60th birthday - Poverty only thing holding India back

INDIA is celebrating 60 years of independence and though comparisons of scale between Ireland and India are meaningless, there are many parallels in our histories, some illuminating, some unfortunate.

We were both once ruled by the same colonial power, we both struggled for independence and, when we achieved it, struggled to establish successful economies.

Both countries were riven by bitter conflict in the years immediately after realising independence, religious differences too often being the catalyst for carnage.

Both newly independent countries were dominated by strong individuals during their formative years; Éamon de Valera in Ireland and Jawaharlal Nehru in India. Both men aspired to economic self-sufficiency and both believed strongly in protectionism.

Both countries also looked to a time before they were conquered by Britain. Ireland longed for a rich culture forced underground. India felt itself an economic power laid waste, pointing out that in the 18th century, India had the biggest economy in the world, larger than all of the Americas and western Europe put together.

Ironically, many Irish people served the British cause in India, denied opportunity by colonialism at home they helped impose it abroad.

As we enjoy a level of affluence barely imagined possible by the generation who founded this Republic, so too do a minority of India’s one billion citizens.

Incredible growth is running parallel with demands for land reform, which would allow millions of rural dwellers to own land they have worked for generations, giving them the possibility of escaping dreadful poverty.

India’s rapidly expanding IT sector employs 1.3 million people from a workforce of 400 million; a UN report this week put India above only Uganda when it comes to teacher absenteeism and as a result 40% of Indians cannot read or write. Despite being a nascent economic world power 49% of Indian children are malnourished, 1,000 die of diarrhoea every day.

As our Shannon fiasco has shown the need to balance economic opportunity with social obligation is a challenge facing all of the modern world.

Modern India is a victory for pluralism united around a democratic consensus, an achievement all of the subcontinent can be proud of.

Confronting the chronic poverty endemic in India and so many other post-colonial countries would make it an achievement the world could be proud of.