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Is India a Failed State? Or on the highway towards it?

Mohan Guruswamy 

TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION:
Is India a Failed State? Or on the highway towards it?

History is strewn with failed states. The USSR probably was the greatest and most powerful of the states that failed. But the many nations once within it still exist and some like Russia continue to be major actors on the world stage. As a state the USSR disappeared completely, despite that we do not consider it a failed state. But Somalia, which still precariously and even vicariously exists, is at the top of any list of failed states.

The term "failed state" entered our lexicon, initially, in the context of Somalia, Afghanistan, and sometimes Pakistan. It connotes a state of national being where the State is bereft of any authority and power. Authority and power are often confused as being the same. They are not.

Authority derives from constitutional legitimacy and respect for the institutions such as the judiciary, parliament, permanent bureaucracy and press, whereas power is really the power to coerce and enforce the will of the state. Authority is abstract while power is physical. A State cannot exist forever without authority. It also cannot exist without accomplishing its goals in good measure.

The record of the Indian State in improving the living standards of the majority of its people is abysmal. India continues to languish among the bottom five of the World Bank's annual Development Report. Almost 70% of the Indian nation lives below a reasonable poverty line that would factor balanced diet, shelter, access to education and healthcare, and basic civic amenities. Nearly 60% of all Indians are illiterate. Infant mortality is 137 per 1000 births. If India were a corporation it would be with the recievers now!

On all infrastructure indices we are well below, forget China, and often enough even below that failed state -Pakistan! The central government earmarks less for health and education than the cumulative pay raise the bureaucracy got last year - Rs.19000 crores. As a matter of fact the State spends more, now much more on the bureaucracy – a whopping Rs.270,000 crores for all central and state government employees each year. That is a good 10.4% of the GDP and it is growing. 

How long can a State that doesn’t accomplish its goals by so much exist?

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