Glue to hold India together? Johns Hopkins professor says it’s politics

The lecture,organised by Sanskriti Foundation in association with the India International Centre here this evening,generated debate among political scientists and economists on whether economic growth or an allegiance to politics will hold the India of tomorrow together.

Khilnani argued that India’s future will not and cannot be held together by ‘primordial identities of common religion,language,caste,political ideology,market optimism,a light-headed nationalism based on material goods,but ‘by a profound allegiance to politics’.

Tracing the most aspirational and optimistic youths in the country’s small towns and villages,‘places that have benefited least from the country’s two decades of rising GDP,’ Khilnani said that this ‘optimism is because of a widespread belief that India is on the verge of more equitable change and distribution of benefits.’

Drawing from the trends in the West,Khilnani points out,“In economically developed nations,it has been observed that poverty in itself is not the greatest spark of social violence,rather it is the dashed hopes for escaping poverty that inspire citizens to raise arms and to riot. In India impatience is already violently manifest in the Maoist and Naxal movements and the authority of the state is in active contest and its legitimacy in question.”

Khilnani maintained that the recent arc of economic growth in India has been driven by the services sector,which relies on more skilled labour and the jobs that are created tend to be less stable than jobs in other sectors and cluster in urban areas.

“India ‘s growth while bringing benefits has also increased the rural-urban differentials. The employment rate in the countryside has barely risen in this prosperous decade and,as a direct result,internal migration continues at an increasing pace from the countryside to large and mid-sized cities. Much of this desperate migration is unproductive,” Khilnani explained. “In cities we can expect in future sharpened political conflicts with competition over jobs turning into anti-migrant movements.”

T N Ninan,moderator of the lecture and chairman and managing director of Business Standard Limited,offered the argument that several state policies have been a hindrance to economic growth and allegiance to politics might not be a feasible solution in a country like India.