Seven Decades of Independent India

by Vinod Rai

  13. India Today, 15 January 1997.

  14. Muni, S.D. ‘India’s Growing Identity with ASEAN’. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, trends, 31 August–1 September 1996, no. 72, p. 1.

  15. Figures from Sridharan, The ASEAN Region in India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 209–10.

  16. Ibid., p. 207.

  17. Nath, Ashok K. ‘The Larger Emerging Economies of Asia – Quo Vadis’, in Asia 21, Singapore, January 1997, p. 59.

  18. The Hindu, 21 January 1997.

  19. Cited in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech at the fifth ASEAN–India Summit in Cebu, Philippines, 14 January 2007.

  20. Rajiv Sikri, ‘India’s Foreign Policy Priorities in the Coming Decade’, ISAS, NUS, Singapore.

  21. 2015 statistics show that China’s share of total ASEAN trade is 15.2 per cent while India’s share is 2.6 per cent. See http://asean.org/storage/2016/06/table20_as-of-30-Aug-2016-2.pdf

  22. Bhatia, Rajiv. ‘India–ASEAN Relations: Progress and possibilities’, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. Article no. 5296, 15 June 2017.

  23. Sajjanhar, Ashok. ‘Taking Stock of India’s “Act East Policy”’. Observer Research Foundation, 2016. Web. 12 August. 2017. Issue brief no. 142, p. 2.

  24. Bart Gaens and Olli Ruohomaki, ‘India’s “Look East”—“Act East” Policy: Hedging as a Foreign Policy Tool’, The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2017. Web. 12 August. 2017. FIIA Briefing paper 222, p. 5.

  25. New Delhi has recently proposed to further extend the Myanmar–Thailand link to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, and shorten travel from the Mekong river to India using water transport. This can be seen as an effort by India to further align itself with ASEAN and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). See ‘India revives highway plan amid China’s Belt and Road push’, The Straits Times, 14 August 2017. See http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/india-revives-highway-plan-amid-chinas-belt-and-road-push.

  26. See Isabelle St. Mezard, Eastward Bound. India’s New Positioning in Asia. Delhi, 2006.

  Chapter VI

  1. Dumont, Louis. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

  2. It is believed by those who abide by the caste order that people are made up of different bodily substances. While these are intangible at the phenomenal level, they supposedly determine how pure a person is and where that person should be placed on the purity/ritual hierarchy. See McKim Marriot, ‘Multiple References in Indian Caste System’, in J. Silverberg, ed., Social Mobility and the Caste System in India: An Interdisciplinary Symposium. The Hague: Mouton, 1968.

  3. Purusha Shukta is one of the hymns of the Rig Veda. It is thought that Purusha Shukta is interpolation into the Rig Veda, as it is different from other hymns.

  4. Bougle, Celestin. Essays on the Caste System. Cambridge University Press, 1971. See also: ‘The Essence and Reality of the Caste System’, in Contributions to India Sociology. 1968, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 7–30.

  5. Ghurye, G. S. ‘Features of the Caste System’, in Dipankar Gupta, ed., Social Stratification. New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 35–48.

  6. This origin myth and the ones following it are from Dipankar Gupta, ‘Continuous Hierarchies and Discrete Castes’, in Dipankar Gupta, ed., Social Stratification. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991.

  7. The Balaji myth refers to the offsprings of the celestial coupling between Balaji or Srinivasa (another name for Vishnu in Andhra Pradesh) and Padmavati.

  8. Jat numbers are from 1931 Census. Since then there has been no caste-specific census.

  Chapter VII

  1. https://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/world-population-prospects-the-2017-revision.html.

  2. Level and Pattern of Consumer Expenditure 2011–12. Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, National Sample Survey Office, Government of India, 2014.

  3. The Falkenmark Water Stress Indicator marks a country water-stressed when annual per capita water availability is less than 1700 cubic metre and water scarce if it is less than 1000 cubic metre. See http://environ.chemeng.ntua.gr/WSM/Newsletters/Issue4/Indicators_Appendix.htm.

  4. Water and Related Statistics. Water Resources Information System Directorate, Water Planning and Project Wing, Central Water Commission. Government of India, 2013, 2015.

  5. Guidelines for Improving Water Use Efficiency in Irrigation, Domestic and Industrial Sectors. Ministry of Water Resources, Central Water Commission. Government of India, 2014.

  6. http://eands.dacnet.nic.in/LUS_1999_2004.htm.

  7. http://indiabudget.nic.in/ub2017-18/bh/bh1.pdf.

  8. http://wrmin.nic.in/forms/list.aspx?lid=1279.

  9. Gross Cropped Area (GCA) is the total area sown once and more than once in a particular year. When the crop is sown on a piece of land twice, the area is counted twice in GCA.

  10. http://punenvis.nic.in/index2.aspx?slid=5814&sublinkid=995&langid=1&mid=1.

  11. Dynamic Ground Water Resources in India (As on 31st March 2011). Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Central Ground Water Board. Faridabad: Government of India, 2014.

  12. Agricultural Statistics at a Glance. Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Government of India, 2014.

  13. Agricultural Statistics at a Glance. Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Government of India, 2016.

  14. One hectare is 10,000 square metres. It is a common unit of measurement in agricultural production.

  15. Price Policy for Kharif Crops. Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Department of Agriculture Cooperation and Farmers Welfare, Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, Government of India, 2017–18.

  16. NSSO. (2013–14). Consolidated Results of Crop Estimation Survey on Principal Crops. Ministry of Statistical and Programme Implementation, National Sample Survey Office, National Statistical Organisation. Government of India.

  CACP. (2013–14). Price Policy for Kharif Crops. Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare, Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices. Government of India.

  17. http://agripb.gov.in/abt_deptt/pdf/Pb%20preservation%20of%20Subsoil%20Act,2009.pdf.

  18. http://k-learn.adb.org/system/files/materials/2012/04/201204-drip-irrigation-and-fertigation-technology-rice-cultivation.pdf.

  19. Gulati, A., R. Roy, and S. Hussain. Getting Punjab Agriculture Back on High Growth Path: Sources, Drivers and Policy Lessons. New Delhi: Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), 2017.

  20. Feed mill is any plant or factory that processes grains, vegetables or meat into animal feed.

  21. Silage is fodder for cattle, sheep or other animals. A silage unit will be where it is prepared and stored. In starch factories, corn starch will be produced as part of the food processing industry.

  22. http://eands.dacnet.nic.in/LUS_1999_2004.htm.

  23. http://mahaagri.gov.in/level3detaildisp.aspx?id=6&subid=11&sub2id=1.

  24. http://eands.dacnet.nic.in/APY_96_To_06.htm.

  25. Price Policy for Sugarcane. Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices. Government of India, 2015–16.

  26. http://eands.dacnet.nic.in/APY_96_To_06.htm.

  27. CACP, 2015–16.

  28. http://eands.dacnet.nic.in/LUS_1999_2004.htm.

  29. Price Policy for Sugarcane. Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Commision on Agricultural Costs and Prices. Government of India, 2016–17.

  30. Based on data collected from micro-irrigation scheme implementation, department of agriculture, Pune. Government of Maharashtra (Note: data is from 1986 to March 2015).

  31. https://www.maharashtra.gov.in/Site/upload/CabinetDecision/English/18-07-2017%20Cabinet%20Decision%20(Meeting%20No.138).pdf.
Pp. 5–6. Marathi version: http://www.livemint.com/Politics/gLv0fWy012FI6Su0D5lQvJ/Maharashtra-makes-drip-irrigation-mandatory-for-sugar-cane-c.html.

  32. http://pmksy.gov.in/microirrigation/Archive/MIAllocation201718.pdf.

  Chapter VIII

  1. Before this, national planning was confined mainly to the communist countries. Post the Second World War, the demands of reconstruction led many developed market economies to also adopt planning.

  2. Although the model used for the Second Plan is now known as the Feldman–Mahalanobis Model, acknowledging its similarity to the model developed by G.A. Feldman in 1928, the two were developed independently. Nevertheless, while there are commonalities between the Soviet and the early Indian planning models, their modes of implementation were quite different.

  3. The spectacular success stories of Taiwan and South Korea, which followed an overtly ‘export-led’ strategy began only about five years later.

  4. The Third Plan saw the involvement of several eminent economists in developing and refining the original Mahalanobis model. The theoretical basis of this plan foreshadowed the ‘two-gap’ model of growth by Chenery and Strout developed in 1966.

  5. There was a four-year ‘Plan holiday’ between the Third and Fourth Plans enabling recalibration of strategy. This was a political decision that planners had to incorporate into the plan model.

  6. Roughly translated as: abolish poverty.

  7. By the mid-seventies, savings rate in India had doubled compared with the early fifties and had surpassed that of the US.

  8. In the Mahalanobis model, aggregate savings is related both to overall GDP and its sectoral composition. In the Harrod–Domar model it is related only to GDP. The Mahalanobis model could generate higher savings at lower GDP growth rates than the Harrod–Domar by manipulating sectoral composition.

  9. Rajiv Gandhi is on public record as describing the then Planning Commission as ‘a pack of jokers’.

  10. The Eighth Plan, like the two previous plans, was ‘realistic’ with GDP growth target set at 5.5 per cent. The plan model remained the same as the two earlier plans, despite the change in the economic system.

  11. In the earlier Plans, fiscal side was taken into account to the extent it affected availability of resources.

  12. Planning Commission (2001), Approach Paper to the Tenth Five Year Plan, Government of India.

  13. Three notable interventions of this plan were the National Highway Development Programme (NHDP), the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), a rural roads programme, and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a universal primary education programme. The latter two interventions were again encroachments in the domain of states.

  14. The Tenth Plan provided a consistent state-wise breakdown of the principal targets of the Plan in consultation with the state governments.

  15. ‘Inclusive growth’ is first mentioned in the approach paper to the Eleventh Plan and has since become the dominant catchphrase in international development discourse.

  16. The Eleventh Plan consolidated infrastructure initiatives of the Tenth under the rubric of ‘Bharat Nirman’. Its other major innovation was the push to public–private partnerships (PPPs), particularly in power, roads and ports.

  17. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the world’s largest work-fare programme, was the principal intervention to address this issue.

  18. A rough indication of this expansion is given by the fact that the Second Plan document was only 140 pages long whereas the Twelfth is nearly 1400.

  19. Reacting to the charges of politicization of allocations during the Second and Third Plans, the Central government began allocating block grants on the basis of the Gadgil formula adopted by the NDC from the Fourth Plan onwards.

  20. The states were to contribute a particular proportion of total funds in order to access the Centre’s share.

  21. NITI being the acronym for ‘National Institution for Transforming India’.

  22. Some form of a plan is necessary for accessing International Development Agency (IDA) funds that require a nationally owned Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), which is nothing but a national plan under a different rubric.

  23. The author’s personal experience over the fifteen years he spent in the Planning Commission was that the most active users of the Plans were the private corporate sector, which saw the utility of a consistent economy-wide strategy for its own strategic planning.

  Chapter IX

  1. Nayar, Baldev Raj. The Modernization Imperative and Indian Planning. New Delhi: Vikas, 1972.

  2. On the myriad challenges that she confronted on the domestic front, see Francine Frankel, India’s Political Economy: 1947–2004. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009.

  3. The rationale for the Indian position is spelled out in K.B. Lall, ‘India and the New International Economic Order’, International Studies, 17, 3–4, 1978, pp. 435–61.

  4. For a discussion of the factors that led to the Indian nuclear tests, see Sumit Ganguly, ‘India’s Pathway to Pokhran II: The Prospects and Sources of New Delhi’s Nuclear Weapons Program’, International Security, 23:4, Spring 1999, pp. 148–77.

  5. Huntington, Samuel P. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968.

  6. Doshi, Vidhi. ‘India’s Long Wait for Justice: 27m Court Cases in Legal Logjam’, Guardian, 5 May 2016.

  7. Human Rights Watch, Broken System: Dysfunction, Abuse, and Impunity in the Indian Police. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009.

  8. ‘50 per cent of police posts vacant in UP; national average at 24 per cent’, Press Trust of India, 2 April 2017.

  9. Mohan, Vishwa. ‘3 cops to protect each VIP, just 1 policeman for 761 citizens’, Times of India, 8 February 2013.

  10. Chakravarti, Sudeep. Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2008.

  11. Roy, Shubhajit. ‘Why the Indian Foreign Service has a Quality and Quantity Dilemma’, Indian Express, 4 August 2016.

  12. Ramachandran, Sudha. ‘The Indian Foreign Service: Worthy of an Emerging Power?’ Diplomat, 12 July 2013. See http://thediplomat.com/2013/07/the-indian-foreign-service-worthy-of-an-emerging-power/.

  13. Amarnath K. Menon and Gaurav C. Sawant. ‘The Missile that Cannot Fire’, India Today, 13 April 2012.

  14. For a detailed discussion, see Sumit Ganguly and William R. Thompson, Ascending India and Its State Capacity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.

  Chapter X

  1. Overview of Civil Society Organizations: India. Civil Society Briefs, Asian Development Bank, 2009.

  2. In this paper, the terms non-governmental organizations and civil society organizations have been used interchangeably.

  3. Edelman Trust Barometer: India, Edelman Trust Barometer Annual Global Study, 2017, vol. 1, no. 50.

  4. See Rob Jenkins, ‘NGOs and Indian Politics’, in The Oxford Companion to Indian Politics, eds., Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 409–26. Tandon, Rajesh. ‘The Hidden Universe of Non-profit Organisations in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 2017, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 79–84.

  5. Baviskar, B. S. ‘NGOs and Civil Society in India’, Sociological Bulletin, 2001, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 3–15.

  6. Sen, Siddhartha. ‘Some Aspects of State-NGO Relationships in India in the Post-Independence Era’, Development and Change. The Hague: International Institute of Social Studies, 1999, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 327–55. See Rob Jenkins, ‘NGOs and Indian Politics’, in The Oxford Companion to Indian Politics, eds., Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 409–26.

  7. Sampath, G. ‘Time to Repeal the FCRA’, The Hindu, 27 December 2016. http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/Time-to-repeal-the-FCRA/article16946222.ece. Last accessed 4 July 2017. Balakrishnan, Ajit. ‘Indian NGOs’ Long March’, Business Standard, 8 March 2012. See http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/ajit-balakrishnan-indian-ngos-lo
ng-march-112030800051_1.html Last accessed, 4 July 2017.

  8. Chipko Movement is a non-violent forest conservation movement that was started in the seventies in the hilly regions of Kumaon and Garhwal to protest against tree felling. Under the leadership of Chandi Prasad Bhatt, a Gandhian social worker, Chipko, literally meaning embrace, was led by local villagers, particularly women, who would embrace trees to prevent their felling. The activists outlined that rampant tree felling would lead to environmental degradation of the hills, increasing risks of landslides and flooding in the region.

  9. Guha, Ramchandra. ‘Environmentalist of the Poor’, Economic and Political Weekly, 2002, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 204–07.

  10. The Jan Lokpal Bill, also referred to as the Citizen’s Ombudsman Bill, is an anti-corruption bill drawn up by civil society activists in India seeking the appointment of a Jan Lokpal, an independent body to investigate corruption cases. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Lokpal_Bill.

  11. See Rob Jenkins, ‘NGOs and Indian Politics’, in The Oxford Companion to Indian Politics, eds., Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 409–26.

  12. Chandhoke, Neera. The Conceits of Civil Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. See Rob Jenkins, ‘NGOs and Indian Politics’, in The Oxford Companion to Indian Politics, eds., Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 409–26.

  13. Tandon, Rajesh. ‘The Hidden Universe of Non-profit Organisations in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 2017, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 79–84. Jalali, Rita. ‘International Funding of NGOs in India: Bringing the State Back In’, Voluntas, 2008, vol. 19, pp. 161–88.

  14. ‘Centre orders filing of cases against four NGOs’, The Hindu, 28 February 2012. See http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/centre-orders-filing-of-cases-against-four-ngos/article2942708.ece. ‘Kudankulam row: Cases against NGOs; German expelled’, Economic Times, 29 February 2012. See https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/kudankulam-row-cases-against-ngos-german-expelled/articleshow/12077009.cms.