India has model for the World; the World has none.

S.Gurumurthy

`Learn from India, how to develop India' Mahatma Gandhi told Pandit Nehru. But his young disciple was defiant. He said: `No, we have to look to the West; the Western civilisation, and, therefore, economics, will overtake India'. His mentor could not persuade him; and there were high tensions between the two.

Pandit Nehru chose the Socialist model for India, the worse of the two methods commended by the West. The other being free market capitalism. Predictably, he looked up to Soviet Russia to learn economic lessons for India.

We should have learnt sports from Russia; instead we took lessons in economics. Even USSR's ideological cousin, China, refused to do this. They learnt economics from their own experience, not others'.

But to his credit it must be said that a year before his death, Pandit Nehru almost admitted in Parliament that he should have looked to Gandhi for the first steps in economic development. But before he could shift to reverse gear, he was no more.

But he had almost chosen the right successor - Lalbahadur Sastry - perhaps to undo what he had done. And Sastry would have done it; he had the firmness in him. Otherwise, he would not have recommended people to fast on Mondays to cope up with food shortage. Imagine a Prime Minister today asking the people to fast. But destiny snatched him away.

Indira Gandhi found an external ally in the Soviet Union to ward off the challenge to her leadership from the `right wing' in her party and outside. By then, socialism had ceased to be a choice. It had become a compulsive faith; anyone dissenting promptly became `anti-poor', `pro-rich', and even `CIA Agents'. During the emergency, socialism was grafted into the constitution of India. The judiciary approved socialism, the bureaucracy internalised it. The FICCIs even welcomed it !

But everything began to change. The weakening of socialism in the 1980s emboldened the IMF and the World Bank to make heavy demands on their clients - India being a large client of them. Now they began to prescribe models for India. "Learn from Argentina and Brazil" they said. Are they nations to teach food ball or economics ? Soon enough Argentina and Brazil confirmed their position more as foodball experts, not economic teachers. The IMF and the World Bank stopped mentioning their names.

But once Berlin wall collapsed and the Soviet Union was no more, the IMF and World Bank needed no show pieces to persuade others, India; they began to legislate changes. It became the job of the new converts to globalisation within India to evangelise on their behalf.

`Learn from Mexico' said the new converts five years back. But, now, no one mentions Mexico today after its currency became a waste paper against the Dollar.

The collapse of Mexico did not deter our intellectuals. `Let us look at South Korea and Thailand; Let us learn from Malaysia and Indonesia'. They said, "globalise, open out, and make the Rupee fully convertible like they have made their currencies".

But soon enough what happened to South America, happened to South East Asia. In the past 10 months, these South Asian show pieces have been blown to pieces. The Koreans became so upset with globalisation that they forced the `Titanic' film to fold-up within 10 days in Korean threatres. The rural Koreans began throw stones on foreign cars.

In Malaysia, Dr.Mahathir Mohammed sacked his successor - designate who insisted on continuing with unlimited globalisation. He made the Malaysian currency not freely convertible. The currency crisis had a knock even at the mighty Japan and greatly eroded its self-confidence. And, finally, the free currency market crisis hit Russia so devastatingly that the once mighty nation has virtually declared insolvency.

Now, the IMF and World Bank, the Americans and the Indian globalisers have lost all their show pieces.

Now the Wall Street Journal and the Economist, The Time and the Newsweek are today speaking in the language of who ? Hold your breath, the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch.

While it took 70 years for socialism to collapse, global capitalism seems to be folding up in less than 10 years, as Swami Vivekananda said, living a few hours of exhultant and exhuberant dominance, then vanishing like ripples on the face of waters.

Proclaiming that global capitalism has failed, `The Newsweek' writes, `But global capitalisms failure demands a deeper explanation ...... spreading capitalism is not simply an exercise in economic engineering. It is an assault on other nations' culture and politics that almost guarantees a collision'.

But when the swadeshi thinkers in India said the very samething for the last seven years, our intellectuals said: "these fellows do not know economics, they are talking about culture". Someone even said more arrogantly, "if the Swadeshi spokesmen were to be regarded as economists, well, I could be called a Bharatnatyam dancer". His arrogance is matched only by the arrogance of the country in which he lives.

Look at what the Chief mouthpiece of Western intellectualism, the Economist, has to say: "Washington's dream of a quick move to global financial liberalisation is in ruins. It is hard to believe that just a year ago the IMF was trumpeting a new global commitment to unfettered capital flows. Almost all observers now concede that premature liberalisation of capital markets (often pushed by the IMF itself) was one cause of the currency crisis".

This is the same disaster which the dream budget of Chidambaram was commending to the country - the full convertibility of the Indian Rupee.

We escaped the fate of Thailand and Malaysia, not because of our liberalisers, but inspite of them. They could not push India into the disaster of free convertibility as fast as they wanted.

The one question that everyone asks is: `how did India and China escape the collapse'. The only answer everyone gives is: `It is because they did not globalise fast enough'.

Wall Street Journal now commends fixed exchange rate for the whole World. Paul Kruggman cites India as the model for the World.

But does he know that we are a model because Chidambarams and Monteks - and their intellectual clones - failed? Because of their failure, we are a model. If they had succeeded, we would have been where Indonesia and Thailand are.

`The Economist' does not stop at that. It accuses the IMF with behaving stunningly arrogantly' towards developing countries. It charges the US government with forcing countries to `obey the IMF'. These are all the idioms of those who oppose globalisation in India.

So the Western intellectuals have shifted their position. Predictably our intellectuals will follow - of course after a decent interval.

The lesson is obvious.

Rabindranath Tagore said God has addressed distinct set of questions to each nation. No nation can answer its questions by copying the answer papers of others.

What the IMF and World Bank the US and its intellectual counterparts in India have been doing is to copy the suggested answers of the West for the questions confronting India.

So, the World has no model for India. By refusing to accept a model, India has become a model for the World. Now Malaysias and Indonesias follow India.

The next lesson follows. Keep a safe distance from globalisation.