One of the luckiest things in my life was that I decided to do a solo backpack to northern India in December 2019. We all know what had happened afterwards. The skies closed.
Check out my adventure in India at: https://weesertan.blogspot.com/search/label/Travel%3A%20India
To start with, I had always wanted to visit New Delhi, and am a huge fan of Indian cuisine. Tell me which Malaysian doesn't like roti canai or nasi briyani. Secondly, I am totally mesmerized by the Indian civilization, history and culture. Lastly, I have several friends from my time in Glasgow based in India. I took the chance to visit them.
I stumbled upon this book, and it has been a terrific read.
Credits to NLB Singapore, Clementi branch
The Rise of Goliath - Twelve disruptions that changed India (after independence) is like a modern day history of India. Fantastically written by AK Bhattacharya (AKB). It covers the days of Nehru up until Modi.
You can't talk about India without the Partition, which is the first disruption. AKB presented many facts unknown to me, such as Jinnah was initially a Congress member, and was a nationalistic moderate that promote a Hindu-Muslim unity and a united India. By 1930, he lost his influence, left the Congress, and went to London to practice law, before coming back to lead the Muslim League. He never trusted the Congress again.
There were pros and cons for both India and Pakistan after independence. India saw 24% of its total land area being hived off to Pakistan (including East Bengal which became Bangladesh from 1971). This meant that there were less land per person in India and more land per person in Pakistan. Of the total population in an undivided India was estimated at 390 million, of which about 60 million went to Pakistan. While Pakistan got the land, India got 90% of industrial establishment. Textiles, chemicals, cotton mills, silk, cement, sugar mills, heavy engineering factories mostly remained in India after Partition.
Kashmir remains a contentious issue between India and Pakistan today, more than seven decades after Partition. This is a story by itself though.
Post independence, Nehru went for a stream of nationalization projects, and pushed for a welfare state and socialistic economy. This was a time when industrialist like GD Birla, JRD Tata, Purshottamdas Thakurdas and Walchand Hirachand played important roles.
Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister in 1966-77 and 1980-84 when she was assassinated by her body guards. Operation Blue Star is itself a story for the ages. Based on this book, Gandhi is a both and shrewd politician. The Green Revolution helped solve the issue of rice crops, while more nationalization projects kicked in, creating waves of disruption in the banking, oil and coal mining sector. She was toppled in court in Feb 1975 due to her involvement in employing a government servant Yashpal Kapoor to campaign for her during 1971's election. Her election to parliament was declared void!
Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in June 1975, one of the most dangerous disruption in post-independence India. It was Gandhi's political response to a political challenge. She and her son Sanjay Gandhi, the heir apparent who had no constitutional authority ran the government with a small group of ministers.
After lifting the emergency in 1977, she loss the election in 1977 and led to the formation of the first non-Congress government. Emergency rule galvanized the opposition parties. Gandhi actually won the next election in 1980 and was elected Prime Minister the second time. The bounce back was because she readily acknowledge her defeat and committed herself to democracy. Sent to jail after the defeat, she gained huge voter's sympathy.
The 1990's saw the heroics of Finance Minister Manmohan Singh who later became Prime Minister.
Modi came to power and is still in power today. The biggest disruption that happened was the demonetization program in November 2016. AKB was able to explain how Modi and his most trusted advisors pulled this off. The main objective was to rid off black market and counterfeit money.
What a story!
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I have been fortunate to work with colleagues from India. One of the true qualities that I learned is the ability to remain calm and composed even during supposedly critical situations. In life, it's good to not take things too seriously too often.
Take care my friends, as Malaysia is opening up for cross-state travels.
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