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Equitable globalisation can succeed

Sadanand Dhume
CONGRESS party's victory in India's recent election is a shot in the arm for globalisation. The results show that most Indians approve of a policy of gradual economic reform, which can later trickle down to the country's vast rural population. The lesson: A pro-globalisation and democratic government can succeed in a poor country if its policies are seen as favouring the majority.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's victory also feeds two other, enduring debates: Does democracy and development go hand-in-hand? And can poor countries embrace the same bedrock democratic values as their richer counterparts?
India's experience suggests an affirmative answer to both questions.
Despite global downturn, the International Monetary Fund expects India's economy to grow by 5.1% making it an engine of global economic recovery. Its conservatively regulated banks have escaped the Wall Street contagion.
Also, the second straight defeat of BJP by the ardently multireligious Congress shows that pluralism is a universal value and not
merely aWestem one.
The immediate significance of the election lies less in what it promises, than in what it averted -- a government incapable of fashioning a coherent national agenda. Instead, Congress returned with its best performance in nearly 20 years. This puts the coalition it heads, the United Progressive Alliance, within easy reach of a majority, and ensures that the new government will complete its five-year term.
The defeat of the communists also frees the government from relying on a party whose approach to economics and foreign policy remains rooted in tire Cold War. Before withdrawing their support to the outgoing Congress government last year over a civil nuclear agreement with the US, the communists stymied economic reforms for four long years. Their crushing defeat gives India what is arguably its most centrist parliament since independence.
The Hindu right has also shrunk. The BJP slumped to 122 scats, its worst performance since 1991. Unless It can find a way to expand its appeal to tire more liberals, it faces tire prospect of permanent exile to the opposition benches.
This victory gives Singh the opportunity
to revive a lapsed reform agenda. The government is likely to relax foreign investment caps in insurance, banking and retail. Infrastructure spending will remain a priority. But though Singh's economic team are intellectually inclined toward reform, temperamentally they are wedded to gradualism.
Politically sensitive changes will likely remain on the back burner. A costly and patchily implemented "employment guarantee scheme” will almost certainly be expanded. It is the centre-piece of the government's commitment to "the common man," and credited by party strategists as helping them buck the usual antiincumbent pattern in national politics.
In foreign policy, Congress has more room for manoeuvre. The US-India relation -ship will no longer be held hostage by communist antipathy toWashington. The failure of the BJP’s campaign that focused on handling Pakistan-backed terrorism makes it easier to resume negotiations with Islamabad, if it can prove that it has mended its ways.
India will continue to use development aid and institution building to strengthen moderates in Afghanistan. In Pakistan too, India's interests are aligned with America's --the prospect of jihadists getting their hands on a nuclear weapon causes sleepless nights both in New Delhi and in Washington.
But any effort by the Obama administration to extract concessions from India will be bluntly rejected. That, in the Indian view, would be tantamount to rewarding Islamabad for its role as the world's leading exporter ofSunni radical Islam.
In the meantime, India will continue to
lobby for a permanent seat on an expanded UN Security Council, and will welcome the shift of the locus of international decision making from the G-8 group to the more representative G-20.
In the long run India's global influence will be determined by the evidence from two central debates that set it apart from other countries: the compatibility of democracy and development, and of poverty and human rights. By growing its economy around 8% per year over the past five years, India has shown that democracy and development can go hand in hand.
But the average Chinese is already twice as rich as the average Indian, and the gap is widening. Unless India can rapidly close this gap. the appeal of its development model will continue to be greater in industrialised countries that see democracy as an end in itself than in Asia and Africa, where China’s success spurs envy rather than moral outrage.
Nonetheless, Indian citizens enjoy a much higher degree of personal freedom than their counterparts in China and most of the Muslim world. It's impossible to affix an economic value to the right to call the prime minister an idiot on television, to organise anti-government protests, or attend the temple, church or mosque of your choice, hi the end, the powerful symbolism of the idea of India is the country's greatest source of influence.
Dhu™ is 8 ,elto* ” As,a Soaety h Washington. DC. and the author of My Fnend the Fanatic, a travelogue about radial Islam. H>s next book examines the Impact of globalisation on India
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