You also argue in the book, referring to stories in the Western press about the booming Indian economy, that the real success story of India lies not in economics, but politics.
First, to be very fair, I do not mean to discount or disparage the very real economic progress made in the (last) 10 to 15 years. At the same time, I would like to caution against excessive expectations. As I see it, globalisation or economic liberalisation in India has both benign and brutal effects. The benign effects are felt in a city like Bangalore, my hometown. The availability of skilled labour has allowed us to exploit the opening of the global economy.
The brutal effects are felt in the tribal regions of Orissa and Jharkhand, where the raw exploitation of natural resources involves the dispossessing of Adivasis from their land and so on. That is the first negative economic fallout of economic liberalisation.
I am also aware that if the benefits of economic liberalisation are ready to spread across all sections of society, we need a viable and functioning State system.
Over a few decades, the State system has collapsed. It has been a complicated process... Through the first few decades of Indian independence, the Indian state -- by which I mean the political class, the administrative class, the scientists, the university professors -- the Indian public system was peopled by men and women of intelligence and integrity.
Now, intelligence and integrity is manifest in the underprivileged sector in the civil sector, but not the State. As Amartya Sen rightly said, the State must move out of the economy; but the State must provide education, health and infrastructure.
Image: The Infosys campus in Bangalore. Photograph: Rediff Archives
Also read: The Death of Nehru's India
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