Russian Revolution inspired Indians and panicked the colonial British administration, though Communism was not to be the force that swept the British out of India.
Some weeks after the October Revolution in Russia, which took place a hundred years ago this month, the great Tamil poet Subramania Bharati wrote Pudiya Russia:
The people are master of their lives,
Their welfare advanced by their own laws.
Lo! In a trice has it arisen.
This is the people’s state they proclaimed,
So that the whole world might know
“Gone are the slaves’ shackles, knew ye all,
No more shall men be a slave”, said they.
Like a thunder-riven wall
Collapsed the Iron Age
Arise ye, the Golden Age.
Translations into English seldom do justice to Bharati’s work. Regardless, it is not hard to see what the explosive events in Russia meant to sympathetic viewers from afar. For Bharati, this was the Golden Age after the Iron Age—when the workers of Russia would emerge from servitude in the iron shackles of industry and oppression, to a golden dawn of self-determination and freedom.
This was just one of numerous hopeful interpretations that subject peoples all over the world drew from the events that took place in Russia. All around Russia, from Turkey to Afghanistan to Iran to India, the events in Petrograd became a beacon of hope. With each Bolshevik statement about self-determination and liberty, nationalist movements all over Asia began to look to Lenin for ideological, political, even military inspiration.
What did the revolution mean to India, Indian politics and Indian political leadership? And how did colonial authorities react to these influences and interpretations?
Archives from the erstwhile India Office of the British government, now housed at the British Library in London, tell a story of confusion and chaos. Files once secret but now declassified tell of an imperial government in India stretched to its wit’s end as the looming spectre of Bolshevism seemed to cast its shadow over the Himalayas at the greatest colony in the world.
File 1229/1920 titled “Russia: Bolshevik menace to India; anti-Bolshevik measures” is a remarkable series of secret telegrams, intelligence despatches and translations of Russian documents procured and translated by British spies and agents, dating from the summer of 1919. The series starts with a message from London to the viceroy to confirm that an “Indian propaganda bureau” was now functioning under a Suhrawardy. Presumably this is a reference to Shahid Huseyn Suhrawardy, later to become prime minister of Bengal and then Pakistan. Suhrawardy, a lecturer at the Imperial University of St Petersburg between the fateful years of 1914 and 1920, not only witnessed the events of the Russian Civil War first-hand, but also taught English to Alexander Kerensky who was later overthrown by Lenin’s Bolsheviks. This message ends with a fervent question of the viceroy: “Have you considered whether special precautions are required to prevent Bolshevik agents from entering India either by sea or across land frontiers, and what measures do you contemplate for countering propaganda?”
The rest of the file is a blow-by-blow account of the British government’s frantic efforts to undermine any and all Bolshevik meddling in India. The question was: How were the Indians responding to these titanic events?
The Russian Revolution was arguably the last in a series of three “Asian” events that energized nationalist leaders in India in the years just before and after World War I. The Meiji Restoration in 1868 and then, to a far greater extent, Japan’s success in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 had become a source of great “Asiatic” pride for Indian leaders such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak. In the Marathi newspaper Kesari, Tilak wrote that Japan’s victory had given a rude shock to the prevailing belief in Europe that “Asiatics lacked the sentiment of nationality and were therefore, unable to hold their own…”
The partition of Bengal added the fuel of outrage to the lambent flame of native self-belief. In India and overseas, a clutch of Indian leaders began to militate against the British government. Tilak was the foremost of those in India. In the early years of the 20th century, Jawaharlal Nehru mentions in his memoirs, “Almost without an exception we were Tilakites or Extremists.” Violent anti-British revolutionaries increasingly became a thorn in the imperial side. So much so that in July 1908, Tilak was sent to prison in Burma on sedition charges.
Far away in Russia, these efforts did not go unnoticed. In an article published in 1908, Lenin wrote in his typical style of “The infamous sentence pronounced by the British jackals on the Indian democrat Tilak—he was sentenced to a long term of exile… this revenge against a democrat by the lackeys of the money-bag evoked street demonstrations and a strike in Bombay.
“There can be no doubt that the age-old plunder of India by the British, and the contemporary struggle of all these “advanced” Europeans against Persian and Indian democracy, will steel millions, tens of millions of proletarians in Asia to wage a struggle against their oppressors which will be just as victorious as that of the Japanese. The class-conscious European worker now has comrades in Asia, and their number will grow by leaps and bounds.”
The British, then, were quite right in keeping an eye on Bolshevik plans for India. As late as 1921, a full two years after that first alarmed telegram, British intelligence reports still considered India the main objective of Bolshevik foreign policy.
Communism would indeed gain a foothold in India, inspiring numerous leaders, establishing communist and socialist political parties, and leading to trade union movements and labour mobilization.
The uprising of million of proletarians, however, was not to be. Communism was not to be the force that swept the British out of India. The Russian Revolution was ultimately not to inspire a revolution of the oppressed in India. Why was this so? A number of theories have been put forward by historians and other scholars writing in the years after Indian independence.
One suggestion is that Bolshevism simply became yet another political movement co-opted by the “big tent” that was the Indian National Congress. Writing in International Socialism in 1977, Barry Pavier cites the example of the Ahmedabad textile workers’ strike of 1918 to highlight how establishment nationalist leaders co-opted workers’ movements and smothered them.
Following the withdrawal of a plague bonus that had been paid out to mill workers in order to keep them in the city after an outbreak, workers in Ahmedabad went on strike. M.K. Gandhi intervened and acted as an intermediary between the mill owners, one of whom was Ambalal Sarabhai, and the workers whose representatives included Anasuya Sarabhai, Ambalal’s sister. Indian politics, thus, appeared far too much like a cosy club.
“The workers’ movement,” Pavier writes, “was totally dominated by the bourgeois nationalists of the Congress… The revolutionary aspect—the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a workers state—appealed to them not at all.”
Another suggestion is that there was quite widespread disagreement among Indian leaders about how to deal with Bolshevik interest in India. Should Indian revolutionaries seek to replicate the Russian Revolution, merely find inspiration in Lenin’s success, or find some in-between route to freedom. As the memoirs of M.N. Roy, previously excerpted in Mint On Sunday, and many early histories of the Communist Party in India show, early Indian communists themselves disagreed on a Communist Indian response to British imperialism.
Third, and perhaps simplest of all, is the explanation that many Indians simply had no idea what was really going on in India. As M.A. Persits has written in his widely quoted Revolutionaries Of India In Soviet Russia, the Indians who perhaps best understood the theory and practice of Leninist revolution in the early years all tended to live outside India. It would be many years before communism in India stepped out of the shadows of the establishment nationalist parties and became a movement with coherence and strength.
Still, that is not to say that at least some Indians didn’t find a way of putting the Bolsheviks to some use. The somewhat amusing story of Awadht Ahmed Hadrami, an Indian agent for seamen in Aden, can be pieced together from a 1923 intelligence file at the British Library. British authorities received a tip-off that Hadrami was a globetrotting agent meeting communist leaders in Europe, Indian revolutionaries in North America, and then sailing to India to transfer funds and information to his local operatives. Instructions were sent to the postmaster in Aden to open every single letter that reached Hadrami’s address. Empire is nothing if not bureaucratic, and the Hadrami file is full of page after page of handwritten notes pertaining to each and every letter Hadrami received. At one point, Hadrami caught wind of the order and asked why his mail was being censored. He had nothing to hide, he said. So he was happy to have his mail opened, but could he at least be present at the post office when it was? The authorities seemed to agree.
Eventually, authorities realized that Hadrami had absolutely nothing to do with communists or Bolsheviks. His travels to Europe and America mostly had to do with business and with the purely humanitarian aim of checking on poor Indian sailors. It later turned out that Hadrami was a frequent target of harassment by competing manpower agents in Aden.
Sensing the red paranoia of the British someone had decided to get Hadrami into some trouble. They decided to spread a rumour that he was a leftist anti-national.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.