Fall Circle Talk explores the promise and heartbreak of India

They say there are two sides to every story, and Tarun Khanna’s October 10 Circle Talk on the dual nature and complex maturation of his homeland was no exception. His hourlong, often interactive lecture, “The Promise and Heartbreak of India,” explored both, from the most populous country in the world’s struggles with inequality to its potential as an economic superpower.

“India, demographically, is about to go through in the next twenty-five years what China went through in the past twenty-five years,” Mr. Khanna said. “China has just been through the most massive boom in modern economic history. If India plays its cards right, it could also see such a massive boom.”

As director of the South Asia Institute at Harvard University and Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School, Mr. Khanna teaches a variety of elective courses, including Contemporary Developing Countries, where students try to ponder solutions to complex social problems. As evidenced by his talk in the Marion D. Campbell Performing Arts Center, India is full of those complex problems.

“India is one of the most unequal countries in the world,” he said. “Where I grew up was a very fancy, affluent community in Mumbai, but right next to our affluent community was one of the biggest slums in India. This is a thematic pestilence on society and something that needs to be addressed. But it is a fact of life.”

Mr. Khanna explored that harsh reality—India’s “heartbreak”—in the first part of his talk. He would often speak directly to and with the Groton student audience (“The one thing that’s common with all the classes I like to teach,” he said. “They’re all interactive.”) or share videos on the auditorium's screen. 

The first such clip examined India’s massive Kumbh Mela gathering, what he called “the largest gathering of humanity on the planet,” where more than 220 million worshippers create a temporary city two-thirds the size of Manhattan on the banks where three mystical rivers meet, and seek out the holy waters that promise to wash away sin.

With a gathering of this size come myriad challenges, the least of which are stampedes. Today, law enforcement officials use artificial intelligence to monitor video feeds taken from helicopters and drones, analyzing density with algorithms to inform public safety teams about areas in greatest danger of being overcrowded. Mr. Khanna said it’s a perfect example of how modern India is building upon its past.

“You see a tradition that’s at least 5,000 years old and then you see the juxtaposition with the modern,” he explained. “They’re all coexisting. There are layers and layers of influence that are building on each other.”

Like much of the world, India has been impacted by climate change, but has little infrastructure to handle extreme heat or catastrophic events like flooding. The majority of jobs are part of an informal economy that remains off the grid and pays no taxes. And, for most people, what we consider health care doesn’t exist. 

“We have done a uniquely bad job of providing universal health care to people,” Mr. Khanna said. “That construct does not exist.”

High-school-age children in India have fewer options for education and employment than their contemporaries in America, Khanna said, and the country has been slow to provide much needed opportunity for this generation.

“Many of them have basically said, it’s too hard,” he explained. “What society has to do is dramatically augment the stock of higher education institutions, dramatically improve the possibility of vocational education being accessible, and make it so that most of society has an opportunity to have something to look forward to.

“Part of the heartbreak, I think, is that you have all this amazing human capital, wonderful young men and women deserving of a good life, and all of this inequality,” Mr. Khanna continued. The big challenge for India, and for many developing countries, is how do we create the promise of the future for the next generation?”

Despite these challenges, as a self-described optimist, Mr. Khanna said his bias is to see the glass as half full.

“There are so many ways to make a difference, to lead a productive life,” he said. “As my mom used to say to me, ‘Make sure you leave the world a better place.’ But it’s important to be clear eyed about the context within which you’re going to make a difference.”

In that vein, where government has failed, many entrepreneurs have stepped in to fill the void, making advances in areas such as pharmaceutical production, vaccines, and health care. And India recently became the fourth country to land on the moon, an accomplishment taken on at a fraction of the cost of the first three.

It’s success stories like these that give Mr. Khanna hope for his home going forward, despite all the challenges in front of it.

“It’s all been done through clever use of human capital, even though you’re surrounded by so much heartbreak,” he said. “One of the exciting things for me is that there’s been so much positive change in India in the past ten or fifteen years. It’s been a dramatic ratcheting up of progress.”