It’s time for India to exit the British Commonwealth

The Commonwealth Games (CWG) are finally over, and they were not as disastrous as we feared. There were moments of epiphany: for instance, the brilliant running of Ashwini Akkunji in the 4 x 400m women’s relay — she caught up with a surging Nigerian, and enabled anchor Mandeep Kaur to pull away to an unexpected and well-deserved win. But such sublime moments were few and far between. The persistent image that remains is the collapse of the foot overbridge, or the muddy pawprints of a dog on a mattress. How long do you actually expect these structures to survive? The answer: not long.

Why was India able to hold the 1982 Asian Games — a much bigger and more significant event — with less fuss and more competence? That was at a time when India was hermit-like, insulated from the world, yet it wasn’t a fiasco. Why was it so much worse in this globalised era?

Is there tangible value in hosting major events? The Olympics in Barcelona in 1992 did much for Spain’s economy; but Los Angeles in 1984 just about broke even, and it is believed the losses from Athens in 2004 almost caused Greece’s subsequent near-bankruptcy. These games are risky: no wonder there are only three bidders for the 2018 Winter Olympics.

In Delhi’s case, estimates are that Rs70,000 crore (about $15 billion) were spent, and the official claim is that the Games will have an ‘impact’ of $5 billion. In other words, $10 billion vanished!

That’s the difference between the 1982 Asiad and the 2010 CWG: the professionalisation of grand larceny.

And it is money that this country could ill afford. The new Global Hunger Index suggests that India is worse off than eight of the poorest African nations. How many schools, universities, and kilometres of road could Rs70,000 crore have built? Where is the government’s touching concern for the alleged aam aadmi?

The absurdity of India’s so-called ‘hybrid economy’ is in full view: a bizarre chimera of capitalism and socialism. It combines the worst elements of both — crony capitalism and the dead hand of central planning — with the virtues of neither.

There is also a combination of large-scale corruption and incompetence. This is the true downside of the ‘mixed economy’. People will tolerate corruption if there is competence — for instance, China is very corrupt, but they do get things done. India is unique in being extremely corrupt, and extremely inefficient at the same time.

The incompetence has become systematised in jugaad, that is ingenuity in the face of obstacles. But this is not innovation. In fact, jugaad is the enemy of progress, because it lulls you into a false sense of complacency. It is the equivalent of pulling an all-nighter on the eve of the exam, while the more organised student would have finished earlier and slept well. The inability to plan is endemic in India. It is a clear result of the lack of leadership.

British imperial rule has been replaced by the rule of brown sahibs who are equally adept at looting India. Perhaps this is why it makes a weird sort of sense for India to continue in the British Commonwealth: the empire continues, except that the dramatis personae have changed.

Otherwise, there is a good question as to whether India should be in the Commonwealth at all. It is, after all, a club that celebrates perhaps the most brutal empire the world has ever seen: it is astonishing how callously the British caused up to 30 million famine deaths in the 1890s (see Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino famines and the Making of the Third World by Mike Davis) and several million famine deaths in the 1940s (see Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II by Madhusree Mukherjee).

Why does India need this club? India has other connections with many of the major countries there. Britain counts for increasingly little: it is a non-entity. Canada is important for its mineral wealth, so is Australia, but let us note that both are refusing to provide uranium for India’s misbegotten nuclear plans.

South Africa is a potential great power, but India is already engaged with them in the South-South palavers. Then, going by the medals table at the CWG, there’s Nigeria, Kenya, Malaysia, Singapore, Scotland, Samoa, mostly in the G77.

All in all, it is abhorrent that India should willingly embrace an empire that treated it most brutally. It is time to exit the Commonwealth: India gains little from it. Moreover, it is time the government stopped wasting taxpayers’ money on quixotic projects that end up merely fattening the offshore accounts of the well-connected. It is time to demand accountability and performance, not mere slogans, from the government.