Democracy has transformed the old regional and caste identities. It is democracy, an import from the West, that has made possible the emergence of a modern Indian nation. But the survival of a nation also depends on how well it does economically. The disintegration of the Yugoslav Federation and the USSR is greatly instructive for us. Both disintegrated with the end of the Cold War in 1989, because both were economically declining.

Both were hugely diverse, ethnically, linguistically and religiously, but that is no reason why Yugoslavia and the USSR could not have survived. The United States, Canada and Belgium are also diverse; but they survive as nations.

We could go the Yugoslav way. Of course, had we limped along at the Hindu rate of growth, we would have found it very difficult to continue as one nation. Our diversities would have been accentuated by poor economic performance. But now the high growth rates we are experiencing in recent years present us with another problem: distribution. Today the economic disparity between the regions is sharp and growing. The South and West is doing much better than the North and East. In the corporate world in Mumbai and Ahmedabad people ask, how long do we keep paying for Oriyas and Biharis? There is no eternal India. India as a modern nation is only sixty years old, an infant compared to many nations of older standing.

The writer is Honorary Fellow, CSDS