India is resilient, has diverse economic levels within the larger collective, is able to deal with changing realities, positive and negative, and manages to survive and move on. But still it depends on foreign economic models. The one-foot forward-and-three-paces-backward syndrome and the cautious restructuring of an erstwhile command economy were based on the Soviet model of development. It polarized societies, held the poor to ransom, supported a small coterie with privilege, disallowed competitive, aspirational and entrepreneurial growth that could have spread prosperity far more evenly in the absence of a corrupt and exploitative bureaucracy. The failed Soviet model was followed by the failed American model. The failure to lift our people out of their economic morass, however, has little to do with the restructuring of the economy. It has more to do with the inability of the political boss and his babus to perceive the strengths of our cultural diversity, bring the people into mainstream development and force the pace of indigenous growth. This is the right time for stimulating new ideas, alternatives and formulae that will alleviate the abject poverty that stalks our hinterland. The creation of our own, contemporary economic model based on familiar, tried and tested truths and expertise, is what will accelerate our growth. Unfortunately, our leaders, both political and administrative, do not realize this simple truth. The international turmoil and confusion will affect us too, but we have our own fundamentals that could be raised to combat the financial problem, restore confidence, break the vicious cycle and save the economy from the situation it has entered.

Long list

A return to human power, to the industries of this great legacy of the subcontinent that are alive in the vast rural landscape — linked to environmental realities and rooted in the earth and the many cultures — will extricate our people from all types of ‘poverty’ and help renew our intrinsic strengths, all of which were buried by our colonial rulers and sadly, kept being ignored by elected representatives in modern, democratic India. It was easier for the new, brown sahibs to emulate the plethora of economic and social enforcements through the established ‘foreign’ laws that were meant to deal with the ‘natives’, than creating new legal precepts. This has been disastrous and demeaning.

Now is the time to regroup, restore and reinvent. Centuries of tradition and culture insulate India and give her people a confidence and a sense of security. But is our leadership able to grab the challenge and build an India for the future? Do we have the intellectual wherewithal to encourage the shift from being a cloning nation to becoming an Asian economic giant? The ‘upward mobility’ of the Indian ruling class has forced the complete neglect of the country, breeding redundant laws, faulty structures, and cumbersome administrative machinery. This class, armed with ‘colonial’ powers, has betrayed independent India and Bharat.

This thoughtless ‘ruling class’ is squarely responsible for the fragmentation of our akhand polity. India is anchored in diversity and pluralism, something that are being deliberately destroyed by this privileged men and women who rule us. They have remained in their ivory towers in an effort to retain their positions of power. Bhindranwale was a result of a perverse attitude and today Raj Thackeray symbolizes the same. Decades of malfunction and misgovernment have ensured that the poor rise with guns to make themselves heard. We call it a Maoist movement even though it is clearly a social upheaval. We deceive ourselves. We talk of freedom but are unable to speak that same language in Kashmir. The list of conscious failures of acting correctly and in accordance with the law is long and tedious.