For development
triumphant in an English spelling bee or a candidate who has come second after some Chinese student in a math Olympiad. These are mimic men who have no sense of the original. An India which produced a Bose, a Ramanujan, a Raman or a Chandra now has to be content with these exam achievers. Original research as risk-taking of adventure has been replaced by this tutorial college mentality. Our IIMS, our IITS are low on research, yet claim to be centres of excellence, of creativity.
India can be open to the world, display a hospitality to ideas and yet create some of its own, beyond the jugaad models it puts up for display. Originality need not be in English because the world will find a way to access it. India can be a centre for world thought if it becomes the home for dissent, marginality, eccentricity, for defeated knowledge to be recreated. India should be the home of all disappearing languages and knowledge, for crafts which now die through indifference. India as translator and philosophical interpreter to the world can help us rethink the cities we need.
I think where India has dulled is in the act of middle class leadership. We still inflate ourselves on old ideas of patriarchy, masculinity, of hawkishness, of rhetorical patriotism while our heritage and our informal economy are what attract people. An India of ideas is an India of the informal economy where new notions of citizenship and survival are invented every day.
Take a simple idea. When visitors come, the modern complex bores them. They go to the old city for stimulation. We have to rework our idea of inventiveness to become a society that invites and celebrates difference.