Modi's victory: Thatcherism Indian style?

[caption id="attachment_1305" align="alignleft" width="300"] flickr.com / creative commons[/caption]

This week, in one of the most significant elections for a generation, the Hindu Nationalist leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Narendra Modi was elected Prime Minister of India.  The scale of his victory and number of seats gained in the Indian Parliament – well over the 272 needed for a majority – has decisively ended the Indian National Congress domination of Indian politics, at least for the moment.  The Congress campaign run by Rahul Gandhi, aided by his sister Priyanka looked half hearted and lack lustre, compared to Modi’s campaign.  It also probably cost less than Modi’s estimated campaign costs of £500m including holographic projections of him as well as today’s obligatory social media platforms of Twitter, Facebook and You Tube.  Modi’s victory tweet – ‘India has won!’ became the most retweeted tweet in India (though still falling some way behind Obama’s victory tweet for his second term in office).

Supported by many younger voters, the Modi brand has the promise and allure of a liberalised consumerist capitalist economy.  Modi has been credited with the economic transformation of Gujarat – whether deserved or not – and his campaign has led on this message and promise of such an economic transformation across India.  The appeal of this promise is easy to see.  India’s economy stagnated under the socialist-welfarist policies of the Indian National Congress and despite the liberalisation reforms in the 1990s under the government of PV Narasimha Rao and his finance minister at the time (later Prime Minister) Manmohan Singh leading to rapid economic growth in the early 2000s, India’s economic growth has once again faltered in the last few years.

From a UK perspective the success of Modi, the outsider, has a certain resonance.  In the UK, from the end of WW2 up until 1979 Britain had 8 Prime Ministers.  All were white and male.  5 out of 8 came from upper class / aristocratic families and attended public schools (the exceptions were Harold Wilson and Edward Heath were grammar school boys while James Callaghan a secondary school).   3 out of 8 went to Eton.  6 out of 8 studied humanities / social science at Oxford University – either PPE [politics, philosophy and economics], modern history, classics or languages  (the exceptions were Winston Churchill, who did not excel at his public school and joined the army and James Callaghan who passed the Oxford entrance exam but could not afford the fees so joined the civil service instead).

Then Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister in 1979.  Female and the daughter of a Lincolnshire grocer she was grammar school educated and went to Oxford, but studied chemistry instead of the almost obligatory PPE  / modern history – although subsequently went on to train as a barrister.  Thatcher was in gender and class terms an outsider, who nevertheless managed to break up the establishment dominance and become elected on a populist mandate based on a radical right wing, neo-liberal, nationalist, free market ideology.

The parallels with Modi are clear.  Since independence, Indian politics has been dominated by the Nehru / Gandhi family.  Similar to the Bhuttos in Pakistan, the leadership of the Congress party has been handed down between the generations, effectively stifling any true political meritocracy or fresh leadership.  As with the British political establishment, the Gandhi / Nehru family have attended elite UK universities: Jawaharlal Nehru (Cambridge), Indira Gandhi  (Oxford), Rajiv Gandhi (Cambridge) and Rahul Gandhi (Cambridge) – leading to a suspicion of neo-colonialist rulers and continued domination of a UK educated elite.  Nehru himself is famously reported to have said to JK Galbraith at the time that he would be the ‘last English ruler of India’.  Despite India’s ideal of democracy, since independence its political, industrial, social and cultural elite have been overwhelmingly from the English speaking Hindu upper-castes, with little commitment to social and economic justice.

Modi, by contrast, also comes from a family of grocers – in this case the Ghanchi-Teli oil presser caste, categorised as an ‘Other Backward Caste’ by the Indian government.  As a boy, Modi helped his father run a tea stall at a railway station, later joining the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and completing degrees in politics from Delhi and Gujarat Universities.   He, too, has campaigned on a right-wing, pro-market agenda with the promise of economic transformation in India.  He even claims the same physical energy as Thatcher, reportedly rising at 5am, finishing at 11pm and never taking a day off.  His vegetarianism and teetotalism, though, is in contrast to Thatcher’s known liking for a glass of whiskey.

It is not difficult to see Modi’s appeal, particularly to a frustrated younger generation in India – fed up of stagnant class and caste ridden politics in India.  But let’s not forget our own experience of going down this road.  Thatcherism brought privatisation, economic liberalisation and rising prosperity (for some) to an 80s Britain.  It also brought huge inequality, a protracted miner’s strike, unemployment as traditional industry was shut down and for many areas, destructive of local communities.  Money and wealth became the sought after goods, denigrating anything else that could not be commodified:  care, compassion, social justice and protecting the vulnerable.   Privatisation and ‘light touch’ banking and City regulation has been a central cause of our current economic crisis.  Sometimes the free market really does not know best, as those doing the dealing do not fully understand (or perhaps care about) the goods they are dealing (debt) and the impact this has on the poorest and weakest.

The 2002 riots in Gujarat, however, remain an issue for many, with Modi being accused of taking insufficient action in the Hindu-Muslim riots in which an estimated 2000 Muslims died, with many more being injured.  In 2005 he was denied a US visa because of his behaviour during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots.  Discrimination against Muslims remains rife throughout India – particularly in jobs and housing and Modi’s lifelong membership of the Hindu nationalist RSS (itself inspired by the fascist movements of Europe) brings a potentially divisive religious dynamic into Indian government in direct contrast to the avowedly secular Congress.  If Thatcher’s ‘enemy within’ were the trade unions and her ‘enemy without’ the Argentinians during the Falklands war, many fear that Modi’s ‘enemy within’ will be the Muslims and his corresponding ‘enemy without’ Pakistan.

Modi’s alleged economic success in Gujarat has also come into question.  Since 2002, he has steered his rhetoric away from Hindu nationalism and towards a more inclusive agenda based on economic growth.  Before Modi came into power in Gujarat the growth rate was 4.8% compared to a national average of 3.7%[i].  In the 2000s it was 6.9% compared to a national average of 5.6%.  Not a huge difference.  Social development indicators in Gujarat also remain poor, with 44.6% of children below 5 suffering malnutrition and 70% anaemia, making Gujarat below even Uttar Pradash and Bihar on rates of malnutrition[ii]

From a macro, strategic point of view, however, Modi’s success – like Thatcher’s – might also be seen in terms of the demands of global capitalism.  While India remains a country with shocking levels of inequality, corruption, a woeful lack of basic infrastructure such as education, sanitation and public health, it remains a country difficult in which to do business.  Global capitalism demands a state willing to invest in the necessary infrastructure (including health care and education), the rule of law to enforce contracts, an efficient civil administration – together with free trade agreements - to provide the workforce and environment necessary for effective capital investment.  India cannot prosper on the world stage until its lack of infrastructure is addressed.  Until then, it will be more attractive for its English speaking educated middle classes to seek employment abroad – perhaps India’s most successful export to the Middle East, UK and US - and one which primarily benefits the host country, not India.

Whether Modi can create an inclusive agenda and conditions for India to truly prosper remains to be seen.

 

[i] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/13/modinomics-narendra-modi-india-bjp. Accessed 17/05/2014

[ii] India Human Development Report 2011

TV Review: The Birth of Empire – The East India Company

The BBC has at times a fascination with India and almost every few months it seems a BBC television crew is in Calcutta. Notably Rick Stein has been there, and Ian Hislop began a Great Railway Journey at the Calcutta Club. One of my favourite programmes on India was Alexander Frater’s Monsoon where he ended up in Cherrapunji, reputedly the wettest place on earth. For me it invoked memories of Assam where I spent a monsoon as a child. I much enjoyed Brian Cox’s Jute Journey where he focussed on the Dundee Scots who made their working lives in Bengal managing jute factories. Recently Anita Rani drove around in India on Four Wheels. There have been some TV misses as well: Paul Merton in India and Caroline Quentin: A Passage Through India come to mind although these weren’t BBC productions. Nevertheless I did look forward to The Birth of Empire.

Sitting down to watch this two-partner presented by Dan Snow I waited for my first cliché and sure enough it came: “The Jewel in the Crown”.  It is always remarkable that a small European country of 4 million people managed to colonise an entire sub-continent then of 190 million and producing perhaps one quarter of the world’s output.

The facts of the East India Company are well-known: a joint stock company given a monopoly by the English Crown to pursue trade in India at the start of the seventeenth century. Company employees find cloth, spices, tea, diamonds, pearls and pepper on the Coromandel Coast near modern day Chennai (Madras) after setting up a trading post in 1639. Ships journey to and from India, trade increases, the company makes vast profits, and consolidates its positions. More trading posts are created, there were 22 in the eighteenth century, with new warehouses and citadels, and the foundations of Bombay and Calcutta created. The East India Company and not the British government is the sovereign power, forging agreements with the local princes, overseeing justice, raising taxes, and maintaining probably what was then the largest standing army in the world.

Fabrics in particular are the major commodity comprising 60% of the Company’s revenues. And the Company begins to practice the concept of listening to the English customer who prize hand printed chintzes, and their brilliant and fasted colours. The initial period saw the beginning of a hot drink culture, tea and coffee, and the influence of spices, which of course leads to the situation today when chicken tikka Masala is almost an indigenous UK invention. Calcutta becomes the centre of British India and remains so till 1911 when the Bengalis are agitating for independence.

The programmes have a strong focus on the East India Company employees who arrive in India, with jobs oiled by nepotism and corruption – plus ca change in India today. The employees were allowed to engage in private trading which made many of them enormously rich by contemporary standards.

But while great wealth was a possibility the risks were high. Huge numbers died because of the heat and diseases like dysentery and malaria. In one year one-third of the Europeans in Calcutta during monsoon perished.  Snow spends some time at the Park Street Cemetery in Calcutta. The Company sent out wine which was supplemented by local brews of toddy and arak. It was discovered that quinine which was soon used to make tonic for gin and tonic mitigated the chances of catching malaria. Soon hard-drinking together with gambling and brawling became the norms of behaviour.

What exasperated the authorities in London was the numbers of employees who had “gone native” and taken up with local women often setting up households with multiple women. There were also relationships with the daughters of Portuguese traders and missionaries. But efforts to limit these relationships by sending out British women ended in failure.

The East India Company was very skilled in playing off one group of Indians against each other, and would only engage in battle if absolutely necessary. At the Battle of Plassey, which sealed the preminence of the Company, Clive was outnumbered 10 to 1, but won the battle thanks to local traitors. There were relatively few British soldiers supplemented by local volunteers who were trained in British methods.

Despite some employees having gone “native” the Company was at times surprisingly callous about the demands of the various religions. The Mutiny of 1857, known as the First War of Independence in India, was sparked by rumours that pig fat and cow fat, respectively anathema to Muslim and Hindu soldiers, were used as grease in gun cartridges.  The rumours, whether true or not, managed to unite Muslims and Hindus against the British. With brutality and horrors committed by both sides, the revolt was eventually put down.

The Mutiny of 1857 sparked widescale changes with overall control of India passing to the Crown. Reforms prompted by Macaulay sought to Anglicise the native population and he defeated proposals to maintain an Asiatic approach. The object was to create “Indians in colour and blood, but English in taste, opinion, morals and intellect.” To exemplify this Snow visits La Martiniere School in Calcutta and talked to students who suggest that they only speak English most of the time. Macaulay also proposed the creation of a professional well educated Indian Civil Service, initially of Britons only, to run the administration, and a UK based legal system.

What Snow fails to mention is that while 1857 saw the beginning of the Anglicisation process it was probably also the start of more entrenched British attitudes, with more white women coming out to India thus limiting inter-racial relationships, and the development of a British cultural, moral and racial superiority mindset. Many of the earlier settlers recognised a unique and compelling culture within India, and that appeared to have been forgotten later.

The East India Company was seen as the exemplar of the modern multi-national corporation maintaining control from long-distance, with shares issued in London, an accounting system, and rules of corporate governance. Comparisons with modern day companies might have been instructive.

Dan Snow was an engaging presenter who looked to have done his background research, but I do have the feeling he is more of a military historian which is where he made his name. At times the programme moved back and forth to the UK, with contributions from academic talking heads and visits to sites in London such as warehouses and the Lloyds Building.

The two hours went quickly but I felt there were issues and themes that could have been explored further. First the question of why the UK was in a position to dominate a large alien country, particularly in an era when other European countries were looking to develop their own colonies. Some comparisons with other European countries such as France and the Netherlands, which had their own East India Companies, might have been apposite. Could India in other circumstances have been divided into British, and larger Francophone, Dutch and Lussophone zones as Africa was? There were French and Portuguese enclaves but they were relatively small and ultimately never a serious threat to British hegemony in India.

Were the British more benign than say the French, or the Spanish as colonialists? I might contend that apart from the Mutiny and isolated incidents such as the Amritsar Massacre there was little overt brutality.

The lives of Indians in this period and their interactions with the East India Company were almost completely ignored. In addition the long term effects on India after 1857 were glossed over. Was India a better place following the rule of the Company and the British Raj?  There is the implication that India has benefitted enormously from exposure to the English language both as a unifying force and as a driver to enable global trade. If English were not an option then perhaps Hindi might be more widely spoken. Amongst the elite knowledge of near perfect idiomatic English is almost a given. Anecdotally if one approaches a hotel reception and speaks in a language other than English the reply will invariably be in English. And, for example, interviews during the Indian Premier cricket League are almost always in English. But whether fluency in English has been an enabler to world trade and soft power is difficult to assess. Japan, South Korea and China have, for example, not found trading difficult despite poor language skills although that is changing. One very rarely finds Indian diplomats making statements about world affairs. Fluency in English amongst the elite may hinder the domestic economy as many, including my father, and for example many Indian students and businessmen in the US, find it easy to leave India and take up new roles. But despite the position of the English language India has still not achieved any real impact in world trade except in some industries like software.

While The Birth of Empire was a compelling narrative it would have benefitted from greater exposition and analysis. Most of the background on the Company could have been compressed into an hour giving sufficient time to explore other issues.