India's Similarity to the European UnionBy MANU JOSEPHPublished: November 23, 2011
Like the European Union today, the Indian republic is a confederation of regions and attitudes with little affection between them and vastly different levels of governance, productivity and historical good fortune. And all of them, of course, are stuck with a uniform currency. The inefficient and the irresponsible are subsidized by the hard-working and the responsible, who also have to tolerate a free flow of migrants from the poor states. At least Europe does not have to pretend to be a single nation. Mumbai is the Germany of India. The city accounts for more than a third of India’s income tax revenue, nearly half its corporate tax revenue and a quarter of its industrial output. It has long complained that it has carried the burden of the nonperforming losers and has received little in return. Mumbai has a third-rate infrastructure. It has one-tenth the roads of Delhi. Its obsolete local trains, which are not air-conditioned, are stuffed with more than twice their capacity at peak hours. People dangle from open doors. Some sit on roofs. (Though it must be said few look distressed by the necessity.) This great city, the capital of Maharashtra State, does not have a subway system. Preliminary work has just started after decades of planning. One newly constructed sea bridge, unremarkable by Asian standards, has become a source of extreme pride for the people of Mumbai, as if the municipality had also created the panorama of the Arabian Sea. Even as Mumbai decays, hundreds of migrants from the poorest regions of the country flock to it each day, providing labor so cheap that they have undercut and embittered the local work force. The migrants, mostly from the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, are the East Europeans of Mumbai. They are despised by locals, humiliated often and even assaulted. The resentment of the migrants has spawned a successful political movement in Mumbai, the chief beneficiary being a relatively new party called the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. When elections approach, the muscular members of this organization beat up migrant taxi drivers. In the past, the goons have also waited in train stations to assault impoverished youths arriving from other states, especially Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Those two states are governed comically even by Indian standards, and they are among the most corrupt, lawless and poor regions in the world. But, with a combined population exceeding 290 million, they exert extraordinary influence on national politics. Since India is a representative democracy, where a state’s population determines the size of its delegation in Parliament, the members from the two states together account for more than a fifth of the powerful lower house. It is not just Mumbai that shares the righteous indignation of the Germans. In fact, India’s Germany is less a physical entity than an attitude shared across its urban business community, elite professionals and expatriates. They feel that, in return for their enterprise, tax payments and dollar remittances, they have been getting corrupt and incompetent governance, populist policies and sub-Saharan infrastructure. The people they view as the Greeks of India are the farmers, especially the wealthy farmers, who are the beneficiaries of extraordinary political patronage, billions of rupees in subsidies, cheap or free electricity, tax exemptions, and the unnatural prices at which the government procures farm and dairy goods. Imagine a European Union where the Greeks got to decide economic policy. For the Germans, that is merely a terrifying thought. It is the reality of India. This is essentially the chief grouse of the educated urban middle class. Obviously, there is a limit to comparing India and Europe. Politicians in a poor democracy must take measures a rich democracy need not bother with. In Indian politics, administering quick painkillers for poverty is an important survival tool, and withholding those fixes in exchange for a slow eradication of the misery would be a suicidal gamble. So, time and again, myopic policies triumph over crucial long-term economic measures. There is a philanthropic quality to thinking long term, and Indian politicians are not philanthropic by nature — it is even a laughable thought. The philosophy that guides them is very simply John Maynard Keynes’s observation: “In the long run, we are all dead.” The poor participate enthusiastically in the elections precisely in the hope of immediate benefits, and to hoist leaders from their castes and communities to power, which has commercial rewards. As a result, the Indian electorate has erected a mediocre and morally compromised political class loathed by the educated middle class. It is a deep contempt that assumed revolutionary proportions this year in the form of a news media-ordained anti-corruption movement. It was, in reality, a class war in the guise of a righteous protest. The Germans of India were spitting on what the Greeks had created. But, despite all the tensions, the idea of nationhood is stronger than ever, especially among the middle class. A united India is a cherished ideal of almost every Indian. The moral of the Indian story for the European Union is that what holds a nation together is not the virtues of its people, but very simply time and habit. As most Indians would testify from the lives of their parents, an arranged marriage grows stronger in time, especially when divorce is unthinkable. *Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “Serious Men.”* * * On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 11:17 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Friends: > ? > Manu Joseph's Letter from India:'India''s Similarity to the European > Union' is worth your time. Besides, there is the Newswallah of this morning > and other usual additions. > ? > -bhuban > > _______________________________________________ > assam mailing list > [email protected] > http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org > _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
