Conclusions - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 337

ries the baggage of the past. The mission of legitimate governments should be to create
inclusive economic development with a sharing of wealth and governance by strong, im-
partial institutions. On that count, India has failed as corruption and bad governance have
facilitated the emergence of a self-serving political system, a politicised bureaucracy, an
unprofessional judiciary, and mindless and often cruel policing.
Consequently, the role of politics, democracy, governments, institutions, laws and reg-
ulations, which were lauded 20 to 30 years ago as India's special strengths, have been
progressively undermined. They have been replaced by arbitrary powers wielded by indi-
viduals, be they ministers, bureaucrats, policemen, or regional politicians and gang bosses.
Speaking with the experience of having worked with India's oil and other ministries as a
former chairman of Shell India, Vikram Singh Mehta says institutions are 'so hollowed out
that there is a vacuum and we don't know who is exercising power'. 2 Senior bureaucrats
talk about the difficulty of getting officials down the line to follow established procedures
and implement decisions. Ministers and officials are reluctant to write notes on policy pa-
pers and take decisions because of possible later accusations, fair or unfair, of corruption or
other faults, as was seen in the coal and other scandals. Democracy is also a drag on devel-
opment because, while it has rightly opened the way for dissent and opposition to projects,
no effort had been made to curb its misuse by vested interests who corruptly manipulate
policies and government action. This has contributed to India becoming an increasingly un-
predictable, unreliable, uncompetitive and even difficult place to live and do development
and business.
Ungovernable India
'India has always been ungovernable - the only difference now is that we want it to be so',
a leading newspaper editor said to me, only half-jokingly, when I was writing an article for
the New Statesman in 2002 and a BJP-led government was in power. 3 The first part of that
remark reflected the view that India has always been too large to be run efficiently from
the national capital and that partnership was needed, but rarely achieved, with state govern-
ments.
There has also always been a sense that India's massive problems of poverty and back-
wardness defy effective government and are too big to be solved - a problem that is grow-
ing as aspirations expand and several million people flood the job market every year. I
suggested that acceptance of the ungovernable idea stemmed from the country's 'fatalistic
and (traditionally) easy-going Hindu culture' - a suggestion that provoked intense criticism
when the article was reprinted in Outlook magazine. In this topic, I have taken that view
further with the theme that jugaad and chalta hai provide the approaches of quick fixes and
fatalism that resist basic change.