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Journalism of Courage
Talking to Indian reporters on the eve of his visit to India, President Bush recalled Mahatma Gandhi as 8220;so spiritual that he captured the imagination of the entire world.8221; He was no doubt alluding to Gandhi8217;s great achievement in teaching us all the virtues of nonviolence. But if he were to study India8217;s accomplishments and failures in the years since its independence, he would also detect lessons for his current foreign policy preoccupations.
After all these years of Realism in US foreign policy, the Bush administration is appropriately interested in the spread of democracy8230; Yet as the US goes about its business of pressure-cooked democratization in Iraq, we need to appreciate that Indian democracy succeeded because her political institutions were a legacy that evolved over decades under British rule. During those years, the rule of law, elections, the judiciary, even NGOs, developed through the land. Iraq8217;s difficulties illustrate, by contrast, how hard it is to transplant functioning democratic institutions.
But starting with Nehru, and way beyond his death, we know that India8217;s economy took the wrong turn and embraced a 8220;socialist8221; model whose pillars were near-autarky in trade based on self-fulfilling pessimism about export potential; a hugely restrictive policy on inward investment based on fear; a knee-jerk set of controls on production, investment and trade; and a lovefest with public sector enterprises that proliferated beyond utilities while making huge losses. Many of these policies began to be substantially reversed, starting particularly in 1991 when8230; Manmohan Singh, was finance minister. Overhauling the old policy framework was a gigantic task, which is still ongoing. Besides, the coalition with the communists, and the return of the old, discredited socialists within the Congress party, has created difficulties in sustaining the momentum of reforms8230; These reforms have taken the Indian economy to a significantly higher growth path and, more important, have finally made a noticeable dent in poverty8230; So reformers interested in reducing poverty can only rejoice; and the president should be able to tell the Doubting Thomases: Go and see for yourself in India8230;
The writer has authored 8216;In Defense of Globalization8217; Oxford, 2004. This commentary is excerpted from 8216;The Wall Street Journal8217;, Feb 28
