India’s survival as a democracy validates the possibility of diverse, developing nations maintaining democratic institutions despite economic and social challenges.
While long overshadowed on the global stage by economic superpowers China and the U.S., India is not to be ignored.
Earlier this year, the Hinrich Foundation seized on India’s rise as the world’s third-largest economy in a compelling visual essay that also examined a nation still ambivalent about what its power means and how it views its strategic autonomy.
Against that backdrop, Chuin Wei Yap, Hinrich’s program director for International Research, moderated a wide-ranging discussion featuring Indian political scientist and author Ronojoy Sen, offering a unique window into the nation’s history, language, politics and development strategy for visiting journalists at the National Press Foundation’s International Trade Reporting Fellowship.
An ‘unnatural’ nation
“India is an odd entity in the sense [that] when it did become independent in 1947 along with Pakistan, with the partition of British India, I think one of the phrases that was used to describe India was India is an ‘unnatural nation’ and that was precisely because of the diversity in India.
“So India is really a sort of magnified version, probably of the EU, both in terms of population, in terms of linguistic diversity. So the Indian constitution… has 22 official languages and then you have many more dialects in some ways quite similar to Indonesia and this region in terms of diversity language. And then of course you had the religious divide too, which was in a sense the basis of the partition and the so- called two nation theory. So I think the general sort of prognostication, the predictions about India were fairly damning and glooming at the time, but India has over the last 75 years shown that it has survived, of course.”
The ‘frailty’ of India’s inception
“As an independent state. I think most of the analysis in the late ’40s, early ’50s coming from the West did not see India really surviving beyond maybe a decade, decade and a half.
“They foresaw a breakup of the nation. Language was one issue and religion was the other. So the partition had already happened, of course, as again, some of you are aware in the room that India has a very large Muslim population. So if you look at the Muslim population in India, India would actually be the third largest — has has the third largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan. Even though it did not have the word secular in the Constitution, that was only introduced in 1977, but it always portrayed itself as a sort of pluralist multicultural nation.”
A ‘long way’ from catching China
I think India has not been that successful in diversifying its supply chain. So I think the dependence on China for much of its resources, raw materials is not going to go away. So that behooves India to have a close relationship with China if that’s something that’s not going to go away. But in terms of finally the great path status, I think China is somewhere that India aspires to reach.
“I think there is more American investment in Apple, et cetera, happening in India, but I think India is a long way from matching China to becoming kind of the manufacturing hub of the world for various reasons.
“But there will be definitely more investment happening, but not to the extent that India is going to sort of reach where China is, that’s not going to happen very soon.”
Access the full transcript here.
This fellowship is part of an ongoing program of journalism training and awards for trade coverage sponsored by the Hinrich Foundation. The National Press Foundation is solely responsible for the content. Resources and transcripts are available to journalists worldwide.