Financial Times

Influx of Indians and limits of modernisation
The growing presence of Indians in the economic life of the country is such an emotionally charged issue that any comment on it runs the risk of adding to a popular controversy.

After all, it is easy to dislike and caricature both India and Indians. For many of us, India represents a nation that bears grudges readily and one that seeks honour more than is right. Most Sri Lankans love to accuse Indians of putting quantity before quality, thrift before liberality, and mysticism before science.

Yet we must begin with what we find. And what we find, unless our eyes are closed, is an entire economy steadily being dominated by Indians. Perhaps it is not something to be fought for or against. It might be enough to accept it as something that is necessitated by a confluence of developmental needs, societal failings, history and geography.

However, the question is, given the Indian domination of the economy, what hope is there of avoiding the Indianisation of the mind? We look to India for skills because either we lack them or have them but the possessors of them are afflicted with sluggishness and inertia. The reputation that the Indians have for hard work, which we do not have, means they have a vitality that we lack.

The infusion of new energy and skills is no doubt both necessary and highly desirable. However, our growing dependence on Indians for higher economic skills is taking place in a context in which the majority of our own citizens are having little or no hope of middle class prosperity and graciousness.

Moreover, because the Indian presence is migratory in nature, the sense of civic mindedness and responsibility of the Indian is not oriented toward us. This too fuels public displeasure and distrust of them. Such issues give rise to the question of democratic legitimacy of the growing Indian presence here.
The awareness that economic activity has reached a level that makes the country a viable destination for foreign skills and capital is comforting to those secure in their wealth and social position. However, the weight of the Indian presence is a crippling burden for those who have been condemned for generations to low-end economic activity in a society whose ethos has failed to engender a sense of hope and optimism.

But there is even a profounder concern than the democratic legitimacy which the growing presence of Indians is generating. It is to do with Indian practices, attitudes, and traditional lore. The following example of a highly successful Indian is cited to have a mountaintop view of modern India.
In an article last month in the International Herald Tribune that spotlighted the Indian liquor tycoon, Vijay Mallaya’s airline venture, the reporter had this to say about the great man: “Mallya took his newly delivered Airbus A320 on preliminary flight to Tirupati to seek his favourite god’s blessing. Nearing touchdown, Mallaya returned to his seat and prayed as the captain reverentially tipped the plane’s wings toward the main temple. [The] first flight took off with Mallaya as host. Just as on any other day, he wore a diamond-studded chronograph watch, rock-sized diamond earrings, chunky diamond bracelet with initials VJM carved out in more diamonds and numerous rings and chains.

Perhaps this is a modern version of the bejewelled Oriental potentate surrounded by soothsayers, astrologers, sycophants, and mystics. Mallaya certainly calls himself the ‘king of good times’.

To be able to live like a prince or a “maharaja” is no doubt common enough ambition the world over. Indians though appear to be taking a literal minded approach to it – an approach that in its inclusion of the practices derived from traditional lore seems utterly faithful to the historical model.

Mallaya is a privileged representative of the generation of Indians who had had the occasion to confront the ideas of Western science and its sprit of rational experimentalism. Yet, even he appears to persist in the belief that Nature and natural forces are amendable to prayer and sacrifice.

The influx of Indians will also carry with them an antidemocratic attitude. Though India is often celebrated as the world’s largest democracy, she is democratic, for the most part, in outward appearance. From the curious phenomenon of Sonia Gandhi to the prevalence of the cast system, everything points to a deeply anti-democratic attitude.

After all, it is the awareness of the sense of human dignity and human greatness that gives urgency to words like freedom and democracy. But such an awareness cannot be kept alive under conditions the habituate man as much as Indians are habituated to filth, dirt, disease, poverty, and degradation.

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