Planet India:
How the fastest growing democracy is transforming America and the world
by Mira Kamdar
In 2004, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance went before the electorate with the motto, 'India Shining'. The BJP probably lost the election for a host of other reasons, but the sheer absurdity of the slogan highlighted the party's callousness. 'India Shining' rang false to hundreds of millions of Indians in the throes of a prolonged agrarian crisis, and to untold others 'retrenched' from their industrial and bureaucratic jobs. Pratap Suthan, the advertising expert who designed the phrase, later reflected that it "is all about pride. It gives us brown-skinned Indians a huge sense of achievement. Look at the middle class, and they tell the story of a resurgent India." The truth is encapsulated in the last sentence: the middle class is the subject that shines, and its self-image drives the hype about India, Inc.
New York-based Mira Kamdar's new book both mirrors that middle-class bravado, and gently questions it. There is the familiar litany: India is the planet's fourth-largest economy; its growth rate is very high; its cities spawn supermalls as fast as they can be built. Bangalore's information technology sector makes an early appearance, and its entrepreneurs act as the philosophers of our time (Infosys's Nandan Nilekani, after all, gave New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman the title for his 2005 bestseller, The World Is Flat). Kamdar rightly points to the role of the Indian diaspora, to those Internet and finance kingpins from California's Silicon Valley whose children have now emerged as culture-makers in their own right – producing documentaries, films and comics, most of which are now created in Bangalore and Bombay for a global market. "Buoyed by strong economic growth and a new smorgasbord of consumer goods and entertainment options," Kamdar writes, "India's youth is filled with fresh confidence, fueled by high expectations. They believe the future belongs to them." But who qualifies as 'youth'? Almost 550 million Indians are below the age of 25. Many of them see their confidence shattered before they attain maturity.
Kamdar is aware of this. As soon as the reader of her book gets complacent about the opportunities, she steps in with a few statistics to dampen their enthusiasm. Farmer suicides, malnutrition, illiteracy and the shabbiness of infrastructure litter the text as signposts of other Indias – 'Bharat', or what have you. The ills are familiar, but they are often airbrushed from the India, Inc story. The push is on to brand India – the job of the public-private India Brand Equity Foundation established in 2003. This branding "is done by taking part of the story," Kamdar tells us,