The Indian Renaissance: India's Rise After a Thousand Years of Decline

263 Pages·2008·1.44 MB·English

by  Sanjeev Sanyal

THE

INDIAN
RENAISSANCE
INDIA’S RISE AFTER A
THOUSAND YEARS OF DECLINE
TThhiiss ppaaggee iinntteennttiioonnaallllyy lleefftt bbllaannkk
THE

INDIAN
RENAISSANCE
INDIA’S RISE AFTER A
THOUSAND YEARS OF DECLINE
Sanjeev Sanyal
World Scientific
NEW JERSEY • LONDON • SINGAPORE • BEIJING • SHANGHAI • HONG KONG • TAIPEI • CHENNAI
Published by
World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224
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UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image courtesy: Smita Barooah Sanyal
THE INDIAN RENAISSANCE
India’s Rise after a Thousand Years of Decline
Copyright © 2008 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be
invented, without written permission from the Publisher.
For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through
the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA
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publisher.
ISBN-13 978-981-281-877-5
ISBN-10 981-281-877-4
Typeset by Stallion Press
Email: [email protected]
Printed in Singapore.
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1. Waiting for a Thousand Years 1
2. From Independence to Freedom 33
3. The Entrepreneurial Explosion 61
4. The Great Indian Middle Class 93
(and its Limitations)
5. Poverty, Inequality and the Last Bastion 113
of Control
6. The Two Revolutions 141
7. The Importance of Institutional Reform 171
8. How India will Change 191
9. Is India’s Rise Inevitable? 225
Index 239
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Acknowledgements
There are many people without whom this book would
never have been written and published. I would like to
acknowledge with gratitude the debts I owe to friends,
family and the staff at Penguin who helped me at various
stages of the process.
Let me begin by thanking my editors Sandhya at
World Scientific and Heather Adams at Penguin who kept
me going through the various drafts. I am also grateful to
Manu Bhaskaran, Chapal Mehra, Krishan Chopra, Max
Phua, Ravi Singh and Mimi Choudhury for their faith in
my ideas. I would not have embarked on this project
without their support.
A special thanks to Ramkishen Rajan, Shashi
Tharoor, Amit Prakash, Vikram Khanna,Vijay Kelkar,
Anupam Yog, Rajeev Suri, my brother Saurav and my
father for reading through the drafts and providing many
valuable comments.
Last, but not the least, I must thank my wife Smita
for putting up with an anti-social author over 18 months
and for patiently reading and re-reading the chapters as
they took shape.
Of course, I take full responsibility for any errors and
omissions.
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C 1
HAPTER
Waiting for a Thousand Years
When future generations of Indian school-children read
history, they will be made to memorize two important
dates from the 20th century — 1947 and 1991. The
importance of the first is obvious. It was the year when
India gained independence from Britain, a colonial power
that had dominated the country since the 18th century.1
Despite the bitterness of the sub-continent’s partition
into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority
India, the year 1947 was undoubtedly an important turn-
ing point in the country’s history.
What of 1991? It was the year that India decided to
liberalize its economy, but can it be said to be a turning
point comparable to 1947? For almost half a century, the
country had been held down by self-imposed constraints
that had hampered economic development and stunted
its international stature. Liberalization has clearly
unleashed the country’s economic potential. However, the
shift in 1991 was not just about changing economic poli-
cies but about gaining freedom from a cultural attitude
embodied in the old inward-looking economic regime.
1 The Portuguese held on to their enclaves in Goa, Daman and Diu till 1961,
till they were forcibly evicted by Indian troops. They had been the first
European colonial power in Asia and they were the last to leave. In 1999, they
peacefully handed back Macau to China.
1