Perspectives: Development, India, Diaspora

I've been done reading Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation for about a week now. I still haven't posted a book review on KnowProSE.com yet simply because there's a lot that I had to think through. The book itself isn't complicated, but a good book makes one look around with new eyes - and Nilekani did not disappoint. Thus, to do a circumspect and thorough review I wanted to put that into context for the review. It would be questionable in the book review itself - but it's something I'm compelled to write about.

India

I'm part East Indian by way of some adventurous ancestors on my father's side who thought coming to Trinidad and Tobago was an opportunity, if even for a while, for them to better themselves. I have no idea why they made the decision; I could romanticize it somehow but I believe that better left to Bollywood - which I avoid. That said, I got exposed to Indian culture in the Trinidad and Tobago sense; when I left Trinidad and Tobago and went to an Indian restaraunt I was disappointed with everything except Tandoori chicken and aloo rotis. Oh, and naan. Love naan.

The idea here is that as a member of the diaspora, I'm almost as far removed from India as anyone else outside of India. Generations of slow shifts in East Indian culture conspired with an European mix to make my ancestry independent of a nation. I don't identify as an Indian but I don't deny it. Even so, India is an interesting area of the world - now a country - with a lot contributed and after a hiatus, more to contribute.

I know people in India. I read their blogs sometimes and most times I don't feel like I'm an outsider - perhaps a tribute to those bloggers and their writing ability. Yet India is not a simple place - I knew that going into the book, but I didn't realize the complexity of the nation of some of my ancestors. I'm an outsider to India, and it seems even people in India are outsiders to the rest of India.

When Samarendra Das was down here in Trinidad and Tobago a week ago to talk about the ills of aluminium smelters, I had less than 10 minutes to speak to him. I mentioned the book, and he paused and looked at me for a moment in a way that I can't quite figure. He made some comments, saying he hadn't read the book, and told me of his expectations of it. I realized then that I am fortunate to not have the prejudices of being within India, but that I'm also unfortunate in that I'll never be able to put it into the context I believe the author intended.

Another friend says it's on his list. A few others have ignored my queries disguised as statements for whatever reason. I have a feeling that at least some of them feel it would be hard to discuss it without giving their own context of India.

In Trinidad and Tobago, Indian religious people think highly of India - but that's where it trails off into the ether. Almost no one speaks of India's successes and failures as a nation. Mention India and you'll hear about the musicians, the religious things, sometimes the food. There's a deep and undeniable link to India in Trinidad and Tobago, but it seems stunted. I have heard many who come back from India talk about their religious experiences, but from the same mouth will ooze cruel observations of the people there. VS Naipaul came by it honestly, it seems.

I found it odd, for example, that I was the one who pointed this Jon Stewart clip to people - and the fact that India's space program is responsible for finding ice on the moon.

Just a few days prior, Amit Varma had posted 'Tweet is a very lonely man'. The video is highly entertaining from a distance, but disturbing to consider how far removed from modern reality some Indian politicians are. On one hand we have water on the moon, on the other we have people at high levels trying to adjust to modern technology and failing. It's the same country. India defies definition, and Nilekani had the audacity to try to imagine its future. From what I read, I hope he's largely right - but I read it without the inherent biases of being someone who was born in and lives in India. I'm even separate from the religious ties. Oddly, it's the technology aspects that everyone ignores that excite me most about India.

So that's the context I'll stick with for the review. It's atypical of someone of East Indian descent in Trinidad and Tobago, it's atypical of an American, it's atypical of an Indian perspective. Consider it the perspective of a man without a country.

Development

Nilekani's sojourn through the troubled past of India had me unable to put down the book. This was an India that I had never heard of or dreamed of. But because of the troubled past, it seems that a lot within the book can be customized and applied to many other developing nations.

India didn't have the easy start that I got in short notes in Time Magazine. In the 1980s, I recalled Indira Gandhi being lauded for seeing an information economy in the future and putting in some of the groundwork. This was the era of the young Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on magazine covers. This was the era of the nerds, the geeks, the dawning of the personal computer. Had I known what I do after reading 'Imagining India', I would have looked at Indira Gandhi's vision a lot differently: there were and are real challenges in India that I had no clue about. In fact, I believe I've only scratched the wide surface of India with the brevity of a matchstick.

But it's the previous complexity and adversity through that complexity that allows me to find hope for developing nations around the world. The now mature computer industry in India came through, as Nilekani wrote, a period where someone had to wait 18 days in the foyer of a bureaucrats office to simply get an export license. That shocked even me. The issues of corruption, the politicians who literally (but allegedly, apparently) get away with murder, the parts of India that persist with caste-based politics... the language issues, the education issues... oh, the surprises I found in 'Imagining India'. It's like an unauthorized biography of development.

Frankly, India's a mess that has quietly been reorganizing itself and somehow managing to do just that - not necessarily because of the way things are, but often despite how things are. In such a country, I can't imagine starting a computer company in the 1980s that would become a multinational. That level of entrepreneurship is certainly something to aspire to. Even so, the point is that it certainly wasn't easy for India to develop as far as it has. Maybe it will get easier, maybe it will be more difficult - but if people can not only thrive in elder India and evolve the system as they go, there's a lot of hope for any developing nation. That I most certainly got.

Diaspora

Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation taught me a lot about India yet I somehow came away knowing less about India. And from what I gather, to understand that is about as close to knowing India as anyone can get - be they diaspora or someone who has lived there their entire lives.

India fades into the backdrop of its own context.