The ongoing commonwealth games in Delhi have raised all sorts of questions in my head for which my traditional paradigms (if i may call them that) which usually suffice for most India related questions. It helps me deal with my own questions and confusions, helps me give sensible answers to people around me who don’t know India as well and also puts into perspective news that comes out of India. I have 2 main theories on India which by themselves are based on other theories and facts, they are:
- Corruption is part and parcel of India. It is the norm rather than the exception. Yes it maybe be becoming less of a norm than what it was 10 years ago, but that has been too slow and it still is the norm. If you are doing business in India then you just add the cost of corruption to your cost of business and even inspite of that doing business in India is a profitable venture. Yes this goes against all the wonderful bribery and money laundering laws in the western world but hey, who are we kidding here ? But there is sincerity among thieves and once you pay up the work gets done or the money gets returned. Remember Lakhubhai Pathak accusing Narasimha Rao for taking money in turn for giving him business in India ? He didn’t question why he had to give the money, but he was more upset that even after paying the money nothing got done. That broke the code.
- India is not a superpower and it wont be one for the next 20 -30 years. This is as per most acceptable definitions of a superpower which are based on financial, economic, social and quality of life. The fact that millions of people can talk about yoga, laughing clubs and have a wonderfully spiritualistic way of life does not make her a superpower. The question that we Indians should be asking ourselves is, do we want to be a superpower and what kind of superpower do we want to be ? But that is a different question for another time. Yes we have come a long way in the past two decades but we have some more decades to go and I have no doubt that we will get to wherever it is that we want to get to. I say it often and I’ll say it again, that if a billion people want something then they usually get it. But I recognise that we are not there yet and I have no pretensions that I come from a developing country (or whatever they are called these days!).
So with these two theoretical frameworks in my head I was reasonably confident that a lot of money will exchange hands (corruption paradigm) and there will be a few co-ordination problems (superpower paradigm) but we will get there in the end. What i didn’t factor in was the fact there is thing called 24 hour news channels who constantly need something to fill their agenda and they will blow my corruption idea into pieces. Why after all this money was given and taken did the work still not match upto the quality and was not delivered on time? Why even if the budget has been blown to pieces did things not happen on time ? So if corruption is incapable of delivering the goods then what is next ? I like, as Lakhubhai Pathak would have been, was upset although not quite out of pocket as him. I was more upset that it broke my beautiful theory into pieces and here was something happening in India that I could not relate to.
My second paradigm was more helpful and made up for the lack of the first one. It is a relative one and a clever one and can be adjusted to take into account mid-course problems. So if a mishap happens on the road of India being a superpower, I just put the clock back and add some years to India getting there and telling myself that I have a longer journey to enjoy or grimace. But then when something as wonderful as the Delhi metro or the airport happens on time and on budget the clock comes forward. Maybe I should start an India version of the doomsday clock.
But I wont be doing my India any justice if I don’t turn around and ask – what is the purpose of the Commonwealth anyway ? what does it do or not do ? the Queen hardly has any serious role in the UK, what role does she have in the foreign countries. And what is India doing in the commonwealth ? On its website, the Commonwealth has some airy-fairy principles of human rights, democracy and world peace. Even my friend Gadaffi swears by those rules and my favourite democratically elected leader (now sadly dead) on a weak moment would have admitted a soft spot these really high values. I don’t see any references to clean toilets in their objectives. Even the commonwealth flag looks suspiciously like theWorld Bank logo !
Watching the beautiful opening ceremony, I was struck by the number of nations in the march past and the chest of the BBC commentators swelling in pride as they talked about every little former colony and I think it dawned to me that this is really an exercise to remind the current generation in Britain that the British empire wasn’t a creation of the Victorian fiction writers but was actually real. And which is why the British media are so sensitive, rightly or wrongly, at any failings in the lead up to the games.
Never mind if the so-called Commonwealth values are abused over and over again but keep the toilets clean and the games ticking along.
