The Reluctant Tiger

BBC Radio 4's Analysis: India, the Reluctant Tiger, will be broadcast on Thursday, 28th February 2008 at 20:30 and repeated on Sunday 2nd March at 21.30 GMT

Can India become an economic super-power?

Read the programme transcript

Having got off to a much slower start than China, the Indian economy is now growing at a rate of 9 per cent a year, three times as fast as its Western competitors.

The most visible result is that the Indian middle class has doubled in size in the last 7 years and now numbers 100 million, bigger than the entire population of Germany.

Dr. Zareer Masani asks if this enough to make India an economic super-power and whether the fruits of growth are filtering down to the wider mass of the country’s population, especially in rural areas.

He revisits his homeland to talk to politicians and economic planners, business leaders and their critics. They include Montek Singh Ahluwalia, head of the Government’s top economic policy unit, Professor Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize-winning economist and journalist P. Sainath, a ferocious critic of India’s wealth divide.

Urban-rural divide

All the claims made for India shining, India rising are absolutely true... just for a very narrow section of the population… If you belong to the bottom 40%, you are experiencing levels of deprivation that you never dreamed of P. Sainath

Dr. Masani asks if India’s IT-led growth will fuel a similar expansion of large-scale manufacturing industries, which can create the mass employment the country needs.

And he examines the urban-rural divide and considers whether Indian farmers can join in the new affluence, or if as some critics claim they are literally being driven to suicide by new economic risks and pressures.

The programme identifies the key challenges for policy-makers as being India’s notoriously poor infrastructure and public services, which are creating serious shortages of everything from water and electricity to skilled labour.

Zareer Masani revisits his homeland for Analysis

But can Indian politicians and administrators rise to the task, and is democracy a help or a hindrance in implementing the reforms that are so urgently needed?

Interviewees:

Montek Singh Ahluwallia head of the Indian Government's Planning Commission

P. Sainath Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu, author of Everyone Loves a Good Drought

Suman Bery head, National Council of Applied Economic Research, India

Amartya Sen Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University

Anand Mahindra Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra Limited

Phiroz Vandrevala Executive Director, Tata Consultancy Services

Robyn Meredith correspondent, Forbes Magazine

Naina Kidwai Chief Executive for India, Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation

Presenter: Dr Zareer Masani
Producer: Smita Patel
Editor: Hugh Levinson