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BOOK
REVIEW
The capitalist case for
India
The Elephant
Paradigm: India Wrestles with Change by
Gurcharan Das
Reviewed by Shailaja Neelakantan
 Gurcharan Das is a novelist, playwright, venture
capitalist, Harvard graduate and former chief executive
of Procter & Gamble India. But more than anything
else, he is an unabashed capitalist who believes
privatization is the panacea for all of India's social
and political ills. "In the short term, the [economic]
reforms will have little impact on the poor - let's
admit this honestly," he writes in his new book, The
Elephant Paradigm: India Wrestles with Change.
Das's paradigm is right-wing Thatcherite
economics. Here is Das, former chief executive of a
multinational, at his best: "It is more important, I
believe, to raise the living standards of the poor than
to worry about inequality. We have to realize that
economic reforms are bound to increase inequality that
comes from open and free competition, but that does not
mean that they will worsen the situation of the poor and
the most disadvantaged." And again, Das, the patronizing
proselytizer: The ordinary citizen in India "does not
understand how economic reforms will help improve his
life".
Corporations too, as far as Das is
concerned, can do no wrong. The Maharashtra power plant
Dabhol and its owner Enron (now bankrupt) were vilified,
rightly, for selling extremely expensive power. But
apparently, "we should not waste our energies in blaming
Enron but in reforming the MSEB" (Maharashtra State
Electricity Board), says Das, cavalierly dismissing
Enron's malfeasance.
In his last book, India
Unbound, Das's thesis was that the problems of India
arose because unlike in other parts of the world,
democracy here preceded capitalism. In fact, in a recent
interview in a local newspaper, Das categorically said,
"So I personally think, what slows us down is democracy
and, to some extent, tradition. We have an ambivalence
about money, [we are] very religious," expressing a
none-too-hazy preference for undemocratic models such as
China and South Korea.
The Elephant
Paradigm is a compilation of the 200-odd columns Das
has written in the years since he quit his job at
Procter & Gamble. Thankfully, the book is not
entirely a hodgepodge of disparate ramblings. Das has
attempted to link the articles by theme - a bit of a
difficult task - given that he has covered a wide range
of subjects, including the Panchayati Raj system (local
self-governance), India's information-technology
success, the power sector's problems, religious
fundamentalism and women's rights. The title of the book
implies that while India may never roar ahead like the
Asian tigers (no doubt because it is a democracy), it
will advance like a wise pachyderm, moving steadily and
surely.
Das is a decent writer but his ponderous
philosophizing always gets in the way. Some of his
dime-store philosophy includes this gem: "I am convinced
that the world is divided into two types of people: The
minority who are dedicated to happiness and the majority
who are dedicated to unhappiness. Those in the happy
minority ... are content with getting on with their
lives ... In contrast, those in the unhappy majority ...
define their identity in relation to others and believe
they can only be happy by making someone else unhappy."
Whom is he kidding?
To his credit, Das doesn't
shy from criticism even at the risk of sounding
politically incorrect. While he doesn't support the
Hindu fundamentalists in India, he blames India's first
prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's notion of a secular
India as responsible for sowing the seeds of religious
sectarianism. "Nehru's secularism failed because it was
too intellectual and empty of content ... Today, there
is an unfortunate polarization between an influential
and articulate minority of secularists and the vast
majority of silent, religiously minded Indians. Neither
takes the trouble to understand the other, and what we
have as a result is a dialogue of the deaf."
But
then he says, "Having lost Nehru's age of innocence we
are now resigned to a world without ideology and
continue to grope for a new set of beliefs that will
help us cope with our frustratingly pluralistic
society."
Along the way, Das informs us of the
breadth of his literary, philosophical and academic
readings. He drops a ton of names and cites a ton of
quotes. In an unintentionally hilarious bit, in a
chapter titled "A Sentimental Education", he writes: "We
Indians are verbose, and need to be reminded that human
beings were born with two ears and two eyes, but with
only one tongue so that we should see and hear twice as
much as we say. Shakespeare too, I think, must have had
us in mind when he wrote in Richard III: 'Talkers are no
good doers.' Hence he offers us this advice in Henry V:
'Men of few words are the best of men.'"
Das
should heed the bard's words.
The
Elephant Paradigm: India Wrestles with
Change, by Gurcharan Das, 2002 Penguin.
ISBN: 0-143-02910-X. Price: US$25.24, 430 pages.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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