During the past few years, India's ruling classes have become obsessed with the idea of making the country great. Greatness is defined not in moral and cultural but economic and military terms, and consists of nuclear weapons, latest military technology and a growth rate somewhere between 6 and 8 per cent. By 2020, it is hoped that India will be among the top five economies in the world, and by 2050, one of the three largest. This national dream, which reflects the self-confidence and consumerism of the new middle classes that control the state, dictates our foreign and domestic policies. In the euphoria, encouraged by the West for its own external and internal reasons, we have forgotten to ask what price this new national project is likely to exact in the short and long terms, whether our divided society is capable of sustaining it, and whether the imagined India of 2050, or even 2020, might reproduce all the ills of the advanced western societies and not be worth the sacrifices the rest of the country will have to make.

PICTURE SPEAK

It is a matter of national shame that even after over 50 years of Independence, the quality of the Dalit life shows little improvement.

Every state is severely limited by the structure of the wider society, and ours is no exception. Indian society is deeply divided, even fractured, along caste and communal lines. The post-Independence strategy of dealing with these divisions by co-opting the elite into the power structure, the policy of reservations for the SCs, STs and increasingly for the OBCs, and granting considerable cultural autonomy to Muslims has certainly yielded some worthwhile results, but it has also left much of the ugly social reality untouched. The SCs now enjoy some access to political power and are involved in making important decisions. They have thrown up a small middle class that has given them hope, role models and a sense of collective pride. This is also the case with the STs and the upper rungs of the OBCs.

The importance of caste has declined among the middle classes and the traditional barriers of commensality and inter-marriages have become somewhat weaker. Thanks to social mobility and the compulsions of democracy, castes are increasingly becoming like civic associations, especially among the urban middle classes. As for communal divisions, overall the familiar cycle of inter-communal violence has declined. When it took a particularly brutal form in Gujarat, where it was perpetrated with the active complicity of the government, the country was deeply outraged, including the middle classes, many of which had earlier supported the Hindu nationalism of the BJP. In the elections of 2004, a third of those who had voted for it in 1999 either did not turn out to vote or voted against it. Despite the current equivocations and the pressure of its rank and file, the BJP leadership realises that Hindu nationalism cannot be the basis of Indian unity, and that it has no hope of ever returning to power unless it widens its communal and caste bases and reinvents itself along the lines of the European Christian democratic parties.

While all this is welcome, the deeper reality remains troubling. Among the urban and rural poor, who feel cheated by the political parties and the state, castes have increasingly become the only vehicle of improving their access to power and promoting their economic interests. Although this is particularly striking in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, caste-based mobilisation and plundering of resources of the state are to be found in many other states as well. It is hardly surprising that according to the 2004 national election survey, nearly 40 per cent of the people voted for their castes. As castes become politically significant, their social hold tightens. The social status of the Dalits, including the most successful among them, has improved very little and they remain a marginal and despised group. Their social interaction with Hindus remains shallow and limited and inter-marriages are few. A recent report by an NGO revealed that of the 473 villages surveyed in Gujarat, all but two had separate wells for the Dalits. In a majority of them, they were denied entry to temples and it was common for their children to be asked to sit outside the classroom. Some cooperative milk societies did not accept milk from the Dalit farmers. Of the 148 villages surveyed in Tamil Nadu, wells were beyond bounds for the Dalits in 140 villages, temple entry was prohibited in 136 and hotels denied them accommodation in 36 of them. Other parts of India tell similar stories. It is a matter of national shame that even after over 50 years of Independence, the quality of the Dalit life shows little improvement.

Although fully understandable, the Dalit response is equally worrying. They have turned the Dalit into a new identity and some even view it as a privilege because of the petty rewards it brings. Dalithood is thus in danger of becoming a rigid and relatively permanent category of our socio-political life. Although one can see why the term is attractive to those who have suffered severe social and economic oppression for long, it is essentially negative and reinforces a sense of passivity and victimhood. It is hardly the basis on which the Dalits can become an active historical subject shaking up the society to its roots. I cannot think of any other society in which the oppressed of yesterday have chosen to define themselves in such negative terms. Although Muslims have begun to acquire some access to political power at the national level and in those states where they form cohesive and numerically significant minority, a bulk of them have remained marginal in the Indian society. They are subject to extensive discrimination in jobs and property market. They have few opportunities for advance. Their unemployment rate is nearly three times that of the Hindus and they are largely invisible in the higher echelons of our educational and economic institutions. In many cities and villages, they are ghettoised, residentially segregated, and their social interactions with Hindus are limited.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is a fine President in his own right and we are lucky to have someone of his distinction. It is, however, striking that most Hindus see him not so much as a Muslim, but as an honorary Hindu. He is a vegetarian, familiar with the Hindu classics, is a sanyasin who never married, has dedicated his life to the cause of India, and for these reasons, is held up as a model Muslims should emulate if they wish to be accepted as equal citizens.

Deep caste, cultural and communal divisions and the mistrust and hostility that they breed continue to scar the Indian society. Democracy and industrialisation have softened their edges but have not eroded their bases. There is no reason to believe that things will change radically in the coming years. Economic growth by itself largely benefits the middle classes, at least in the short run, and arouses resentment among the rest. Equitable redistribution is important but not enough. It ensures that no one hopefully starves, but does not tackle deep social divisions. We need to find ways of creating an egalitarian and cohesive society. Social equality generates mutual respect, trust and a shared identity which moderates conflicts. The recent riots in France were provoked not so much by economic deprivation as by a deep sense of exclusion and marginality. If India is to avoid them, it badly needs an egalitarian social transformation as much as a growing economy.

(The writer is a professor at the London School of Economics.)

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