India in Search of Its Future Path: Parliamentary Elections 2014

L.K. Advani, a creative strategist, has helped clear the field for a direct, vigorous and a most competitive campaign fight between Congress represented and led by its Vice President Rahul Gandhi and BJP campaign committee led by Narendra Modi. 
Both parties will try to win a clear majority of the Indian electorate. In case neither one does, coalitions will be attempted to form the next government. It will be a clean fight in a long while. 
Whichever party wins majority or leads a coalition government, if needed, economic, political, military, and foreign policy making will be easier and clearer for the following decade. Clarity of authority, direction  and views by the electorate to their representatives in Parliament will be good for India.
Congress Party leadership reorganization on June 16 and expansion of Congress-led UPA governing Cabinet  on June 17 confirms the above analysis. 
It will be interesting to observe developments in policy and electioneering from now on to the state elections in November 2013 and national Parliamentary elections expected in May 2014. There is a possibility that the Parliamentary elections could be moved forward to November 2013 if the UPA government considers it beneficial to its re-election. In any case, it will be a very interesting period in Indian politics in the next few months.

Culture and Values of India: Balance between the Physical, Mental and Spiritual Lives

(x)       Balance between the Physical, Mental and Spiritual Lives

           

             India has the image and a good bit of substance in being a representation of balance between the physical, mental and spiritual. The continuous search for balance will act as breakers in the pursuit of higher economic growth rates. 

             The dominant Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh traditions in India will continue to seek material progress within their spiritual traditions instead of somehow abandoning them to become material-centric humans. 

            

            The Islamic tradition in India today is so unlike the aggressive invaders from the Mediterranean to Afghanistan from the tenth to the eighteenth centuries that the spiritual and life-style values of Muslims are no different than the other spiritual traditions. 

             It is difficult to visualize ‘animal spirits’ to propel Indians of any persuasion to be economically, and parenthetically militarily, aggressive. After all even Western societies are trying to be less aggressive than in the past.

Culture and Values of India: Geater Importance on Knowledge-based Enterprizes

(ix)      Greater Importance on Knowledge-based Enterprises

           

            Knowledge-based enlightenment relating to all aspects of life - mind, body and soul - has been of general importance from the beginning of the recorded history.  Great universities make it possible to develop biological, chemical, communications, mathematical, and metallurgical sciences and technologies spawned by them for production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. 

            

            So it is not a surprise to see the success of industrialized countries today in an international open exchange environment of business and democratic systems. Innovation, risk-taking, political and scientific institutions and entrepreneurship grow out of the growing knowledge base. 

            The group of OECD countries today can be called knowledge-based societies and therefore the societies with the highest material progress.

             India had a strong record of knowledge-based civilization and it has resumed its old trend  in science and technology in the post-independence period since 1947. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru created a new base of scientific institutions that have produced excellent engineers, doctors, researchers, albeit in limited numbers due to importance of investments also going to immediate necessities like food, water, etc. 

            Even with a large migration of talented people out of India who have excelled in all endeavors wherever they have found a new home,  India has made significant progress at home with a mere 3 percent of  all Indians with higher education in 2013. (About 5 percent of  all Indians are estimated to have achieved college level education of which 2 percent or so have gone abroad. More than 60 percent of  30 million Indians abroad i.e. 18 million have college education where as about 5 percent of 1200 million i.e. 60 million have college education. In other words the effective college level trained labor force in India is about  40 million. 

           Government and the private sector have begun the necessary expansion of higher education including technical education to realize the potential demographic dividend of faster economic growth otherwise the young population will remain a burden and a problem as it was thought of in the 1950s and 1960s. The concept and desire of a population/demographic dividend is crucially dependent on creating human capital in all areas of study. The process has begun and India should have 10 percent of its population with higher education, 50 percent with higher secondary and and one hundred percent  by 2050 or sooner.  At that level India will be able to compete effectively with the rest of the world with high degree of higher education. 

          India is on its way to be a knowledge-based society.

Culture and Values of India: Reciprocity and Exchange-based Specialization

(vi)       Reciprocity and Exchange-based Specialization

           

             The homegrown and imports are equally appreciated and lead to export of culture, faith, values, natural materials as well as home grown and homemade materials, goods and services.  At a base level it shows respect for the other side of exchange that offers a value in exchange. 

             Historically, India, the Middle East and Europe are good examples of trading cultures. The whole of Southeast Asia is the best example since World War II. It is the trade which really connected India to all parts of the world.

Post-independence India is rediscovering the importance of international trade as a source of its economic growth and richness. Ideas, people, materials, goods, services, monies are all beginning to flow both ways again based on specialization and comparative cost advantage. 

India has consolidated its base of confidence in itself first fifty years or so that it is open for business in the twenty-first century without fear of colonization revisiting India. The growth of international trade and investments from 1993 to 2013 presents a clear evidence of India engaging with the rest of the world and continuing growth of this engagement in the future.

Culture and Values of India: Acceptance of Controlled Aggression

(viii)    Acceptance of Controlled Aggression 

            Aggression is part of human nature and the evolutionary history of civilization. In the hands of feudal lords from ancient times to the present we see aggression as part of material progress. 

            Generally more aggressive, acquisitive, enterprising and hardworking societies and cultures suh as European societies  are perhaps the best example of forceful exploitation of resources, peoples and continents. 

            From a long perspective India has its Mahabharata and smaller regional wars.  India, however, does not have a history of extra-territorial aggression unlike the Europeans, Persians, Turks, Afghans, Mongols, Mughals, and others. 

            This trait of non-aggressive collective culture and  behavior with respect to the rest of the world may continue to apply to slower economic growth within India than in other countries which are relatively more aggressive in matters of the economy, military, and global power.

Culture and Values of India: Expanding View of the Self

(vii)      Expanding View of the Self

           

            The inner-self, self-realization, confidence in the self and a winning attitude are hallmark traits of competitive and winning societies. Systems based on the self and the individual at their centers have made more economic progress than group-based systems. Europe and the New World - the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand - are great examples of this.

           

             India specialized in the inner-self and its growth more than the external material comfort and well-being compared with other societies which evolved relatively more on the material progress and worldly comforts. 

             India of the twenty-first century is beginning to catch up as observed in rampant newly discovered materialism including corrupt ways to acquire material goods and services as reported by the press and reiterated by government bodies and leaders who desire to control corruption while promoting economic development and growth. 

            It will be a long time before a balance is established between its historical spiritual focus and the new desire for material well-being. The mind-body-soul alignment  is currently in that order rather than soul-mind-body.  

            India is in a state of transition from ancient to modern. Its spiritual, cultural, and personal dimensions seem to be in search of a new balance in an environment of ethical and moral decay in personal lives, business and government bodies. 

           The chaotic process of a functioning democracy and its new institutions have become only more chaotic and disorderly as economic development and growth have picked up, at least in the short-term.  Self  (Me) is dominating public life in India today. Consequences are quite uncertain.