Birthdays provoke reflection. We look back at our accomplishments, forward to our unfinished business. At the 60th anniversary of its independence from British rule, India can do plenty of both. On Aug. 15, 1947, the country began, as its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, so poetically put it, its "tryst with destiny."
The tryst did not begin propitiously. As many as 2 million people were killed in the upheaval that accompanied the British partition of the Asian subcontinent into the independent nations of India and Pakistan. And between 1950 and 1980, India suffered from the derisively termed "Hindu rate of growth," its economy expanding at just 3.2 percent a year.
More linguistically diverse than Europe, and home to all of the world's major faiths, India's biggest accomplishment in its early decades was resisting the centrifugal forces threatening to tear it apart. It has survived border wars, communal violence, economic meltdown, even the aptly named mid-1970s Emergency of autocratic Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
How? Because at the time of independence, the high-born Prime Minister Nehru, and the lower-caste Bhimrao Ambedkar, the principal author of India's constitution, combined to beat back constituencies that would have limited the right to vote. It may seem obvious in 2007 that voting rights shouldn't be restricted by religion, gender, caste, literacy or landowning status. But in 1947, women in the U.S. had barely had the franchise for a quarter century. It would be nearly another two decades before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 reaffirmed the right to vote for African-Americans, who had been effectively disenfranchised in much of the country. And the U.S. wouldn't catch up to India's model of universal suffrage for every citizen 18 or older until 1970.
From its inception, India has guaranteed every adult a say, and thus a stake, in his or her country's fate. While Indians speak in myriad languages, they are all, in the world's largest democracy, assured a voice. It is a voice they employ with gusto.
Elections in India are colorful, cacophonous and too often corrupt. Voting can still break down along communal and caste lines. But even illiterate and rural voters enter the polls with a good grasp of the issues -- at least the issues that pertain to their lives. Across the economic spectrum, voters maintain their investment in Indian democracy with high levels of participation.
By its very existence, India serves as a sharp rebuke to elitists who argue that democracy is a Western construct ill-suited to developing nations in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. India has given rest to the canard that some countries are too poor, too ill-educated or too fragmented to master the responsibilities of democracy.
The strongest argument for the strength of India's democracy can be found right next door. Pakistan, India's northern neighbor, has only twice in its 60-year history enjoyed peaceful and democratic transition in government. Military coups and martial law have been all too familiar. And while democratic India chugs forward, Pakistan, despite its strong economy, is riven by greater internal instability.
None of this is to discount the challenges facing India. Despite the fact that its economy has grown about 6 percent annually since 1991, despite the fact that India is a surplus food producer, 25 percent of the population, according to 2004 World Bank data, still lives on less than $1 a day. And the rate of child malnutrition outpaces that even of sub-Saharan Africa.
To fix all that, India's politicians need to become more accountable to their constituents, corruption needs to come down, infrastructure needs to be shored up, and educational opportunities need to expand rapidly.
Then again, nobody said democracy would be easy. Sixty years into its existence, the U.S. was still grappling with slavery.
Still, it's risky to bet against India. Already home to more than a billion people, it's poised to pass China as the most populous country on Earth in the 2020s. It's already more costly to rent office space in Mumbai than in Manhattan.
If India maintains its recent economic trajectory, according to a McKinsey Global Institute report released in May, income levels will triple by 2025. Upward of 291 million people will move out of desperate poverty. The middle class will grow from 50 million today to 583 million. And with one-third of its population under the age of 15, memories of a sleepy, stagnant India are quickly being consigned to the dustbin.
On August 15, 1947, Nehru told his countrymen that, "The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough," he asked, "to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?"
Sixty years later, the answer -- India's resilient challenges notwithstanding -- is yes.
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