Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower (7 page)

I have heard these fears again and again from Indians, in every corner of the country, at all levels of the society. The anxiety arises in a place almost as soon as the revolution is felt, because the saturation of Western popular culture leaves no doubt about where the revolution, undisturbed, will lead. When you stand on an early stretch on the arc of selfhood, more self is almost invariably better. But the examples of the societies at the far end of that arc suggest that more is better only up to a point. And so the question becomes: Where on that arc might the Indian dream lie?

Here we can only wonder, for the negotiations that will answer the question are in their earliest stages, taking place in one living room, one factory, one school at a time. But there does appear to be an emerging Indian synthesis between the longing, on one hand, for greater selfhood, and the fear, on the other, of the erosion of family and community connection. After many years living in India, I realized that I was encountering new ways of thinking about the self and the individual neither typically Western nor traditionally Indian. What many Indians seemed to seek was a society that nourishes selfhood without tempting selfishness, and individuality without individualism. These may sound like rather strange distinctions, but they can be meaningful.

Think about the idea of selfhood or individuality as having to do with the opportunity to become the fullest possible expression of oneself; to have voice; to construct oneself through the imagination, without coercion from others or history. This opportunity matters profoundly to the rising generation of Indians, especially in the towns and cities, as it has to similar cohorts all throughout history. Now think of the second idea, of selfishness or individualism, as taking it a step farther: No longer are we talking about the right to become yourself; we’re speaking of the right not to factor other people into your plans, to get on in the world by severing yourself from others as needed. It is this latter idea that I have found less meaningful to Indians—and may remain so.

Perhaps this points toward a bespoke Indian dream: a right to invent
oneself poised against an enduring sense of duty to others. Perhaps it is already here. Just ask the young woman surfing for her second husband on
SecondShaadi.com
, while her parents stand behind her and help to edit her sales pitch. Or the young man who refuses to suffer his parents’ vegetarianism but also refuses to desert them in their old age. He hires one of India’s ever more popular kitchenette builders to construct one for him and his wife in their bedroom, just above Mummy-Papa’s. Mummy doesn’t want the smell of cooking meat in the house, but she wants her son in the house. They have negotiated a way: He can order non-veg from the outside and reheat it in the microwave if necessary. The dream, at least for now, is that he can walk his own path and still live no more than a mother’s summons away.

Mukesh Ambani

Mukesh Ambani is chairman and CEO of Reliance Industries Limited
.

As he transformed our small spice-trading business into what would eventually become India’s largest private enterprise, my father, Dhirubhai Ambani, went to great lengths to instruct his children on the importance of creating opportunity for others and our duty to contribute to India’s development. He held a deep and abiding faith in India’s greatness. He saw India as a land where wealth had always been created by the hard work of an enterprising people; a land that once accounted for a major share of the world economy but was robbed of that productive power by colonization; a land of vast, unfulfilled potential that would surely rise again. It’s a vision that has always inspired me, and one I have sought to help fulfill.

When I reflect on India’s phenomenal progress over the past two decades, and consider what will be required for similar advances in decades to come, I often think back on what India was like in 1980, when I returned to Mumbai from Stanford University. Our company, built from nothing, was about to embark on a major undertaking—our first big polyester-manufacturing facility, to be built in Patalganga near Mumbai.

India’s license raj was in full force back then. Companies had to get dispensation from the government for almost any decision of consequence. Public monopolies dominated many sectors; even when the government opened up certain industries to private firms like ours, it held power over our investment policy, production levels, prices, and financing. These sanctions created immense difficulties; they created an
artificial scarcity for everything a business needed to succeed. My colleagues needed vehicles to travel to and from the site, which was about sixty-five miles from Mumbai. The journey was arduous; at the time, there were no good roads to Patalganga. But the waiting period, even for a scooter, was ten years. Telephone line installation, too, routinely took years. Small wonder that we struggled to recruit international experts who could help set up the plant. Most of the foreign executives we approached let us know in a hurry that they didn’t regard coming to India as the sort of experience that was likely to enhance their careers. Nor was it any surprise that India’s economy was so sluggish in those days, and its industries so uncompetitive, given the pervasiveness of so many highly protected state enterprises with little incentive to meet global standards.

However, the license raj was in its final decade. As my father was privileged to have witnessed in 1947 the independence of India from Britain, I was privileged to have seen in 1991 India embracing economic reforms that liberated our country’s entrepreneurial energies. These two transitions set India on the path of development and had a profound impact on the world in both political and economic terms. The reforms were compelled by a financial crisis, but nevertheless they were visionary and bold; the government scrapped its requirements for businesses to obtain licenses for private investment (except in eighteen key industries), reduced many of the high tariffs, and narrowed the list of imports subject to quotas and other restrictions. The performance of Reliance shows an amazing trend when mapped against time. The inflection point was 1991. We grew exponentially, eventually becoming India’s biggest private enterprise, on the basis of the freedom to compete against the best in the world.

In the mid-1990s, when my father entrusted me with the responsibility of building another large plant, this time a huge petrochemical refinery, the experience was markedly different from that in Patalganga a
decade before. This time, we approached the project with confidence. If there were no roads, power stations, or ports, we would build them. I am proud to say that in addition to the world’s largest refinery, thousands of acres of mango orchards are now flourishing in that once-barren area of Jamnagar, on the coast of Gujarat. There is also a sizable town and several villages with schools, hospitals, and clean drinking water—a classic example of how freeing the private sector to earn profits can dramatically improve the lives of people who previously faced daunting struggles to enjoy even the basic necessities of life.

Of course, we were hardly alone; the end of the license raj unleashed a wave of growth that exceeded all expectations. In nearly every field of human endeavor, Indian achievements since 1991 have been remarkable. Today Indian pharmaceutical companies sell lifesaving drugs and vaccines in Africa at one-tenth the price set by their bigger competitors in the West. Bollywood is vying with Hollywood for eyeballs across the globe. Aadhaar, an initiative of the Unique Identification Authority of India, will soon support the world’s largest online platform to deliver government welfare services directly to the poor.

I believe India today is potentially poised for another, even more stupendous leap on its upward trajectory. India’s relative weight in the global economy, and in world affairs in general, is bound to grow for many reasons. By 2030, India is projected to overtake China as the most populous country in the world, with the third-largest economy in U.S. dollar terms. Furthermore, India is a very young nation, with nearly two-thirds of its people below the age of thirty-five. Already, the Indian middle class exceeds four hundred million, and by 2040, it could conceivably top one billion—which would create a wave of new demand with the power to inspire all manner of innovative new products and services. Well before one billion people reach middle-income levels, roughly that many will be connected by mobile phones, a phenomenon that has the power to change the game for any industry—banking, education, entertainment, health care, retail. The possibilities are truly breathtaking.

The most exciting prospect of all is the impetus that could come from tapping the surging aspirations of the seven hundred to eight hundred
million Indians who remain excluded from India’s success story. If we manage to bring this segment of the population into the economic mainstream, the result will be an enormous enhancement in India’s economic and noneconomic power, as we generate equality in access despite inequality in income.

Equally important is the dividend India can reap from its youthful demographic profile; young Indians are scripting the most dynamic transformations under way in our society. Generating the twenty million jobs a year needed to absorb the youth entering the labor force over the next ten years gives the country a chance to leapfrog into the future faster than ever before.

But doing all this will require a single-minded and concerted effort. Economic empowerment for the hundreds of millions of excluded Indians, and jobs for our youth, can be achieved only through the concerted action of all—citizens, businesses, and government working together. That is one of the great lessons of the past two decades, when the economy expanded at a rapid pace only after the government loosened its regulatory shackles.

Consider education. Reduced government control and centralization—especially in higher education—could make a major difference in providing excellent education for all Indians. While the public sector has an indispensable role in education, the private sector is uniquely equipped to contribute. Each year, over one hundred thousand Indian students pursue higher education in foreign universities; imagine the potential impact if we could reverse this trend by offering more attractive educational opportunities in India.

Agriculture, too, offers many opportunities to unleash the creativity of India’s people. No grassroots or economic progress can be made without addressing this sector, given the huge swath of the population it employs. India has about 13 percent of the world’s arable land, but Indian agriculture is still languishing at the low end of the agronomy value chain. I refuse to accept that Indian farmers are deficient in any way compared to those from other economies. But they face severe problems in getting their produce to market at decent prices, thanks in part to a complex and
antiquated system of middlemen. Although the government has launched a host of ambitious programs meant to help our farmers, there are many hurdles to successful implementation. One of the biggest challenges farmers face is access to credit. There’s a huge unmet need for crop insurance to protect farmers from the ravages of India’s notoriously variable climate. We must streamline the regulatory requirements for public-private partnerships in agriculture. Much more can be done to encourage broader dissemination of information about market conditions and new farming methods. Not least, we need much greater investment in basic agricultural infrastructure such as irrigation systems and cold chains. India’s private sector has a wealth of knowledge and experience in all these sectors.

These are just two examples, but they give an idea of the direction India should go—not timidly, not in a small-bore way, but in a sweeping and comprehensive manner. As the old India gives way more completely to the new India, a certain amount of flux will be generated. However, the good developments will far outnumber others. My father, who fervently believed in India’s promise, understood that better than anyone else I know. Most of the things he told me are indeed coming true!

Bill Gates

Bill Gates is the cofounder and chairman of Microsoft and the cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

I first began traveling to India in the 1980s, drawn by a fascination with this ancient country that cherishes its history, has a deep reverence for learning, and harbors great ambitions for the future. My interest in India was professional as well as personal. Microsoft was expanding, our need for talent was growing, and as a CEO I was attracted to the vitality and ingenuity I saw in the Indian people. I was really pleased when we opened Microsoft’s Indian headquarters in Hyderabad in 1990.

A few years later, several colleagues and I were flying into Bangalore. As we made our final approach, I looked out the window and saw an area of densely packed, tiny, dilapidated homes stretching out for miles. At that moment, one of my Indian traveling companions declared proudly, “We have no slums in Bangalore.”

Whether out of denial, embarrassment, or innocence, my colleague didn’t see the “other” India. I don’t mean to single him out. It can be easy to turn our eyes away from the poor. But if we do, we miss seeing a society’s full potential.

I knew at the time that I was very fortunate to be collaborating with the most privileged people of India—highly educated citizens of great intelligence, diligence, and imagination. But when Melinda and I started our foundation’s work in India, we began to meet people from the areas we’d been flying over. They had little education and poor health, and lived in slums or poor rural areas—the kind of people many experts had
told us were holding India back. Yet our experience in India suggests the opposite: that what some call a weakness can instead be a source of great strength.

Our foundation began working in India a decade ago with a number of grants to fight HIV/AIDS at a time many feared India would become a flashpoint for the disease. In the ten years since, the most marginalized groups in Indian society have proved indispensable in the fight against AIDS. Since 2003, the foundation has expanded into other areas, including vaccines; routine childhood immunizations; improving health outcomes for mothers, children, and newborns; family planning; agricultural development; and control of infectious disease. In each case, Melinda and I have seen many examples of India’s poor making dramatic contributions for the good of the country. Nowhere have we seen the power of the poor demonstrated more clearly, however, than in the fight to end polio. Indeed, India’s accomplishment in eradicating polio is the most impressive global health success I’ve ever seen.