The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : Seduced by an elusive idea of India

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Friday, May 26, 2006

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Seduced by an elusive idea of India

Hasan Suroor

In the West, the buzz about a "resurgent" India ready for the big take-off is inescapable. No doubt, all this sounds exciting and fills many Indians with pride. But how much of it is for real?

THE IDEA of a "new" India, emerging from the shadows of the "old" to take on the world on its own terms, is so seductive that even sceptics find it hard to resist. Most Indians, especially expatriates who have long memories of what it was like to be a Third Word immigrant in the First World, believe that there has never been a better time to be an Indian abroad. As one Indian academic, who moved to Britain in the 1960s, said: "At least, they don't ask you any more if you have computers in India."

The buzz about a "resurgent" India ready for the big take-off is inescapable with politicians, academics, and journalists furiously debating its political and economic implications for the West. In Britain, India is the biggest media story after China. Edward Luce, former South Asia bureau chief of Financial Times and author of a forthcoming book on India, recalled in an article recently that there was a time when Indian diplomats used to complain that their country was always "hyphenated" with Pakistan. Times had changed, he noted, and these days India was "just as frequently linked with China," the bigger of the two Asian giants poised to dominate the 21st century.

In an acknowledgement of its new profile, India was chosen as the theme for the prestigious Bonn Biennale, which concluded last Saturday. The week-long Biennale, with the rather touristy title Namaste India, sought to bring "new" India to Germany through contemporary forms of dance and theatre. India will also be the focus for this year's Frankfurt Book Fair, Europe's biggest publishing event.

On the Indian "street", there is a palpable sense of confidence and, suddenly, it is chic to be an Indian. So much so that Britain's Indian community does not want to be lumped with other Asians any more and is insisting on being officially referred to as "British Indians" rather than "British Asians." Bollywood has gone mainstream; "Indipop" has moved out of Southall and now sells at upmarket Oxford Street; modern Indian art routinely goes under the hammer at Christie's; and even in areas such as haute couture, once regarded as an exclusive preserve of white Europeans, they now tend to be less snobbish towards Indians with designers from India now regularly featuring in high-profile fashion events in London, Paris, and Milan.

No doubt, all this sounds exciting and fills many Indians with pride. But how much of it is for real? And how much of it is of a piece with the famous "India shining'' campaign that was rejected so decisively by the Indian electorate only two years ago?

The truth is that, for all the hype, the idea of India in the West is still very much that of an exotic country with its palaces, ghats, and temples. At another level, India is associated with a lumbering bureaucracy, corruption, lax law and order, and the slums of Mumbai and Kolkata. The "real" India with its IT parks, metro networks, spanking new flyovers, modern glass-and-chrome skyscrapers, and signs of growing middle-class prosperity remains elusive for most westerners. The news from India is still mostly bad news: violence, fraud, human rights abuse. Even as I write this, the big news is a three-column story in The Times on a "sati" reported from Uttar Pradesh.

For Western businessmen, who never stop talking about India's "potential," it is really a place where you go to sell your goods and buy cheap labour. The much-talked about call centres are all about getting labour on the cheap: glorified sweatshops where India's educated and bright young men and women spend the most productive years of their professional life fielding (often abusive) calls from foreign clients. A sign not so much of progress and modernity as a comment on lack of good employment opportunities for the educated youth.

Even the clamour for Indian engineering and management graduates is largely to do with the fact that despite the seemingly mouth-watering salaries they get, it is still economical to hire them than comparable talent in America and Europe. It is all about getting world-class engineers and managers at bargain prices — and little do with the achievements of "modern" India.

Tellingly, Klaus Weise, director of the Bonn Biennale, admitted after the Namaste India festival that many Germans identified themselves more with the old India.

"After Purushartha [a "new-age" play staged by a Bangalore theatre company], many Germans came up to me and said this Japanese sonic sound was not the `real' India. For them, India is still Max Mueller and the Mahabharata. I'm not sure everyone got the message that we have to learn — and love the new India, what's real in India today," he told an Indian journalist.

People may no longer ask you if you have computers in India, but they still wonder whether there is clean drinking water and believe that India, despite its booming economy, remains a "terrible place to be poor," as New Statesman noted in a special issue on India recently. The magazine's South Asia correspondent William Dalrymple voiced concern over the "unevenness" of the boom India is experiencing and pointed out that "much of India remains completely untouched" by it. The jury on India's future was still out, he suggested.

"India is changing with a speed that is astonishing, but ... much still remains uncertain and the country remains as fascinatingly unpredictable as ever," he wrote.

Translated in blunt language, it means that the idea of a "new" and "prosperous" India poised to become a "modern" super power is slightly exaggerated. Eventually, India will be defined not by the swanky new neighbourhoods in Gurgaon but by its crushing poverty that makes the country seem like "one land, two planets," as a headline in the magazine put it.

And what about India's much talked-about "soft power" in this "new era"? Its capacity to influence the world culturally? There is a worry that far from being able to influence others, the country itself is in danger of descending into a cultural black hole. "India goes Bollywood" was the topic of a debate, held as part of the Bonn Biennale, to explore the impact of India's economic boom and increasing "commercialisation of society" on its media.

Is there a danger that artistes and journalists in India are becoming too dependent on market forces? How big is the space for non-commercial art? And to what extent is entertainment replacing serious information and debate?

These were the questions posed to a mixed Indo-German panel, which included Dorothee Wenner, head of programme at Internationale Filmfestspiele. Opinion, as happens on such occasions, was divided with at least one participant — an art consultant from India — strongly opposing the view that space for serious debate back home was shrinking and being taken over by commercial forces. But because there was no consensus does not mean that the issues surrounding the relationship of culture, media, and the market disappear. These are real concerns and, in fact, the debate that took place in Bonn should be happening in India.

Ask any dispassionate observer of the post-liberalisation "modern" India and the answer you are likely to get to the above questions is: yes, artistes and journalists are becoming too dependent on market forces; there is little space for non-commercial art; and serious debate is almost non-existent. In fact, "India goes Bollywood" is a very apt description for what is going on in India on the cultural front — and in much of the media, especially in electronic media, which was supposed to herald a brave new world of information.

Those of us who live abroad and "get" their India through private satellite TV channels (alas, Doordarshan remains curiously invisible) get the sense that culturally nothing is happening in India outside of Bollywood. Watching Indian TV channels is like watching a long Bollywood sequence, only occasionally interrupted by news or current affairs. Even news is not Bollywood-free. Clearly there is a perception in Indian TV newsrooms that the only way to spice up news and make it interesting is to pepper it with filmi stardust — Shah Rukh Khan endorsing a new computer brand; Preity Zinta opening a new jewellery boutique; Amitabh Bachchan on a visit to Dubai; Bobby Deol showing off his new restaurant.

In a sense, what is happening in the media, especially in television, is symptomatic of a wider indifference to ideas in India, whether in the academia or in cultural institutions. And this does not augur well for a country aspiring to become a super power even if only as a "new sort of super power," as New Statesman called it.

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