Delhi (15 page)

When I finally found the right room, the office itself was pristine. I perused an accommodating
New Scientist
while the bureaucrat deftly dealt with two complainants in a mixture of Hindi and English, fielded three more phone calls, and offered tea. A silent peon brought it on a tray. It was jaw-achingly sugary. I could see how the masterfully vague politician had developed diabetes from the campaign trail.

The bureaucrat himself was unusual. No paunch here: he was lean, with a firm dry handshake and cheekbones. He had the usual affability, though, combined with a reticence that was easy to miss at first.

‘Isn't it difficult working within such a big and complex government?'

He smiled. ‘There are many ministries, yes, and over seventy-five ministers at the Union level. Energy policy earlier almost fell under one single ministry. Now there are ministries of power, coal, mines, petroleum and gas, renewable energy. Then the other important ones must be consulted on some such matters: the ministries of finance, railways, environment, rural development, law, fertilizers (they use gas), steel (they need coal), and tribal affairs (because of land). And, of course, the Planning Commission and the Prime Minister's Office.'

He smiled again, showing very white teeth. ‘But we all work together very well.'

My eyebrows were just raising of their own accord when the phone rang. He answered in quick-fire Hindi, slotted it back. The phone rang again.

I tried again: ‘What about the complications of federalism?'

A third smile. ‘The [provincial] states are usually very helpful. We all work together very well. More tea?'

The bureaucrat's reticence could not camouflage the reality. For all that it aspires to be a faceless state, India has not escaped the personal. Contemporary Dilliwalas love to hate the bureaucracy, especially because of its reputation for corruption and timewasting. The police, especially the railway police, are particularly notorious.

Of course, India is far from the only Asian country with a corruption problem. In 2012 Transparency International placed it joint-94th of 174 countries, just below China and Thailand but above Vietnam and Indonesia. Some commentators believe the worries can be overstated in any case. After all, industrializing America was very corrupt, with its robber barons and grubby ‘machine politics' in cities like Chicago. Corruption may not
cause
poverty; it may be a symptom of development, conquerable after but not before growth.

This, though, is not a popular line of argument with the Indian middle classes. And in 2011 the city shook with their wrath.

Jantar Mantar—the name is loosely equivalent to hocuspocus—is perhaps Delhi's oddest sight. Just off the shopping strips of Connaught Place, it presents a series of strange and violently red-orange structures. Staircases and windows to nothing, fixed cog teeth, a sort of crap coliseum. The largest of all looks not unlike a stylized and flattened cartoon of female genitalia. Two cones prevented ascent, but teenage boys posed for photographs at the perineum.

These structures are in fact gigantic astronomical instruments, staring hopefully up at sun, moon, and planets. Jantar Mantar is also a traditional place of protest. It was here that Anna Hazare, a bespectacled 70-something with unusually fleshy ears, began a fast to demand an ombudsman—the Lokpal—to peer inside the grubby recesses of the state.

The middle classes roared with approval. End the red tape, the grasping hand in the national till! They registered their disapproval of the state on
Ipaidabribe.com
—disproportionately popular with the IT crowd of Bangalore, as one might expect—and imitated the activist's sleek white hat. Sales of the topi, formerly an anachronistic bit of headgear, rocketed: in the awkward phrase, it had made the transition ‘from mass to class'.

There are different brands of corruption, though, and Anna Hazare's movement focused largely on only one. The middle classes agree that corruption by petty bureaucrats = bad. These low-level officials make life way more difficult than it needs to be, slowing down files and passport processing, demanding extra signatures and levelling mysterious fines. They are easy to hate.

The commonly heard call from elites is for a turn to
meritocracy
. Along with the cry to streamline the state, they have a second demand: get rid of reservations. The reservation policy perhaps is the world's oldest affirmative action programme, built into the constitution in 1950 for the most deprived and victimized sections of Indian society, the Dalits (former untouchables) and Scheduled Tribes (or
adivasis
, the 100 million ‘original inhabitants' of the remotest jungly corners of the country). It was designed to facilitate their access to the levers of power, by ‘reserving' quotas of seats for them in the bureaucracy, elected assemblies and public universities.

The policy was famously meant to be removed after a trial period. Instead it has been retained—and expanded. In 1989 a weak government sought to implement the earlier conclusions of the Mandal Commission, which recommended extending reservations to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs)—a vast collection of 27 percent of the population, selected more in terms of caste background than economic poverty and including some extremely large and powerful caste communities. Upper-caste students responded with protests and violence. Many continue to argue that reservations are rotten, blaming them for the divisive caste parties and corruption. Positions are sold, and the new bigshots from these formerly dispossessed groups have set about seizing the spoils of power.

Reservations have not ended the poverty of Dalits and
adivasis
—they may even have been a distraction, if an inspiring one for some. There are far, far more people than state jobs, and it is clear that meaningful change must come through improved health and education rather than the tiny formal economy. But the call for meritocracy may be misplaced.

Meritocracy can be a veil for dominance by the same old elites, smug and isolated from the rest of society—all the more so as inequality continues to grow. And let's not pretend that the opposite of reservation is open competition. After all, also widespread is a more discreet but potentially more pernicious form of corruption, a form that gets far less middle-class attention—because, of course, it's often they who benefit. I might not need affirmative action or a briefcase of cash to get my job; I may only need a phone call. Delhi is full of rich kids who rely on their parents to get ahead.

The city's slogan might be: ‘Do you know who my father is?'

Squatting in the heart of New Delhi, it is impossible not to wonder: is India really the world's next superpower? For all these flaws—its size, complexity, stubborn traditions, and unwieldy head—it is common to compare India to a heavy plant-eating mammal. The shelves burst with elephant-themed books on India and other Asian beasts—
The Dragon and the Elephant; The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cellphone
—all asking questions like
Does the Elephant Dance?
Delhi's greatness, its world-city aspirations, hinge on the answer not only at home, but on the international stage.

There are several crucial things one should understand about this Elephant, the gladiatorial
Elephas maximus indicus
to his friends. Without further ado, here are ten points to push this already clichéd analogy beyond its breaking point.

1.
Do not be fooled by the size of the Elephant's head
. India's foreign service is terrifyingly small, smaller than those of New Zealand and Singapore. This might help to explain why its diplomatic profile is less illustrious than one might expect. This does not mean that the Elephant is decisive, however. On every issue New Delhi hosts a cacophony of voices, which sometimes leads observers to claim India doesn't even have a foreign policy strategy.

Incidentally, it should be noted that there are documented cases of entire elephant herds being led by blind old leaders.

2. Elephants have very long memories
. Contrary to popular belief, the Indian Elephant is extremely thin-skinned and holds grudges. India and China are often bracketed together by journalists and by Goldman Sachs' BRIC acronym, but they are old enemies. In 1962 they went to war; the Indian foreign policy establishment still nurses humiliating memories half a century on. India shelters the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile, while China stands accused of harbouring and aiding India's Maoist ‘Naxalite' rebels (after all, Maoists are often found to have goods stamped with MADE IN CHINA). Other historically unpopular targets include Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund. And Indians really haven't forgotten that whole colonialism thing either.

When old enemies insult the proud Elephant (especially Pakistan, with its dangerous habit of terrorist provocation), certain Indian males may enter a state of enraged testosterone-fuelled frenzy known as
musth
. They become extremely aggressive, make loud rumbling noises, and threateningly wave their tusks (see 4 below). However, usually such behaviour is confined to the army—which allegedly has a blitzkrieg-style doctrine, Cold Start, to unleash in case of Pakistani provocation—and to the bars I frequent of an evening.

The other side of this proud ability to hold grudges is that the Elephant is also an incorrigible moralizer. Indians from Gandhi on have been famously self-righteous. India used to try to depict itself as the head of the non-aligned movement, neither for the capitalist West nor the Soviet Union (and China). It purported to offer an idealistic alternative to the cynicism and power-hungriness of international relations. Even now the world's diplomats roll their eyes when they spot the Elephant in the room, and bitch over the watercooler about the faintly sanctimonious way the Elephant tends to go on in multilateral negotiations.

3. On the other hand,
elephants are not especially radical animals
, which is why they are so favoured by the US Republican Party. The pachyderm is pragmatic; as Thoreau chortled, ‘Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys.'

The Elephant is a proud and hierarchical creature. He believes he is one of the biggest, oldest animals in the Hobbesian jungle and wants to be recognized for the titan he is—not in any revolutionary way, but along well-established lines. He has set his eyes firmly upon a grand prize: a seat on the United Nations Security Council. India wants to be one of the world's big boys, internationally respected with big boys' discounts on oil, trade, and the environment.

The Elephant also knows that money talks. For all the tension, India remains warily fixated on China and the example it provides for other emergent powers: if you're big enough, rich enough, and tough enough, the other big boys have little choice but to respect you. If we're honest, half of today's ‘great powers' (my motherland included) are penniless aristocrats. They might be snobby about new money, but they'll hold their nose and marry it. While I was in Delhi, British prime minister David Cameron came for one of his not infrequent visits. He gushed about the ‘great relationship' between the two like a wannabe stepmom, flattering Indian business leaders. My Indian friends just shrugged.

4.
The Elephant knows that size matters
. India has accordingly decided to get muscles. Despite two decades of economic growth and now officially being a ‘middle income country', more of the world's poorest people live in India than in any other country. The government has priorities other than poverty alleviation, however. On 19 April 2012, the English-language newspapers overflowed with joy once more. India had successfully tested a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile, named Agni-V after the Hindu god of fire.

A decent army, navy and airforce are key, perhaps especially the latter. The Indian Ocean looks like an increasingly important arena, with Chinese bases across the Ocean and on the Pakistani shore—the so-called ‘string of pearls' around India's neck—and Chinese investment and workers in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Burma. In this calculus, nuclear weapons are the protein shake of international relations. Conventional weapons remain its bread and butter. India is now the greatest importer of arms in the world—something perhaps encouraged by the enormous opportunities for corruption presented by secretive, lucrative defence spending. (Shortly after Agni-V, Britain stopped sending India aid. It continues to welcome Indian arms dealers with open arms and award ceremonies.)