In the year that is just over most educated people here have, for the first time since independence, been so preoccupied with domestic problems that they have hardly cared to look out and see what has been happening in the outside world. This is only natural. The problems at home are so pressing that these demand all the attention. The country has been borrowing resources and even ideas and institutions from abroad for so long that it needs to find out whether these have served it well. China’s altitude has been strikingly different. For the last fifteen years its leaders have struggled against impossible odds to shun foreign models and find indigenous solutions to the country’s problems.
Big Doubts
For almost a decade after the revolution, the Chinese leaders, too, acted in the belief that a ready-made model was available to them in the Soviet Union. But by 1957, if not earlier, Chairman Mao Tse-tung, though not many others among his colleagues, had developed serious doubts not just about the capacity of the post- Stalinist leadership to head the world communist movement or even manage properly the affairs of eastern and central Europe, but also about the relevance of the Soviet model for his country. And by 1958, he was ready to launch China on an unchartered course in the shape of giant communes, in search not of a short cut to communism as is widely believed, but of practical solutions to problems based on China’s own human and material resources.
It has been assumed, all too quickly by too many people on the basis of inadequate information and interested propaganda that the experiment ended in a fiasco. So it did, but only in the short run. Setting aside for the time being its political consequences in the shape of sharp differences in the leadership, which culminated in the cultural revolution in 1966 and its cost in terms of deterioration in relations with Moscow, the loss of Soviet assistance and the consequent slowing down of the pace of industrialisation, it cannot in retrospect be denied that the pioneering spirit has paid dividends.
The Chinese have reshaped the countryside not so much in the ideological sense of establishing an egalitarian society – this they had done even earlier – as in the physical sense. And they have done it on a scale no other people has attempted in modern history. They have reclaimed millions of acres from arid mountainous wasteland, stopped soil erosion through massive programmes of afforestation, and improved the quality of land all over the country by raising its level, changing the top soil and providing drainage and irrigation facilities. They have as it were remade their country and ensured that nothing like the threat of a widespread famine will haunt their people in the foreseeable future. China does not figure today in western lists of disaster-prone countries.
It is easy enough to explain away the absence of a similar effort in India in terms of the limitations of democratic institutions. But while it cannot be denied that mass mobilisation on the Chinese style and scale is not practical in a democracy, and that too one as ill-disciplined and ill-organised as India, it cannot be said in all conscience that the Indian elite has been sufficiently sensitive to the need for remaking the countryside on the basis largely of locally available resources. This is best evident in the fact that its programme for raising agricultural production, limited as it is in scope too, is critically dependent on inputs which need either to be imported or manufactured on the basis of imported technology. And what to speak of massive programmes of afforestation, India has engaged in deforestation on a scale that threatens to produce a major disaster by the turn of the century.
Statistics have been cited and will doubtless continue to be cited to controvert the charge that Indian planners have denied agriculture the priority it deserves. But that cannot clinch the issue partly because agricultural development itself has sought to be promoted specifically for the purpose of meeting urban needs, partly because the bias of education has remained primarily urban so much so that even agricultural universities have been so organised as to make their graduates dependent on government jobs, and partly because the dominant section of the elite has continued, unconsciously if not always consciously, to equate industrialism with progress, modernity and national power and status. Its members may have differed on whether heavy industry should have top priority in the plans or whether light industry producing consumer goods should occupy the pride of place. But neither of these groups has regarded agriculture as anything but a handmaiden of industry.
Genuine Concern
It is no denigration of Mr Nehru to say that despite his genuine concern for the plight of the ‘dumb millions’ in the countryside, he accepted this borrowed model of development as whole-heartedly as Mr JRD Tata and Mr GD Birla. Doubtless he, unlike the captains of industry, rejected the 19th century concept of laissez- faire and convinced himself that it was not only desirable but also possible to go in for mixed economy, with special emphasis on an ever expanding public sector and extensive controls for the private sector. But for all that, the model remained essentially western because in the West also the slate has increasingly come to play an important role in the promotion and direction of the economy. Unlike Chairman Mao Tse-tung he did not develop an independent approach to Indian problems.
The explanation is not far to seek. India, unlike China, has been exposed to foreign invasions throughout its history and its elite has had to cope with external influences all the time. In modern times, the western impact on India has clearly been far greater than on China. Unlike Chairman Mao, Mr Nehru himself was the product of western education and so were most of the officials with whom he dealt. In Chairman Mao’s case some Soviet experts have even questioned whether he has ever fully grasped Marxism, rooted as it is in western philosophy which is alien to the Chinese way of thinking.
But however natural it might have been for the Indian leadership to opt for the industry-centred western model of development, it was just not possible to implement it in India beyond the creation of some islands of modern technology. The limitation of resources clearly became evident during the second five-year plan (1956-61) itself and the model would have broken down if substantial aid had not been available throughout the ‘sixties. This assistance may not have produced much growth but it helped to sustain the belief that India was going along the right lines.
Right vs. Left
The belief in the western model still lingers on among the dominant elite. That is one reason why it continues to conduct its debates in classical European terms of right versus left and the public sector versus the private sector. But the elite has lost some of its old confidence, and with it some of its aggressiveness. It can even be said that in psychological terms it is on the defensive in dealing with Mr Jayaprakash Narayan’s challenge not because he has any precise idea on how India’s problems of degrading poverty, population explosion, mass illiteracy and a perverse educational system can be solved but because it is finding it increasingly difficult to convince itself that it can master the present crisis and take the country forward.
All that Mrs. Gandhi can think of is a snap poll so that she can buy some respite. Similarly, Mr Jagjivan Ram will be content if the food problem does not get out of hand in 1975. No one is able to think beyond the management of the immediate problem. Indeed, this lack of faith in the future on the part of those in control of the economy and the state machinery may explain the growth in corruption and economic offences in recent years.
It is perhaps a mere coincidence that India should have turned its gaze inward precisely at a time when the urban-oriented and industry-centred model has run into deep trouble in its homelands of western Europe, the United States and Japan. But that is immaterial. The relevant point is that in the new context there can be no justification for India to seek a resolution of its crisis within the old parameters.
The westerner is trying hard to convince himself that technology will find a way to replace oil and other rapidly depleting natural resources. Perhaps he will succeed to the extent of being able to avoid a breakdown of his civilisation. But some of the solutions may well turn out to be worse than the disease. Nuclear power is obviously one such solution. For India the task is, in any case, impossible and a change of direction necessary. This is easier said than done. But the challenge can be avoided only at the cost of emasculating the people and imposing on them a tyranny worse than anything the country has witnessed so far.
The Times of India, 1 January 1975