As I write this, the news has come that the High Court in Kerala has overlooked the concerns of the Reserve Bank of India and given green light to the proposal to set up “Islamic Banks” in the state. Obviously, India’s policy towards Israel is going to come under increasing strains, given the known antipathy of these elements and their myriad supporters in major political parties surviving on Muslim votes towards that country, the only genuine democracy in vast region stretching from North Africa to South Asia.
The Arab unrest could have some other implications on the Indian polity, which are not necessarily bad per se. More than the autocracy, the unrest is against the rampant corruption that the regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen have legitimized and the riches of the country that the rulers there have diverted to safe bank accounts in the Western banks. But then this is not the only semblance of similarity with India. More important is the fact that almost all these rulers in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen have had prepared enough grounds that they would be succeeded by their sons in power.
Of course, Mubarak and Ali Abdullah Salehnow (Yemen’s President for the last 32 years) have now promised that their sons would not succeed them. But people do not believe them. This has got great meaning for India whose polity is systematically witnessing the consolidation of the dangerous trend of dynastic politics. As was once written by this columnist, India has many more political dynasties today than it had in the past. Taken together, there might be at least 1,000 to 1,500 political families in India that have successfully promoted dynastic successions at various levels, national or provincial. In other words, India is now politically controlled by 1000 to 1500 families, though not necessarily all of them are of equal importance.
Last but not least is the fact that the immediate pretexts for the unrest in the streets of Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen have been rising unemployment of their youth and uncontrolled food inflation. India is not faring better on these two fronts. Our political leadership seems least interested in controlling the food inflation: onion prices rising as high as 286 percent, that of vegetables 107.6 percent and potatoes 47 percent over the last one year. And this despite the fact that farmers producing them are not the beneficiaries and the prices have come down considerably in the wholesale markets.
All this is not suggest that India is going to explode. Unlike that of the Arabs, our democratic roots have been much stronger despite our many faults. We regularly change our governments peacefully. We have got many more outlets that absorb our anger and frustrations. And most importantly, we have a powerful and independent judiciary to protect our fundamental rights. But it would be just as wrong to assume that we have nothing to learn from the causes of the revolt in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen.
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