Meghnad Desai - The Raisina Model

If you stand in the front balcony of Rashtrapati Bhavan, just outside its library, you have a stunning view of Raisina Hill. The architecture of Imperial Delhi sprawls below you down the Rajpath. What you see is the breathtaking arrogance of the imperial imagination. Lutyens and Baker knew what it meant to construct New Delhi as the seat for the largest colony of the British Empire. It was meant to fill the ruler with pride and the ruled with awe, to signal the permanence of British domination of the Indian subcontinent.

Alas, history is a cruel mistress. While the British built the structures which fill Raisina Hill, they did not stay to enjoy them for long. The new rulers were not intimidated by the imperial grandeur. They moved right in and took over as if nothing much had changed. Despite the chaos of Partition, it was the smoothest transition from one Raj to anotherBritish Raj to Congress Raj.

Seventy years down the line, how well have Indians done since the transition? What explains the survival of India as a single entity about which Winston Churchill had expressed such major doubts? He had said India was no more a reality than the Equator. Indians had their answer; the narrative which helped them fight the foreign rulers. But could anything unite the Indians when the common enemythe foreign rulerwas gone?

There are other questions to ask. Could India have done better economically, removed poverty faster, equipped its citizens with literacy, numeracy and skills sooner, improved the position of women and tribals and Dalits and Muslims and OBCs (Other Backward Classes)? Why do we still have trouble in Kashmir? Why are we still fighting the Naxalites? Why do the people of the North-east have a sense that many people in the rest of India do not accept them as their own?

This book celebrates seventy years of Indian independence but it is not a celebratory book. It asks questions, seeks answers and raises doubts even as it notes the achievements. My aim is to stimulate responses and set off debates.

What are my credentials for writing this book? I left India in August 1961, a few weeks after my twenty-first birthday and a few days before Indias fifteenth Independence Day, to study abroad and have since settled in the UK. But I have maintained a passionate interest in the fortunes of India and Indians. Distance has the advantage of lending clarity to ones view and enables one to cut out the noise and notice the signals. Of course, when I say something which is an unpalatable truth (often on TV programmes where I feature), I am reminded that I am really a foreigner. That reassures me that I have hit the spot I wanted to.

I have been writing about India off and on since 1967, when my very first article which was my take on how India encountered the West since the arrival of the Portuguese in 1498. I write regularly for the Indian Express and the Financial Express and did so for the Business Standard between 1996 and 2001.

This is my most recent attempt to understand India. I hope readers engage with it. India being what it is, and knowing my own predilections, I shall no doubt revisit the subject again and again.