The High Road of India and the Low Road of China
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 26 Dec 2016
Vithal Rajan – TRANSCEND Media Service
‘Oh, ye’ll tak the high road, and I’ll tak the low road,
And I’ll be rid of poverty afore ye;’
— With apologies to the unknown Scottish lyricist
It is interesting to note that the two strongmen leading India and China, Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping, have declared almost simultaneous resolve to rid their countries of corruption in high places. It might be instructive to look back over the last seventy years or so and see if there were other parallels along the way.
Both the Asian giants achieved freedom to write their own destinies within a couple of years of each other in the late nineteen forties. At that time, India was accounted an emerging economic power in a context where Europe had been flattened by war. China had been ravaged by Japanese aggression and a pitiless civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communists, and had only a fraction of India’s economic capability.
India and China have shared very many historical features. Both countries started on an uphill path of modernization burdened by huge, poverty-stricken, illiterate populations, steeped in feudal cultures and controlled by small groups of oppressive local elites. The modernist leaders in both countries had to deal with the implacable resistance of the privileged, the helplessness of the masses, lack of technology and funds, and a severely handicapped infrastructure. Several of the leaders of independent India had been educated in Britain and maintained links with the erstwhile imperial power, though they received little disinterested support. The Chinese communists on the other hand faced the enmity of the West, especially from the United States of America, which had emerged as the new imperial superpower. The only support China could get was from Stalin of the USSR, and that, in Mao Zedong’s words, was like prising it ‘from a tiger’s mouth.’
The template for modernization had already been created by the mega projects of America and Russia, and both countries rushed to leapfrog over the difficulties of the past. The functionaries of both countries were very similar, arrogant mandarins, self-assured with contempt for the masses, and these traits still linger on in full measure.
Given these parallels, and with the economic and social lead India received at Independence, there was every expectation that India would surpass China with ease. It is with this expectation that Jawaharlal Nehru assumed the mantle of the leader of the non-aligned world, with a special mission to introduce the peasant-like Chinese to the comity of nations. However, the script did not quite play out this way in history. China has zoomed ahead, and there is every likelihood of its becoming the leading superpower in this, the 21st century, while the great millions of India are still enmeshed in irreducible poverty. Why this happened is too intriguing and important a historical event not to be speculated upon. An easy elitist assumption is that India has been handicapped by ‘democracy,’ while China has gone far ahead because it is regrettably ‘authoritarian.’ The hundreds of millions of ordinary Indians, however, have only experienced daily authoritarianism at the hands of countless government functionaries and their flunkeys. And while little is known about the inner workings of the huge Chinese Communist Party, whispers leak out of vigorous debate within.
If we look at the early decades of both de-colonized countries, an interesting difference emerges. Independence in India empowered the bourgeoisie as never before. That class gained full control not only of their own destinies but of all other classes as well. Indian development was then designed keeping the interests of this class in mind. Even when policies and projects were ostensibly designed to help support the poor, such policies always considered the bourgeois elite as the key actors to ensure success. For example, if water for agriculture was needed, construction of big dams was selected as the most viable solution, and the dams produced profits, prestige and power to the elite class of rulers. Alternative options involving micro projects to be implemented by the masses were immediately discarded as impractical since the masses had neither the necessary skills nor the organizational ability. If jobs needed to be created capitalists and big industry had to be given incentives, rather than giving access to resources to poor communities themselves. The story in every other sector of development is almost the same. Seventy years down the line, India has an enviable list of dollar billionaires, and a powerful middleclass, but income disparities have widened dangerously, leaving the majority of the people still poor, underfed, uneducated, and without medical cover.
The Chinese also suffered, and continue to suffer, under an arrogant elite leadership, but Mao Zedong, a romantic revolutionary, launched two great movements early on, The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which brought many disasters to the Chinese people and great loss of life. However, the psychological purpose behind these movements was to give the long oppressed masses a new identity as equal citizens of a modern country, and courage to seize an entitlement to question their leaders and hold them accountable. What is on record are the losses of life, the disasters in production, and other quantifiable date from that tumultuous period. What cannot be assessed, except by the results that followed decades later, is the self-confidence of the masses, who were enabled ‘to stand up,’ as Mao declared on October 1, 1949. The social components of development should never be underestimated – indeed Gunnar Myrdal pointed out as much with prescience in his monumental Asian Drama. Perhaps, the 1950s and 1960s produced ‘latent development’ in psychological terms that created a sense of capacity and hope in the people, and also left behind empowered structures in local bodies, that enabled Deng Xiaoping and his successors to build the new China in such short time to the amazement of the Western world.
Can the differences between the developmental histories of the two Asian giants have been caused on the one hand by the Indian bourgeoisie being continually empowered, while on the other Mao Zedong attempted to empower the Chinese masses for two short decades? Was he right in holding that at certain times the superstructure of beliefs can define the infrastructural shape of a people’s polity?
If Indian economists and planners cease to be in denial of Chinese success, perhaps we can learn that the best way forward might be by trusting the Indian masses to have the necessary capacity, will power, and management skills to take the country forward. The gates must be opened that today shut poor people out from access to the key assets of land, water, finances, and education, and the inalienable right to organize their own communities.
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Vithal Rajan, Ph.D. [L.S.E.], worked as a mediator for the church in Belfast; as faculty at The School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, and as Executive Director, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. He has founded several Indian NGOs, is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 26 Dec 2016.
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The treatment of the Indian poor, of which Arundhati Roy claims there are more than in all sub-Saharan Africa, and the lack of basic services,besides the vicious demonization of the forest dwellers and those fighting for land and water, must be a big reason. Surely the Chinese government’s plan of action to keep the population from expanding for so long (denigrated as “anti-freedom” by the West) must be given credit as well.
I agree with Rosemerry. And I would like to add that India almost followed China into Communism, birth control, education, health care for all and the removal of the upper classes, but was foiled by assassination and corruption, and undermined by the west, for example:
Just recently, there was a plan for 10,000 alternative power micro grid systems to be built in rural and remote locations in India with the government providing startup funding. Components would be manufactured in India. This would not only provide electricity but also hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Immediately, Obama signed a $1 billion US/India agreement that advantaged US thin film solar companies and the nuclear industry.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Indian-off-grid-solar-plan-will-face-challenges
http://mnre.gov.in/file-manager/UserFiles/draft-national-Mini_Micro-Grid-Policy.pdf
Weren’t Russian nuclear powerplants being planned in Koodankulam?
Arundhati Roy is a hero of mine…, so glad to see you mention her here, Rosemerry. Also, glad to see you crediting Teng’s 1-child per couple policy in China. (Friends of mine have condemned it because of alleged “forced abortions” (I wasn’t there, so I don’t know!) I see Teng’s programs/policies as the 2nd phase of Mao’s and Chou En Lai’s Revolution, and, let’s face it, Revolutions (including the American, French, Russian, etc.) can be brutal and nasty. But, could China have made its remarkable transition to the modern state it is now without Mao, Chou and Teng? China has difficulties enough with its present population of 1.4 billion. Can we imagine the miseries of a China with 2 billion? These are difficult questions, but we must ponder them seriously as our world population continues to expand beyond its present 7.3 billion. Most of our organized religions oppose any kind of birth control–chiefly, I guess, because they do not want to limit the numbers of their own “tribes”–be they in churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. We have many mental hurdles to overcome!