Hear That Chug-Chug?

I say this because Lak has spent nearly two decades in India as a journalist for the BBC. During this period he had the opportunity to travel extensively through the length and breadth of the subcontinent, and to meet a wide range of people from very diverse backgrounds. He has brought to his natural instincts as a journalist the kind of actual exposure that is indispensable to board the India Express.

Lak’s essential thesis is that India’s democratic credentials and the concomitant growth of liberal institutions, accompanied by a political pragmatism that has facilitated the needed devolution of central authority, will make it, along with America, the globe’s next liberal superpower. It is a flattering analysis. Obviously, the author enjoyed his stay in India and has an empathy for Indians. In fact, he quotes this from Gregory Roberts, the author of Shantaram, at the very beginning of his book: "The simple and astonishing truth about India and Indian people is that when you go there, and deal with them, your heart always guides you more wisely than your head." Has Lak, then, been more guided by his heart than by his head? My feeling is that his heart has indeed played a role, but the mind has been at work too; and it is the combination of the two that makes the book such a worthwhile read.

In making his case, Lak has covered familiar ground: democracy, the IT revolution, the role of religion (especially Hinduism), liberal activism in the form of NGOs and voluntary organisations constantly snapping at the government’s ankles, the state of education, and the foreign policy of a nuclear power. In elaborating on these, he has made extensive use of interviews with people who matter while interacting with a great many lay people as well. There is a journalistic style that makes the material readable, and some stories, such as that of Ram the presswallah, whose two sons become IT engineers against all odds, are almost mushy though not unconvincing. Certain segments—and I have in mind particularly those dealing with caste or religion—are a trifle simplistic, but that is obviously because things have to be explained from scratch to the uninitiated foreign reader (is there such a species anymore?).

Lak’s somewhat dramatically stated conclusion is that by 2040 India will become the most powerful country in the world, poised to take over the sort of global role that the United States has occupied for more than a hundred years. There is a tinge of euphoria in this assessment, but it is not unreasoned. He comes to this conclusion while taking fully into account the unfinished tasks before the Republic, including, most importantly, poverty, illiteracy and malnutrition. He also considers other candidates for the slot. China and Russia he rules out for not being ‘liberal powers’. Others, such as Brazil, South Africa, the UK, France, Germany and even Japan, he discounts for lacking either the potential or the ambition to reach superpower status. "No, only India," he concludes, "stands out from the crowd of countries that could equal or even replace the United States."

Lak’s enthusiastic prophecy may have as many detractors in India as abroad. But his analysis, and his conclusions, cannot be dismissed out of hand. In the midst of the many problems the country faces today, it sometimes requires the objectivity of a foreign observer to jolt us into realising the potential within us. Ultimately, that potential has to do with institutions, the most important of which is democracy and its associated freedoms, and the plural ethos to which India is committed, both as conscious policy and the legacy of history. If those institutions survive, and strengthen in the years ahead, perhaps what Lak has predicted may well come to pass.