There are many people, some among my friend circle who are
quite envious of the progress made by the Chinese people and associate it with
the centralized, authoritarian rule they have. They look at the Indian state of
affairs and say “It would be so nice if India could progress like China even if
it meant sacrificing India’s democracy. We should try an authoritarian
government. It may just be the answer to the thousand woes that plague India
currently.”
And it is easy to understand their line of thinking. The
Indian political and administrative system is chaotic, inefficient and corrupt.
You just need to glance at headlines any day and you will see political,
economic and social disasters. And then look at China. Such a glorious country!
They have great infrastructure, a rising standard of living and are better at
human development index too. But while their achievements may seem so attractive
right now, there is a tale of sorrow, tragedy and horrors that lie beneath it.
The Chinese dragon awoke in 1976 with a growth rate which
drew the envy of the world. But Communist government came to power in 1949. So
what happened in the period in between? Thanks to the globally competent and
dreamy education system we have (no sarcasm here to be sure), we Indians are
not taught proper world history or at best we are taught a very Euro-centric
version of it. (If in any
case you went to a fancy school where they taught you such things properly,
please contact me whenever you feel like feeding hungry people in cafes and
unburdening yourself of some money.)
Coming back to the topic at hand, I will give you a quick,
distorted and sensationalized version of Chinese history. Basically, there was
this fellow Mao who called himself a communist and he kicked another Chinese
dude from the country and established PRC (Peasant’s Republic of China). The
government thus established was the wet dream of any supporter of authoritarian
and centralized style of government where laws were followed no matter how
stupid they were.
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| China in 1960s |
Mao was, in the hindsight, not the best kind of leader. He
thought that Stalin was a good fellow and not just “good at mass murdering”
type. He also rejected Western “capitalist” science while implementing agrarian
reforms. He took a series of pseudo-scientific and senseless decisions called
the Great Leap Forward, which included decisions like killing all the sparrows
that kept pests in check, having an iron workshop in every home that produced
useless pig iron and sowing seeds 2 meters below the surface that never
germinated. It was a leap forward, though not towards an economic prosperous
China as Mao imagined but towards an early grave for millions. The disastrous
Leap was history’s largest democide. It resulted in the Great Chinese Famine with
casualties between 15 to 30 millions. That is the equivalent to entire
population of Punjab being wiped out. To put that into perspective, imagine
every single Punjabi in India dying. As in, every Punjabi you know, that
person’s family, relatives etc. all “becoming dear to God” (according to very reliable Google translation
of “bhagwan ko pyare ho gaye”).
The effect of bad policy was compounded by the bureaucrats
who were all too eager to please their superiors, enforcing it strictly even
when it was clearly causing death and destruction. They then went on to fake
the agricultural data and pretend as if the world’s biggest famine wasn’t
happening right under their noses. If anyone tried to commit “grave crimes”
such as stealing food to save their lives or pointing out that a famine might
be going on were promptly persecuted. I bet the Chinese people were not that
enthusiastic about lack of democracy at that time. All this happened in
1958-61, when India was beginning to experience a green revolution. We were not
just not having any famines, but also moving towards self-sufficiency.
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| India in 1960s |
The Chinese suffered a lot. It was not until two decades
later that they saw better times. Our sufferings have been few in comparison.
Our lowest point since 1947 is considered to be Indira Gandhi’s emergency. Mao’s
pinky figure might be responsible for more deaths than her and rest of our PMs
put together. We did not even have any mass executions for God’s sake! And we
dare to compare ourselves to China?
If China is progressing today, its credit does not go to
their style of government, but to their quality of leaders (after Mao) who remain committed
towards progress of their people. But it is all a matter of luck. They could
very well have been duplicates of Khymer leaders (who almost wiped everyone who could read or write or is intelligent) or Kim family (the less vulgar
North Korean one). We, in India, have something better. We do not have to depend
on position of constellations for our leaders; instead we can very well choose
our own. If we do not have good leaders or good governance the fault somewhere
lies with us too. How many of us go out and vote? How many keep a serious check
on the performance of our MPs and MLAs or the government? How many agitate upon
the issues we feel aggrieved about? We do have democracy but not a
well-established democratic practice.
While I would like to see India progressing, it should not
be at the cost of our democracy and free speech. Amartya Sen has said that
there are no famines in functioning democracies. Brother has won a Noble prize. If he is
endorsing democracy and linking it with the general avoidance of mass horror
tales, there may be some good reasons for it. If Indians have not reached the skies,
we have also not fallen into giant sinkholes. Let us consider ourselves lucky,
avoid extremes like authoritarian rule and focus on diagnosing and treating India’s
problems. As they say “Distant
drums are (always) fine!” (door ke dhol suhane hote hai, courtesy the
authentic Google Translate). To sum it up, while there can be bad leaders in both democracy and dictatorship, at least in the former we are shielded from the worst. No democratic leaders has gone scot free after mass murdering their own people like Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot did.
