Disruptions that made India

Rachna Singh

The re-organisation of Jammu & Kashmir, the abrogation of Article 370 and repeal of Article 35A, in the space of a day, left the country breathless with its suddenness. While some welcomed the move, naysayers called it a catastrophic misstep. Whether it will be one or the other, only time can tell. But what is certain is that it is an epoch-making change that will have far-reaching consequences. 

India is, however, no stranger to such momentous changes. In fact, the story of India’s evolution and growth in the last seven decades since Independence, has been marked by a series of critical political and economic transformations aka disruptions. Our birth as a nation was based on an act of disruption — Partition. A.K. Bhattacharya’s eminently readable book, The Rise of the Goliath, chronicles the 12 major disruptions that left an indelible mark on the Indian countenance. 

The book walks the reader through the political shenanigans that marked the partition of India and analyses the motives of the protagonists of the disruption — Jinnah, Nehru as well as Mahatma Gandhi. The story of a fledgling democracy grappling with the devastating fall-out of Partition and attempting to build a strong robust economy is riveting. 

Policy makers adopted an approach of aggressive statism with the State showcasing huge public sector projects as temples of modern India, nationalising the Imperial bank of India and taking over Air India, a commercial airline. However, the focus on industrialisation, to the exclusion of all else sowed the seeds of the disruption that had to follow. 

Agriculture, left in private hands, went into decline. The policy of treating agriculture as a tool of redistributing assets and resources boomeranged and India was faced with a food crisis that had the Indian PM reaching out for aid to the US. But with some help from agronomist, Norman Borloug, the Green Revolution became a reality and India survived the crisis.  

The book cuts a quick breathless swathe through all the major political and economic upheavals that marked India, including some that are considered hot contentious subjects even today — the Emergency, the Mandal agitation, the demolition of the Babri Masjid et al. 

The author is clearly not fettered by a ‘politically correct’ stance. So, all subjects are analysed fearlessly and honestly, be it the parleys of the Indira Gandhi coterie that advised emergency, the political one-upmanship of the OBC agitation, the onset of differences with RBI prior to demonetisation or the opposition to the roll-out of GST. 

The author also mulls over the ‘what ifs’ of the historical events giving the narrative a somewhat quirky ‘the road-not-travelled’ perspective. Would we be living in undivided India if Jinnah had not prevaricated or if Nehru had stuck a little longer with his ideal of a unified undivided India? 

Would politics of the Ram mandir have been different if Kalyan Singh, had been arrested before the mobs took charge on the fateful day in December? Would the impact of demonetisation have been less disruptive for the common man, if the government was not forced to move up its implementation on account of a news leak on October 28 of 2016? 

The book gives a ringside view of the political and economic turmoil that we have read about in history books and papers. But it also gives the events a nuanced perspective that history books sadly lack. 

The tale of how the government bailed India out of an economic crisis by selling its gold, how the economic reforms of 1991 were affected by the Rao-Manmohan duo, the policies that led to the NPA build-up, the bank reforms set into motion by Arun Jaitley, the RBI-Government skirmishes, the roll-out of GST are all discussed with authority and discernment. 

Interestingly, the last chapter of the book, Disruptions Ahead, suggests the possibility of legislative changes such as repeal of Article 370 and annulment of Article 35A as also delimitation of electoral constituencies in the years to come. That the author foresaw such changes speaks of his perspicacity as a journalist and political analyst. So, when the author suggests the possibility of corporatisation of agriculture or India going Presidential in the years to come, such a probability cannot be shrugged away. 

A great read for those who want to get a handle on the momentous changes that made India what it is today.