Development: Swallowing the Whole

Psychology of Civilisation and Acceptance of Development 

In the first essay of this three part series on Development and its alternatives, we saw how the concept of ‘Development’ introduced after the Second World War has become a one size fits all solution for poverty alleviation world over. In its application, it is destabilizing traditional ways of life and causing irreparable environmental damage.   In this second essay we discuss how three different modern realities  - our obsession with skin color; contemporary architecture with its omnipresent glass and steel buildings and a revivalist Hindu movement under the right wing dispensation in Delhi,  are a sneak peek into a civilization that has wholeheartedly embraced development and growth sans critique.

In sixth grade when I was rather surprisingly, at a day’s notice, asked to deliver a speech on Thomas Friedman’s ‘The World Is Flat’. I think Globalization was a fancy word back then and without doubt continues to be, but now it comes with its discontents. Whatever it was, I never could have read or even comprehend the book in one day.  So, the speech was nicely read from a sheet prepared by my teacher. Now many years later, when globalization has become so potent an idea that scarce would you find a pundit not extolling its virtues, I picked up the book to gain a ‘globalised’ perspective on ‘development’.

The author, at one point argues that as a result of increased economic interdependence amongst nations today, the possibility of regional conflicts snowballing into global wars is minimal. Testimony to this is the fact that China and United States, widely seen as possible anatgonizers in a new multi polar world, are so heavily invested in each other’s economy that no future war can be fought without inflicting self wounds. Much like nuclear weapons during the Cold Wars, economic interdependence is the new deterrent against wars.

However, Historian Margaret Macmillan, at a recent lecture in Delhi played down the role of global interconnectedness as a deterrent to war. She highlighted that warring states of Europe during the First World War were just as interlinked as the nations in today’s globalized world; from marital ties between monarchies to professional associations of Lawyers and Laborers working in cohort across the continent, the interdependence was strong. Records reveal that at one point, diplomats of five warring nations stationed in London were all first cousins. Yet, little could these relations do to arrest the war from defiling world peace.

The analysis of Indian role in the war under command of the British Empire is invaluable in more than one ways. It reveals the psychology of a people towards another, and in that it is important to our continued analysis of Development as discussed here. That a miniscule British presence of over 100,000 men could subjugate a territory as vast and treacherous as India precludes the possibility of military superiority alone being the reason for establishment of colonial rule in India. It is not unreasonable to assume that skin color of the white men gave them an exalted status and perhaps a sense of invincibility in the minds of the Indian. Perhaps, the almost frenetic demand for skin whitening formula speaks about this mindset even today.

However, this myth of invincibility of the white man was shattered when Indian soldiers, over a million in number, fought the Austro-German alliance in Europe during the First World War. Seeing the British losses on the battle field, these soldiers on return from the war, no longer considered the British undefeatable. This change in perception is believed to have emboldened them to resist British rule in India with greater vigour. In effect, shattering of a psychological myth may have hastened the process of India’s independence in some ways.

In this light, it is pertinent to question if the reaction to the intellectual ideas such as ‘development’ that took birth in the West could have been received with anything but acceptance. Given these psychological workings of the mind and the projection of Europe as the cradle of civilization, it is easy to lend an air of superiority to the intellectual discourse of the West. Development, I believe is no different. Thus, when we see Development as an idea that has captivated societies all over the world, it is not solely based on its own merit but also on the deification of its propagators.

While we have analyzed reasons for perceived superiority of the West, it is essential also to look inwards and understand the historical context in which Development was welcomed. In the post WWII era, the jargon of Development quickly evolved and was thrusted upon the Third World as a one size fits all solution to the all pervasive poverty and backwardness. Soon, economists, anthropologists, sociologists, scientists and technologists were developing models and metrics to eradicate suffering from the world based on an American capitalist, consumerist centered idea of development. Given the perceived superiority of the colonial masters for reasons as discussed above, Third World leaders accepted externally conceived and planned models for a revamp of their nations. This acceptance however also came about as a result of what we lacked in our own civilization.

To this end, V.S Naipaul’s scathing critique of Indian civilization and its decay in “India: A Wounded Civilisation”, laments on an intellectual stasis that inflicts our society. He argues how a rich tradition of cultural synthesis capable of ‘incorporating and adapting’ myriad influences into its own civilisational matrix has given way to one of intellectual bankruptcy, where ‘what we borrow, we seek to swallow as whole’. When I see hideously designed glass and steel structures in Delhi, I cannot but agree with Naipaul when he writes, “Year by year India’s stock of barely usable modern buildings grows. Old ideas about ventilation are out; modern air-conditioners are in; they absolve the architect of the need to design for the difficult climate and leave him free to copy”. This mentality to cut, copy and paste is best summed up by former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit when she said, “Hum Dilli ko Paris bana denge”. Indian adulation of occidental ideas and a concomitant decay in our own civilisational logic has ushered in a Development sans critique.

The idea of civilisational stasis can further be grounded in an analysis of how ‘identity’ shapes evolution of a civilization. A very interesting observation on the acceptance of ‘development’ can be made with a background of how scientific and spiritual identities have shaped differences between the West and the East. The colonial rule looked down upon the scientific achievements of the East as second grade to the technological advancement achieved in the west during Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. This Amartya Sen sights in ‘Identity and Violence’ as having “encouraged Indians to put their spiritual foot forward, to an extent, a reaction to a rather dismissive imperial reading of India’s analytical and scientific past history”. Certainly, now when Prime Minister Narendra Modi brings up Hindu gods performing plastic surgeries, instead of rescuing the scientific models of gravitational attraction proposed by Aryabhatta or astronomers like Varahamihira and Brahmagupta, he further pushes ancient Indian science towards obscurity and maybe even absurdity. Given this context, when Development came as a concept in the 1950s, with technology as a central tool for poverty alleviation, India was ready to accept it without debate, for it had chosen to forget its scientific past and become the land of spirituality.

Over the years, we have simply accepted the notion of development and are mindlessly trying to turn India into America or Europe. I say mindless, not because ‘development’ is bad, but because maybe it is just inadequate for us. If only we could accept that different cultures have different ways of living and different attitudes towards life, rather than trying to enforce what may have worked best for America, we may be moving towards ‘pluri-verse’ over a ‘uni-verse’

In the next blog in this series, I will look into the effects of development on the ground and explore if Post Development is also a shot at meaningful World Peace.