View: Under Congress India lacked an accelerator. Under Modi’s BJP it lacks brakes

Let’s begin with a metaphorical exercise. If you were to visualise India as a vehicle, what sort of vehicle would it be? To me, for most of the past seven decades it’s brought to mind a battered, bulging and extremely slow-moving public bus.

In this cacophonous coach it could seem as though every passenger got to decide the stops. Those who wished that it moved faster would wince every time a sleek competitor from South Korea or Malaysia or Thailand whizzed past. In theory, every five years or so passengers could toss out the driver. But only with the advent of economic reforms in the 1990s did the pace pick up. Even then, though the speedometer needle settled in a new spot, only in brief bursts did the Indian bus seem to overcome its inability to accelerate.

This is one way of looking at India’s post-Independence journey. But if you stop focussing on speed and look instead at safety, the picture changes dramatically. India may have been slow, but at least it was steady. The same noisy democracy that acted as an economic drag also provided a check on recklessness. As Amartya Sen famously pointed out, Mao Zedong’s authoritarian China suffered famines during the Great Leap Forward. Indian democracy prevented such excesses.


As Narendra Modi’s first five-year-term as prime minister draws to a close, his ardent admirers and caustic critics may agree on one thing about India: the brakes are off.

Let’s begin with a metaphorical exercise. If you were to visualise India as a vehicle, what sort of vehicle would it be? To me, for most of the past seven decades it’s brought to mind a battered, bulging and extremely slow-moving public bus.

In this cacophonous coach it could seem as though every passenger got to decide the stops. Those who wished that it moved faster would wince every time a sleek competitor from South Korea or Malaysia or Thailand whizzed past. In theory, every five years or so passengers could toss out the driver. But only with the advent of economic reforms in the 1990s did the pace pick up. Even then, though the speedometer needle settled in a new spot, only in brief bursts did the Indian bus seem to overcome its inability to accelerate.

This is one way of looking at India’s post-Independence journey. But if you stop focussing on speed and look instead at safety, the picture changes dramatically. India may have been slow, but at least it was steady. The same noisy democracy that acted as an economic drag also provided a check on recklessness. As Amartya Sen famously pointed out, Mao Zedong’s authoritarian China suffered famines during the Great Leap Forward. Indian democracy prevented such excesses.

As Narendra Modi’s first five-year-term as prime minister draws to a close, his ardent admirers and caustic critics may agree on one thing about India: the brakes are off.