bengal, annihilated Naxalites with "a head each day" policy of executions that broke their back in his state. In the early 1980s, Julio Ribeiro, the Mumbai police chief, forced the mafia to seek safer sanctuaries with his "bullet for bullet" policy of executions because it had become impossible to convict any member of the mafia in court. In the 1980s, Indira dispatched Ribeiro to Punjab where together with KPS Gill, he perfected the art of encounters to suppress insurgency in the state.

Instead of reforming the security apparatus, the legal machinery and the judicial system, Indira opted for the expedient method of beating terror through the use of state terror. The situation came about because she let the law and order machinery collapse partly through neglect and partly through patronizing criminals. It is widely known that Indira supported Bhindranwale, the extremist Sikh leader, before ordering troops into the Golden Temple when he became too much of an inconvenience.

Since then, Indian politicians regularly patronize violent criminals and even terrorists. When violence gets out of hand and the interests of politicians are threatened, they expect the police to take stringent action and restore order through the use of encounters. The Congress, India’s ruling party since 1947, is the chief proponent of encounters. In the year Ishrat was killed, Gujarat’s police killed a mere five civilians as compared to Andhra Pradesh’s police that executed 85 civilians. In Congress ruled Andhra Pradesh, the Greyhounds, a special force established to counter Naxalism, has a fearsome reputation of being trigger happy. Encounters are a terrible idea and the only way to stop them is a long overdue reform of India’s legal machinery. However, politicians have not demonstrated either the interest or the political will to reform the broken system.

The Muslim Vote

India’s political leadership no longer cares about national security. It only cares about acquiring power. In a country of 1.2 billion people with a plethora of languages and religions, identity politics has become the name of the game. This means that voters are mobilized on "wedge issues" to vote against their best interests by appealing to their religious, regional, or caste identities. The Congress has long cultivated Muslim clerics to get the community’s vote. The Supreme Court judgment in the giving alimony to an elderly woman was overturned by a constitutional amendment by then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the son of Indira, to appease conservative clerics and capture the Muslim vote. Muslim women were sold down the river for prospects of electoral gain. Under the Muslim personal law in India, Muslim men can have four wives, a privilege not afforded to them even in Muslim countries such as Malaysia. Appeasement of conservative clerics has been defined as secularism in India, and anyone who questions appeasement is labeled as communal by a national media that has been co-opted through decades of patronage by the Congress.

Ishrat Jahan is increasingly being painted as a martyr who was killed by a communal police led by a Hindu zealot named Narendra Modi. The Gujarat chief minister is reviled by India’s Muslim community for his alleged role in Gujarat’s 2002 riots, and was nearly disowned by his own party for that reason. The Congress is using Ishrat Jahan to flaunt itself as a guardian of Muslim rights. By painting Modi as a threat to Islam, the Congress is seeking to mobilize the Muslim vote for itself.

Since 2004, Modi has emerged as the biggest threat to the ruling Congress party. He has delivered good governance to Gujarat and presided over a growth rate that is more akin to China’s instead of India’s. The country’s middle class is disgusted by the corruption of the Congress. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has led the most corrupt government in post-independence India, with thousands of millions of dollars siphoned off from the state exchequer. Modi is a real threat, but his Achilles heel is his image among Muslims who form 15% of India’s population.

The Congress has conveniently ignored its own track record for ensuring the deprivation of India’s Muslims. The party pretends that it was never responsible for massacres or riots such as , where Muslims suffered. Mainstream media, especially the English speaking elites of Delhi and Mumbai, pretend that the Congress had no culpability for the 1984 against the Sikhs, even though Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have collected irrefutable evidence of Congress involvement. The 2011 Wikileaks cable reveals that the United States was convinced about the complicity of the Congress in Sikh massacres. Ishrat Jahan has become a symbol for the Congress to paint itself as a savior of Muslims, but this petty politicking is playing havoc with India’s national security.

The Murky World of Indian Politics

Finally, the Congress is using India’s key institutions to launch political vendettas. Anyone who does not fall in line with the dominant socialist and secular ideology of the Nehru family is accused of being communal. Not only is mainstream media unleashed to create a maelstrom against its enemies, the Congress is now using the full might of the state to destroy those it perceives as threats.

The Congress has been in power at the national level for an overwhelming majority of the period since independence. It is now a dynastic oligarchy where the spoils of power are shared between a few families led by the Nehru family. Modi is a an upstart with no lineage who threatens to upset the Congress applecart. The Congress is using the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to pin the blame of Ishrat Jahan’s killing on Modi and scuttle his political chances at the national level. In the process, the CBI is also turning its guns on Intelligence Bureau (IB), India’s leading intelligence agency. The goal is to paint Ishrat as a martyr and Modi as a murderer. India’s Supreme Court has called the CBI "a caged parrot," but a more accurate description of the CBI might be an "attack dog" for its political masters. In the past, the CBI has been used against allies and enemies to rein them in or destroy them. But the venom with which the CBI is being directed against Modi sets a new low even for the murky world of Indian politics.

Asif Ibrahim, the IB Director, is Muslim and highly regarded for his integrity. He has told the prime minister that IB has sufficient evidence to prove that Ishrat was a member of LeT with links to Pakistan’s infamous Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The ISI is most famous for training and then supporting the Taliban. It turns out that , an operative for LeT and now in US custody, confirmed that Ishrat was a member of LeT. The fact that she was with Pakistani men with known terrorist antecedents gives credence to IB’s claims. The CBI has named Senior IB Official Rajinder Kumar as complicit in the Ishrat Jahan encounter and he is expected to be charged once he retires, sending shockwaves in India’s national security community. Senior IB officials and independent observers believe that Kumar is a "collateral victim" in a vendetta the Congress is carrying out against Modi.

The CBI has gone so far as to ask the IB to reveal who provided it inputs about Ishrat. In asking the IB to reveal its sources, the CBI is breaching a cardinal rule of intelligence gathering and compromising India’s already beleaguered intelligence community. It is an old rule in intelligence and even investigative journalism that sources are not to be revealed, but the CBI is paying scant regard to such principles. Many former directors of IB and RAW believe that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has wrecked the intelligence community beyond repair. He has no power to make any decisions. Sonia Gandhi, Indira’s Italian-born daughter-in-law, is the prime minister's boss and wields real power but has no interest in national security. Between Manmohan and Sonia nothing gets done and India’s intelligence agencies have become rudderless over the years. Using the CBI to target IB might well be the final nail in a coffin of India’s intelligence agencies. In a country where political interests supersede national interests, institutions, professionals and citizens are paying the price.

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Democracy is more than elections. It requires institutions. It requires rule of law. It has been 63 years since India declared itself a republic. Yet the country is in many ways a de facto monarchy. At the national level, one family has largely remained in power since 1947. This has led to tragic consequences for the country.

During the Indian independence struggle, the Indian National Congress (INC) was a movement. Elections were held regularly and even Mahatma Gandhi was outvoted on occasion. Subhas Bose was elected as President of the INC . When World War II broke out, Gandhi was outvoted twice in the Working Committee.

Post independence, Nehru, India’s first prime minister, tightened his grip on power and started promoting his daughter. She became president of the INC in 1959, a time when she was obviously not qualified to hold that office. Today, Indira’s Italian daughter-in-law is the president of the Congress party, the descendant of the INC. She wields complete power and nominates who she likes to office. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a figurehead who has responsibility without power while Sonia wields power without responsibility. This has led to an exponential increase in corruption and a .

Concentration of Power

America’s founding fathers created a system with a separation of powers. The legislative, executive and judiciary were all supposed to keep each other in check so that the young nation would not find itself under the yoke of a home grown tyrant after kicking out a foreign one. Concentration of power is generally a bad thing, whether such a concentration is with the government, a party, a church or a family.

In India, despite the existence of a democracy, power is wielded by influential families. In a country of nearly 1.2 billion people elections are hideously expensive. A mere 550 members of parliament (MPs) represent this massive population as compared to 650 representing 62 million in the UK or 435 representing 313 million in the US. Indian politicians have to reach out to massive constituencies. To fund and run a campaign, they need a lot of cash and a massive election machine. Dynasties, therefore, have a natural advantage and today, .

Nehru was first to promote his dynasty by elevating Indira to power. He made her president of the party when she had done little to earn that position. She in turn promoted her sons and decimated the opposition. At one point, she threw everyone who opposed her into jail and her younger son behaved like a crown prince even though he did not even hold a position in the government. Other politicians emulated Nehru and Indira, and most politicians in power are members of some dynasty. There are massive barriers to entry to a political career. Running for office is increasingly beyond the purview of the average citizen. The non-dynastic politicians are usually bosses of criminal syndicates who have the money and muscle power to give the dynasts a run for their money.

Crumbling Institutions

Inspired by the Soviet Union, Nehru imposed socialism on India. A socialist bureaucracy was overlaid on a 19^th century colonial system created by the British to exploit the country. India promulgated a constitution that was laced with high minded declarations but retained antiquated laws such as the Indian Police Act of 1861, imposed barely four years after what the British called “the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.” A colonial era administrative apparatus was supposed to create a socialist society but all that ��������’s policy did was give more power to the bureaucrats who strangled the economy and perpetuated poverty.

Under Indira, India lurched leftward and hugged the Soviets closer. Indira centralized power in the same way as Stalin though thankfully her methods were less brutal. She ignored the judiciary, subordinated the police and even interfered with the military. State officials of character were put out to pasture if they did not kiss the hem of Indira’s sari. She planted the seeds of the criminalization of Indian politics by promoting people of doubtful integrity to power. This has led to disastrous consequences. Today, criminals are close to politicians in power or in power themselves. Crimes such as rape are occurring literally next to the president’s residence.

India no longer has functioning institutions. Power is held by families and individuals. The police are dysfunctional: they retain colonial era coercive powers but are starved of resources. Far too often, the police refuse to register crimes unless the victim is rich or powerful. The judiciary is worse. Millions of cases are pending and citizens have to bribe court officials for their cases to be put on trial. Increasingly, judges are for sale and justice is often not just delayed but denied. Simply put, the constitutional machinery of the Indian state is functioning through extra-constitutional means. This means that might is right and there is no rule of law left in the country.

Other institutions in India are also crumbling. The military has been eviscerated. Subordinated by a civilian bureaucracy that does not allow it access to India’s political leadership, . While India has attracted attention for becoming the , this hides the fact that it cannot even produce boots and clothes for its soldiers. The Indian military is demoralized and not in a position to fight. The intelligence services are in disarray. RAW, the foreign intelligence agency, has lost relevance because it reports to a prime minister who has no power. IB, the domestic intelligence agency, is rudderless too. Indian diplomacy is manned by a mere 700 diplomats who are stretched incredibly thin and whose promotion depends on their ability to chill champagne for Indian politicians on foreign jaunts instead of their ability to further the country’s interests.

In short, behind the hype of India as an emerging superpower lies the reality of a state that is unable to fulfill its basic functions. The administrative edifice of India is decrepit. With soaring crime and a Maoist insurgency in a third of its districts, there is a real threat that the current Indian state itself could eventually collapse.

Reform or Perish

India needs urgent reforms. The dynasties want the status quo to continue. No one wants to cede power or opportunities to amass wealth willingly, and the ruling families of India are no exception. The Nehru family that rules India is projecting Rahul Gandhi as the successor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Throughout history, dynasties tend to degenerate. Rahul is a pale shadow of his great grandfather Nehru. He is intellectually deficient, has no moral compass and no vision for the country. He pays lip service to reform but has gathered around him a bunch of corrupt dynasts as his coterie. His infamous brother-in-law has reportedly amassed billions of dollars through shady deals and called those protesting against corruption as “.” He has never held administrative office and has yet to come up with a single policy suggestion of significance.

Much of the Indian media, especially the English speaking elite, is beholden to the Nehru family. NDTV, India’s leading TV channel, is run by scions of leading officials of the state who benefited for decades from the patronage of the Nehru family. Besides, most Indians have been indoctrinated by a version of history that venerates the Nehru dynasty. Their photos are on display everywhere, and universities, government programs and landmarks are named after them. Even in Syria, Damascus’s airport is named Damascus International Airport while, in India, New Delhi’s airport is named Indira Gandhi International Airport. The Nehru dynasty cult is more insidious than the Mao cult in China. Few people in Beijing are beholden to Mao anymore while most people in New Delhi still look up to the Nehru dynasty.

The argument for supporting the Nehru dynasty by well meaning Indians is that the alternatives are worse. The specter of a fascist Hindu right-wing party or criminal caste based parties scares many Indians. However, what they fail to realize is that the Nehru dynasty has been guilty not only of corruption but also of insidious identity politics that is rarely examined in the cold light of the day.

Indira supported Sikh extremists in Punjab and Tamil insurgents in Sri Lanka. After her death, the Congress conducted a mini genocide of Sikhs on the streets of New Delhi with leaders leading mobs personally. Rajiv took the decision of rigging the and installing another dynast named Farooq Abdullah in power. It arguably contributed to the start of an insurgency that persists till today.

Concentration of power for too long in the hands of one dynasty is a recipe for disaster. The Nehru dynasty has created a system where all power is concentrated in its hands. The Congress party resembles the North Korean Communist Party with one generation seamlessly ascending to the throne after another. It has wrecked all institutions of the state, including the military and the judiciary. At the same time, India’s growing population has increasing aspirations. Pressure on India’s resources is increasing and different parts of this diverse country are pulling in divergent directions. Without reform, the Indian state is in real danger of collapse. The Nehru dynasty is incapable of reform because its interests are inextricably tied with the status quo. For India to progress, the country has to engage in a painful protracted process of creating a real democracy with institutions that work. The time has come for India to confine the Nehru dynasty to the waste bin of history and forge a new future.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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