Aggregation of power and the rise of domination. The late eighties and early nineties marked a change whose impact is only beginning to be felt now. It was the birth and rise of the technology entrepreneur. It was created by the liberalisation framework of Dr Singh, accelerated by population scale reforms of multiple governments, fueled by the dual forces of the technology & globalisation and finally given wings by the Modi govt.
So what exactly did the Modi govt do which earlier govts did not do. Forget the bogus narrative to get votes from the illiterate freebie seekers. That is not for intellectuals. Few actually understand these three points. And they are key:
1. the first is restoring cultural diversity and making the bureaucracy more meritocracy based. Inducting intellectuals laterally from outside of the electoral framework.
2. Ending the raj of the havala banks and disbanding their network of collection and export of money. Few realise that the quantum of money stolen from the Indian economy in the 75 years after independence was more (inflation corrected) than the money siphoned off by the British.
3. Ending the Raj of dynasties, specifically the dominance of pedigreed alumni groups steeped in western thought such as Doon School, St Stephen’s etc and even more elitist places like Kodai, Mussoorie Intnl etc. And replacing those with meritocracy based groups like the IITians.
It is not just the IITians but also other premium grads from say premium medical colleges, IIFT and places like HBTU, UDCT, MBM, CMC, COEP, PEC etc. We know the list and it covers around 200 colleges including some good emerging private colleges like Ashoka and Kria.
Out of these around 10% of the colleges and an indicative 5% of the students are from the IITs. The last 25 years have witnessed the concurrent rise of Brand IIT and Brand India. This is not a coincidence and in fact one would not be wrong in saying that the rise of Brand India as the cart has been pulled by Brand IIT as the horse.
If the half a million IITians were to be a country, they would have a higher per capita income than USA, a higher investment ability than China and more technology prowess than Israel. The only power it would not have is that of tax collection.
That power belongs to Big Tech. By monopolising services (gmail, gmaps, gpay), grabbing eyeballs (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram), stealing your personal data (everyone), peeping into your private lives (Siri, Alexa, Google) – big tech can extract any tax they want at will. With zero evasion, almost zero collection cost and using handcuffs which the users buy on their own with their own money (smartphones and digital connectivity)
When we as the intellectuals of India – work to reinvent India – the starting point is to articulate what is the “conception of a nation state” that is worth pursuing. It is most certainly not a piece of land. Or a part of the population. It is not even natural resources like oil or even gold.
