Independent India at Sixty-Five

To an outside observer, independent India at sixty-five gives the impression of robust health: an economy with a high rate of GDP growth, which, even though it has slowed down a little in the last year or so, still remains impressive; a vibrant democracy where the poor and the marginalised in particular still show great enthusiasm for exercising their franchise; and a secular polity where, notwithstanding occasional niggles, the minorities are assured of their basic rights. But appearances can be misleading; if India in the twentieth century had experienced an unprecedented social revolution, it is now in the midst of a veritable counter-revolution, which is so serious that the very foundations of modern India are being threatened. And this in my view is a result, paradoxically, of the very trajectory of development that has brought India into international attention as an emerging ‘economic superpower’.