India seeks an exalted global profile
Praful Bidwai
A characteristic of India's ruling elite is its insatiable appetite for symbols of grandeur and obsession with exclusivity. Witness the jubilation over India joining the global Nuclear Club, New Delhi's smug satisfaction at being invited into the Group of 20, and its tireless effort to get a permanent Security Council seat.
Such craving for status comes naturally to our upper crust which spends millions of rupees on exhibitionist weddings and local gymkhana or golf course membership. Status fetishism drives it to buy its children's admissions to super-expensive schools.
Of a piece with this is New Delhi's decision is to create a new sign for the Rupee. "With this", said Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, the Rupee "will join the select club of currencies such as the U.S. Dollar, British Pound sterling, Euro and the Japanese Yen…." Even China's Yuan doesn't enjoy such status.
It's doubtful if the new Rupee symbol "captures the Indian ethos", as claimed. It's an amalgam of the Roman and Devanagari scriptsand lacks high recognition value given the world's unfamiliarity with Devanagari.
The Dollar, Pound and Yen have been convertible for decades. The Euro sign is new, but its stylised "e" conveys continuity with the Greek letter epsilonand with the European civilisational heritage. The Rupee sign lacks such attributes.
It's hard to see the world readily adopting a new sign for a non-convertible currency in which very little trade occurs. India's foreign trade represents only 1.3 percent of the global totalin contrast to the US's or China's one-tenth.
Currencies in which governments hold their foreign reserves, and oil, gas, minerals and metals are traded, enjoy a special status. Here, the Dollar remains dominant although the Euro is growing.
China has just displaced Japan as the world's Number Two economy. If China sells off its enormous $2 trillion-plus holdings of US government bonds, it can cause the US economy's collapse. Yet, the Yuan isn't the world's reserve currency. And India's GDP is only one-fourth that of China.
The Rupee symbol, then, is less about global acceptance of India's economic superpowerdom than about its ruling elite's grandiose self-image. The world sees India as an emerging power, not even as The Next China. China is an industrial and manufacturing giant. India isn't. India is seen asand in reality, remainsa poor country.
However, New Delhi's policy-makers obsessively want to raise India's profile. Consider India's hubris-driven attempt to transform itself from an official development assistance (ODA) recipient to an aid-donor.
The attempt goes back to the India Development Initiative announced in 2003, when India kicked out all aid-donors barring sixUS, UK, Russia, Germany, Japan and the European Union (EU). It declared it wouldn't accept tied aid. And it launched a tiny ODA programme for poorer countries.
The BJP-led government did this in a fit of pique at the worldwide criticism of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom and some EU countries' effort to fund the victims' rehabilitation. The move was political. Thus, US and Russian aid was retained although it's minuscule. But substantial Dutch and Nordic aid was stopped.
This is morally reprehensible. A government which has failed to eradicate poverty and huge income divides in 60 years has no right to refuse aid which could benefit the poor.
The United Progressive Alliance continued this policy. In 2004, it launched a power-projection drive by sending relief material in naval ships to several tsunami-affected countries.
India has since stepped up loan guarantees, technical training and ODA to some poorer countries. This was done partly to balance growing Chinese influence in Africa. But China is in an altogether different league. Its ODA is $25 billion. India's is under $1 billion.
Yet, India continues to depend on aid, including annual $2-billion bilateral assistance. Some of this is well-targeted: two-thirds of British aid goes to health and education. India is also the World Bank group's biggest borrower, on which for the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission and metro railway depend.
Indian aid has doubtless done some good in Bhutan, Nepal and Afghanistan. Especially relevant are Indian training programmes for legislators, judges, police, diplomats and technicians. India's $1.7-billion aid for Afghanistan has attracted praise because of its fine targeting, emphasis on capacity-building, and elimination of middlemen.
However, much of India's aid is tied to Indian goods and services. This contrasts with India's own refusal to accept tied aid!
Double standards also prevail in India-Africa economic relations, based on the extraction of oil, gas and minerals. India, like China, is practising mercantile colonialism in Africa, for which it rightly criticises Western imperialists. India must rethink its Africa relations and aid policy.
Today, neither India nor China presents a model worthy of emulation by poorer countries. India's rapid growth has extracted a high price: ecological destruction and explosive disparities.
India's social sector record is abysmal. The UN Development Programme has just released its Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) estimates, which assess deprivations in education, health, assets and services, besides income.
There are more MPI-poor (421 million) in eight Indian statesBihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, UP and West Bengalthan in the 26 poorest African countries combined.
India can set a worthy example through an equitable, balanced, climate-responsible development model which assures basic needs and dignity for all its people, including food security, safe drinking water, sanitation, healthcare, education and public participation.
India can also put its growing global power to good use by representing underprivileged peoples and nations and demanding reform of today's unequal global order.
Tragically, there's no domestic debate about the purposes of India's power and how India should contribute to making the world a better place.
India will be ultimately judged by the world not on the basis of GDP growth, IT achievements or number of billionaires, but success in combating poverty, creating a peaceful and prosperous neighbourhood, and making a better world possible. To do this, its elite must give up its delusions of grandeur.end--
Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.
Email: bidwai@bol.net.in
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