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Fragility is a state of affairs, consisting of many economic, social, demographic, political, environmental, and security-related pressure points that either strengthen or weaken a nation state. Countries around the world have been subject to various pressures over time which have led to changes in their fragility. If fragility is left unchecked, the nation can slide towards civil war and break up.

The overall fragile states index (FSI) is derived from twelve subindices which are: demographic pressures, economic inequality, economy, external intervention, factionalized elites, group grievance, human flight and brain drain, human rights, public services, security apparatus, state legitimacy, and refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs).

According to the 2018 FSI, the five most fragile countries are South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria and the Central African Republic in decreasing order of fragility. At the other end of the spectrum we have strong democracies such as the Nordic countries, Singapore and other advanced countries.

India’s overall fragility increased from the ninety-third rank in 2006 to the seventy-second rank in 2018. India’s slide by twenty-one ranks over this period was mainly driven by uneven development (such as rising income inequality), human flight and brain drain, state legitimacy, demographic pressures and security apparatus.

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These are explained below:

Uneven development considers inequality of income distribution regardless of the rate of economic growth. India has one of the most unequal distributions of income in the world. The uneven development indicator not only considers actual inequality but makes qualitative assessment on perceptions of inequality that can feed group grievance or reinforce tensions between groups. The indicator also measures economic opportunity such as the extent of free education, equal education opportunity, fair housing for the poor, job training, etc.

Research shows that income inequality in India has increased significantly since the mid-1980s. When income inequality worsens at such a pace, it is bound to lead to an increase in fragility. Income inequality is typically measured based on income data collected through official surveys of households. Where governance is weak and black money income is high, official surveys understate the income of the upper income groups because they do not report their actual income (including the black money component).

In other words, actual income inequality which takes account of black money incomes is significantly worse than income inequality based on official surveys of household incomes. This, in turn, understates the uneven development component of the FSI.

Human flight and brain drain is partially evidenced by the rising number of applicants for US H1-B visas, the increasing number of illegal Indians trying to enter the US from Mexico, and the rising tide of Indians seeking to emigrate.

The illegal immigrants are mostly poor Indians with little or no skills. In contrast, recorded immigration involves skilled and educated workers looking for better opportunities abroad. These immigrants are mostly located in India’s larger cities. In fact, human flight and brain drain are happening in spite of the higher economic growth rates in the postliberalization era.

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State legitimacy considers the extent of openness of the government (i.e., transparency of operations). How open are the elites, who are close to power (called ruling elites), to transparency with regard to their business operations and taxes? Are they held accountable for their actions, for corruption, profiteering and marginalizing, persecuting, or otherwise excluding opposition groups? Other aspects of state legitimacy consider the population’s level of confidence in state institutions, whether riots and uprisings occur and with what frequency, and whether people consider elections to be free and fair.

State legitimacy also assesses the scope and frequency of political violence, armed insurgencies, and terrorism. India has had a long history of various armed insurgencies, political violence and riots. A very low score on the political stability and absence of violence component of the WGI is entirely consistent with a worsening score on the state legitimacy sub-indicator of the FSI. When I was attending college in Calcutta in the early 1970s, the city was racked by violence perpetuated by the Naxalites. Prominent signs and wall paintings of Mao Zedong were appearing all over the city proclaiming ‘Lal Salaam’ (Red Salute) or ‘Chairman Mao is our chairman’. Even at the ripe old age of eighteen, I could not figure out why Chairman Mao should be our chairman! This was shortly followed by some other communist group marching down the streets shouting in Bengali ‘Amar Naam, Tomar Naam, Vietnam’ (literally, my name and your name is Vietnam, implying there is solidarity between the common man and the revolution in Vietnam). Although these ridiculous sound bites failed to resonate with the masses, it would not be wise of the government to ignore the reasons why these kinds of grievances exist in our society.

So, even after systematically destroying the Naxalite movement, there are still pockets of Naxal activity in some states in India. This is true for other insurgent movements as well. The government has tried to address the legitimate causes for grievance with some degree of success. However, there are other reasons or demands which simply cannot be accepted by any democratically elected government under the Constitution of India. Today, West Bengal’s reputation for dirty politics has sunk to a new low after Mamata Banerjee came to power in 2011.

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Demographic pressures capture population pressures in relation to food supply, access to safe drinking water, energy requirements and other life-sustaining resources. This indicator also considers demographic characteristics such as pressures from high population growth rates or skewed population distributions.

For example, more than half of India’s population is under the age of twenty five. A high proportion of young population is known as a youth bulge or a demographic dividend. But a youth bulge, or sharply divergent rates of population growth among competing communal groups, can have profound social, economic and political effects. Moreover, while a youthful population can be more productive, the youths need to first find employment.

If government policies are not able to encourage the private sector to create more jobs, that demographic dividend can easily turn into a demographic curse. Beyond the population, the indicator also takes into account pressures stemming from natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, floods or drought), and pressures upon the population from environmental hazards.

The main findings for India are that there has been an increase in fragility since the BJP came to power. India was ranked seventy-ninth among 178 countries in overall fragility in 2013, the last full year when the Congress was in power, increasing thereafter to the seventy-second rank in 2018. However, India’s fragility increased even more under the Congress from a rank of ninety-third in 2006 to a rank of seventy-ninth in 2013.

This excerpt from Dev Kar’s India: Still A Shackled Giant has been published with permission from Penguin Random House India.

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