Author: Sanjaya Baru
Publication: The Economic Times
Date: August 15, 2017
URL:   http://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/india-70-how-india-the-original-globaliser-has-begun-playing-with-the-world-again/amp_articleshow/60065120.cms

From 1857 to 1947, India became increasingly nationalistic as it sought to overthrow colonial rule. It then became the champion of the decolonised nations.

The most enduring description of post-Independence India to be offered by a foreigner has been provided by two economists from the two Cambridge campuses – John Kenneth Galbraith of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the US, and Joan Robinson of Cambridge, in Britain. The former called India a “functioning anarchy”. Less well known is what the latter said of the subcontinent: that for every statement about India, the opposite is also true.

 Galbraith’s oxymoron remains relevant even today, and is still the lasting impression that many foreigners take away from their stay in India. The country’s split personality is what distinguishes it from most post colonial societies.

 There are the increasingly well functioning post-colonial societies of East Asia that the world has come to admire. And then there are the many anarchic dysfunctional ones of the developing world. India spans both worlds – although neither are its well functioning parts still up to the East Asian mark, nor are its most chaotic parts as badly off as some of the African nations.

 Ironically, though, right through the Cold War era, the world mocked India’s claim for special recognition of its status as a developing country democracy, because dictatorships were not all that unpopular – either in the West or the East. It is only more recently, as India has sought recognition for its economic prowess, that the world has begun to celebrate its democratic and secular credentials. In part, this is due to the West’s worry about non-democratic China’s spectacular rise, and in part because the world is worried about religious extremism and the jehadi terrorism inspired by radical Islam.

 India’s economic rise, and the professional skills and family values of people of Indian origin worldwide, have also earned brownie points in recent decades. All of this has changed India’s own view of the world. This is most visible not as much in metropolitan India as in the small towns of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab and around the subcontinent where millions of families have benefited from new global opportunities that have become available to skilled professionals and workers.

 The year India turned 30, Morarji Desai’s government threw Coca-Cola and IBM out. As India turns 70, the government led by another Gujarati has opened doors wide to foreign investors, closing down gate-keepers like the Foreign Investment Promotion Board ( FIPB). That change of mindset was heralded by yet another non-metropolitan politician, PV Narasimha Rao, who redefined India’s relations with the world – both economic and political.

 While the Nehruvian elite were socially and culturally globalised, they imposed on India an inward-looking economic regime. It took a non-Westernised politician like Narasimha Rao to overturn that regime.

 If India has been more open to the world, the world too has been welcoming of India. Not only do millions of Indian professionals live and work outside India, but an increasing number of Indian companies are now investing abroad. The past decade has seen the emergence of the Indian multinational and a new breed of global Indians working for MNCs around the world.

 When people-to-people (P2P) and business-to-business (B2B) relations began to change, it was natural that even government-to-government (G2G) relations had to change. Thus, the defining feature of India’s most important partners today – the US, the EU, Asean and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Japan, Russia – is that they are all key economic partners too. Not just trade partners, but also home to Indi
an communities and defence partners.

 But the rising anti-globalisation sentiment in the developed economies, the slowdown of many OECD economies, the fiscal problems of oil exporting economies are all creating new barriers to India’s globalisation. How this shapes and defines India’s view of the world remains to be seen.

 For now at least, India takes a more favourable view of globalisation and seeks greater engagement with the world. It also seeks a greater say in multilateral fora and organisations, seeking to graduate from being a ‘rule taker’ to becoming a ‘rule-maker’.

 From 1857 to 1947, India became increasingly nationalistic as it sought to overthrow colonial rule. It then became the champion of the decolonised nations. At 70 India returns to the norm that it has known for centuries – as home to a people that have always engaged the world around, living at the crossroads of Asia and the Indian Ocean.