BOOK REVIEW India on the mind Planet India by Mira Kamdar
Reviewed by Scott B MacDonald
One of the interesting conclusions about Kenneth Pyle's book Japan Rising: The
Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose is that the Asia-Pacific
country is an adaptive power, "more likely to take cues from the unfolding
international system".
What is implied is that Japan is not likely to become a true
hegemon in the sense that it has universal values that have an appeal and
spread to other countries in the fashion of the American, French, Chinese and
Russian revolutions.
As Sreeram Chaulia adeptly noted in his review of Pyle's book in Asian Times
Online, Japan "looks destined to remain a cautious adaptive power that receives
more from the international system but gives less". [1] The same cannot not be
said of emerging India.
According to Mira Kamdar, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and an
associate fellow of the Asian Society, India is economically on the rise, very
much plugged into globalization, and is increasingly a pivotal player in a
changing international system.
Along these lines, India's experiment with democratic capitalism has an
increasing appeal across borders, especially those in lesser developed
countries.
In her Planet India: How the Fastest-Growing Democracy Is Transforming America
and the World, Kamdar emphasizes India's soft power, the appeal of its
democratic system, and growing economic success make it an exciting counterpart
to more authoritarian China and a far more affluent (and wasteful and
materialistic) United States. She states: "From combating global terror to
finding cures for dangerous pandemics, from dealing with the energy crisis to
averting the worst scenarios of global warming, from rebalancing stark global
inequalities to spurring the vital innovation needed to create jobs and improve
lives - India is now a pivotal player. The world is undergoing a process of
profound recalibration in which the rise of Asia is the most important factor:
India holds the key to this new world."
Kamdar undertook Planet India "because I believe India matters as never
before to a world in crisis". The old Western-dominated world order is in
decline - as reflected by severe environmental problems, a sharp-elbowed
scramble for natural resources, global terrorism, extreme inequity, and the
spread of AIDS and other diseases. While the West has a high standard of living
and remains an attractive pole for people around the world, the expensive
nature of Western society cannot be easily replicated. Consequently, another
model is needed, and India fills that role.
According to Kamdar, "India's goal is breathtaking in scope: transform a
developing country of more than 1 billion people into a developing nation and
global leader by 2020, and do this as a democracy in an era of resource
scarcity and environmental degradation."
While Planet India is very much an India-first book, it clearly points
to all the soft-underbelly problems of widespread corruption, poor
infrastructure, socioeconomic inequality, water shortages, disease and
pollution. For example, Kamdar notes: "India is a potential hotbed of the
planet's most lethal pandemics. It is also rapidly becoming the capital of
non-communicable epidemics, with rates of diabetes and heart disease as well
above global averages." She also takes into consideration problems such as poor
treatment of women, the underclasses, and others, not to mention Hindu/Muslim
tensions that all threaten to derail Planet India.
Despite the multitude of problems confronting India, there is a very active
desire to change things. Since the early 1990s, reforms have unshackled the
economy, breaking out of a more socialistic development mode. This is where
India offers an alternative mode of development between a wealthy and
out-of-reach lifestyle in the West and a rapidly growing politically
authoritarian China. India must offer lower-cost solutions to global problems,
such as disease.
"But India is also where there is perhaps the most hope of finding ways to deal
with these and other scourges on a scale that could actually serve the world's
billions," writes Kamdar. "The high-cost regimens will only help a few of those
afflicted. If India can find low-cost, convenient therapies, for example oral
insulin therapies where patients don't have to inject themselves, the lives of
millions of people will improve." This lower-cost approach extends to a host of
other areas, including alternative energy.
Kamdar has written an interesting and topical book that most Americans should
read, especially as India will increasingly become part and parcel of US life -
either through the growing numbers of Indians living and working in the United
Sates, Indian products showing up in the marketplace, or jobs being sent
offshore to Delhi or Mumbai. She correctly points out that Indians living in
the United States "are one of the most prosperous and well-educated groups in
America".
That success increasingly has an impact on driving India and the United States
closer together and in Indians in the US wishing to give something back to the
land of their origin. This is certainly a factor in improved US-Indian
relations during the years under presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush,
founded on a growing clutch of shared strategic concerns, including the
terrorist threat poised by radical Islam and a rising China.
India's rise also provides, according to Kamdar, a historical opportunity for
the US in terms of a partnership: India and the United Sates, undoubtedly two
of the world's great democracies, have a real opportunity to recall each other
to the moral bedrock of their respective founding moments; to turn away from
rampant militarism and save our environment.
There is a growing sea of ink being spilled to cover the rise of India. In many
regards, India is in a race between the weight of a large and growing
population hit by rising expectations and a highly competitive world and finite
resources. The great Indian experiment is one of the most significant events of
the early 21st century, something Kamdar brings very much to life. Planet India
is clearly one of the more noteworthy additions to the literature on India and
is strongly recommended.
Planet India: How the Fastest-Growing Democracy Is Transforming America and the
World by Mira Kamdar. New York: Scribner, 2007. ISBN-10: 0743296850.
Price US$26, 320 pages.
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system.
Along these lines, India's experiment with democratic capitalism has an
increasing appeal across borders, especially those in lesser developed
countries.
