Still Shining India

The paradoxes that abound in a rich country with poor people are legion, and the Indian condition is no exception. The yawning chasm between the cruel realities on the ground for the majority and the rarefied heights in which the thriving classes luxuriate was aptly illustrated at the recent Aero India 2007 show. The premier – and only – air show of Southasia had apparently 'arrived'. Taking place 7-11 February at the Indian Air Force base in Bangalore, Aero India 2007 presented some of the most advanced machines currently available to men and states – from luxurious private jets, to fighters, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, light combat helicopters and Multirole Transport Aircraft. The Americans, expectedly, showed up in full force, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon. Ironically, today the market for the mighty machines for the air is in the countries of the global South. While there was military hardware aplenty, Aero India was less about militarism than about objects of desire, made available to those classes that see their own development as particularly removed from the process of attending to the concerns of the great unwashed masses.

The atmospherics emanating from the breathless Indian national media could not have been better. Lakshmi Mittal had recently bought up Arcelor Steel, Tata had just taken over the Anglo-Dutch Corus, and K M Birla's Hindalco was soon to follow with an all-cash buyout of the American Novelis. Greeted as a unique hero at Aero India, Ratan Tata, at 69, became the oldest man in the world to fly an F-16, and his sortie received blanket coverage. Although no price was too high in Tata's takeover of Corus, the headline- and caption-writer forgot to mention his reluctance to pay fair compensation for the land his multinational had acquired in Singur. This dual approach to economic acquisition by the state-supported corporate class typifies the Shining India culture that was the undoing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2004 general election. Evidently, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance under Manmohan Singh has not yet learned the lesson either: that chasing the stars in the firmament of an illusory Still Shining India can bring grief to both the ruling party and the populace at large.