INDIA IS so much more than "impossible to ignore". This is the understated claim made for it by foreign secretary Nirupama Rao to The Irish Timesrecently. Seventeen per cent of the world's population, 1.2 billion people, half of them under 24, live in the huge, vibrant and glorious mass of contradictions that is India. Its booming economy is expected to grow by nearly 9 per cent this year, double the global average and faster than China.
It is the world’s largest democracy. It is a nuclear, regional and world power and is now staking a claim to its place at the top table of global politics and economics as of right. It is an extraordinary culture and civilisation. But it is a land of profound contrasts, of what VS Naipaul called “a million little mutinies”, as our foreign affairs correspondent Mary Fitzgerald’s series India’s Fortunes has illustrated vividly over the last week. Although its 300 million-strong new middle class revels in the fruits of a boom that will see the country overtake the world’s second largest economy – Japan – by 2032, millions also remain trapped in the direst of poverty. There are more below the poverty line than in the 26 poorest African nations combined. Nearly half of India’s young children are malnourished and one-third of the population between 15 and 35 are functionally illiterate.
Urbanisation – India accounts for 10 of the 30 fastest-growing urban areas in the world – and modernisation co-exist with traditions like arranged marriage; deep caste prejudice and discrimination remain powerfully embedded; in rural areas where thousands of impoverished farmers have taken their lives by drinking pesticide, Maoist-inspired militias carry on a bloody war in 223 districts in 20 of India’s 28 states; in Kashmir a young intifada is under way; and Hindu-Muslim tensions remain a tinder box capable of exploding any time. A resurgent popular Hinduism is mirrored by growing support for more rigid interpretations of Islam, although a recent court ruling sharing the site of the disputed temple of Ayodhya does give some hope.
The Commonwealth Games were meant to enhance the country’s prestige but the litany of problems that plagued them, from collapsed footbridges and filthy accommodation, to blatant corruption, only served to expose to embarrassing international attention a seriously dysfunctional political system infected with cronyism and nepotism. At least 21 government agencies were notionally involved in preparing for the games, yet none was in charge.
However, for all its woes, secular India is still a remarkable success story that has seen it triumphantly overcome the legacy of its bloody founding and the decades of lethargic economic development that followed. Its decade of growth has made it an indispensible force for stability in the region, not least in its tense relationship with Pakistan, and a key partner in global governance in the G20 group of nations as part of the BRIC alliance with Russia, China and Brazil. India is not only “impossible to ignore”, it deserves a far more central place in Ireland’s China-centered “Asia Strategy”.