The world’s largest democracy now features a burgeoning middle class, whose new-found economic and social freedoms are light years away from the old developmental state with its bureaucratic straitjacket that bound the economy before economic reform took hold. The Indian middle class displays a growing appetite for consumer goods, and is realising its hope of participating in the global economy as one of its most enthusiastic entrants. The idea that India’s adventurous middle class will act as the engine propelling the country onto the world stage may downplay the enormous challenges that lie ahead for managing the Indian economy and society.

But the process, to some at least, now seems virtually unstoppable.

Ashima Goyal points out that the Indian labour market is expected to absorb 12 million young workers a year over the next five years. That will require a 10 per cent rate of GDP growth — though growth has slipped back recently. In addition, some of the 300 million or so Indians living below the poverty line will have to transfer to higher-productivity employment. By way of comparison, the impact of unemployment from the global financial crisis in economically advanced countries only affected 22.5 million workers. The availability of capital for investment is roughly 40 per cent of GDP, with a ratio of savings to GDP of between 32 and 36 per cent and net capital inflow through the current account deficit of between 2 and 4 per cent of GDP. Given India’s capital-output ratio, this investment should continue to support a 10 per cent rate of growth.

India’s continuing economic growth also has strategic implications — and a potential to provide stability in this otherwise volatile region.

Yet, India continues to face many problems, among them its struggle to cope with enduring forms of social and economic inequality. The struggles and challenges lie not only in improving the country’s decaying infrastructure and mammoth, but stagnant, public service. They also lie in initiating new policy measures and state-led interventions aimed at addressing acute problems of poverty, malnutrition and gender imbalance, and infusing the education sector with dynamic ideas and practices. These, in turn, must be designed to enhance skill formation in order to capitalise on the so-called demographic dividend — an important foundation for India’s future.

Among India’s many achievements is the resilience of Indian democracy despite the corruption that continues to plague Indian institutions. As Doron and Nelson observe, Indian democracy may not be perfect, but the debates that raged until at least the 1980s about whether it would survive have now been firmly put to bed.

It may be tempting to dismiss the claim that India has ‘maintained its unity while celebrating her many diversities’ as just another cliché, yet behind it lie some substantial ideas. ‘The cynic may find that India’s ‘unity’ consists of a diversity of chronic ills: poverty, inequality, decaying infrastructure and endemic corruption — ‘unity in adversity’, perhaps’, say Doron and Nelson. But India’s achievements in the face of such adversities are remarkable. ‘These achievements include regular elections, facilitated by an impressive Election Commission; a robust constitution; critical media; and a vibrant public sphere with many civil society institutions’.

Some aspects of unity are under threat, with the south and west becoming noticeably more prosperous than the north and east, for example, and the middle classes looking more to global values and challenging Indian values. On the one hand, the unity of the Indian state certainly offers economic opportunities, and with less upheaval and insecurity than would otherwise be experienced on a continent of many nations, not simply a federation. On the other hand, the fear of giving in to any separatist movement, especially in the Maoist belt and Kashmir, has led to instability and suffering.

‘Can such diversity withstand the onslaught of industrial growth and global capitalism? And for the poor to benefit from ‘trickle-down’ development, must India become homogeneous?’, ask Doron and Nelson.

India may not be alone but it uniquely poses many challenges to ‘grand theories’ of democracy and the idea that one size fits all. As it now hitches its fortunes to European models of nationalism and market capitalism — models that are facing crises and questioning in the regions where they first emerged and came to dominate — India may well be wise to galvanise its home-grown potential for solving the country’s own problems. It may also be served better, as Doron and Nelson suggest, by allowing its ‘million mutinies’ to continue ‘churning its society and polity’ in finding directions for the future.

Peter Drysdale is Editor of the East Asia Forum.