South Africa and India. Michelle Williams M.

influences of Gandhism from the perspective of an individual life, that of Dr G. M. ‘Monty’ Naicker (1910–78), a political activist who drew heavily on Gandhian ideas. Naicker was involved in Natal Indian politics and played a leading role in the 1946–48 Passive Resistance Campaign challenging the increasing segregationist measures in Durban. As Vahed suggests, Naicker and others in the South African Indian Congress were in dialogue with Gandhi and Nehru, a dialogue that was crucial in propagating nonviolent forms of resistance and feeding ideas between Indian and African nationalist thinking.

       Emerging comparative perspectives

      The experiences of India and South Africa have also been explored through scholarship comparing them. While still working largely within nationally based historiographies, scholars are beginning to look at social, political and economic processes experienced by India and South Africa in order to better understand each individual case. Indeed, comparative research is especially fruitful in trying to understand the complexities of India and South Africa, as both countries (and scholarship on the countries) have tended to see themselves as exceptional, reducing social and political phenomena to the uniqueness of their respective societies. Comparing them with each other helps to dispel notions of exceptionalism and makes us look to local, national, and global processes and forces shaping the countries. Thus, using the comparative method strengthens analyses by focussing attention on factors that may have been overlooked in a single-case analysis.

      Looking at southern Africa alongside India yields fascinating similarities and differences in their histories. The early colonial histories bear resemblance involving layers of Portuguese, Dutch and British incursion. In the 20th century their histories diverged markedly when in 1947 India gained independence and became the largest democracy in the world. Less than a year later the apartheid regime officially took power in South Africa, putting the country on a very different trajectory. Yet their histories would converge again by century’s end, and despite important differences in their struggles, the Indian National Congress and the African National Congress bear striking similarities. Moreover, in both South Africa and India, Communist Parties have found their voices expressed in oppositional politics and institutional arenas, and both societies enjoy robust civic associations and vibrant labour movements.

      Alongside these achievements, however, are also disturbing trends. According to the 2009 Human Development Report of the United Nation Development Programme (UN, 2009), South Africa registers the third-highest income inequality in the world. In addition to high levels of poverty, South Africa has some of the most violent crime rates in the world. India, too, manifests extreme levels of inequality and poverty, and has seen incessant communal (religious) violence since independence. While formal democracy has been consolidated in both countries, as Patrick Heller shows in this volume, the power of the elite continues to act on subaltern classes in devastating ways. The goal of deepening democracy has proven more elusive in both India and South Africa.

      Development indicators are illustrative of the achievements and challenges faced by each country. While India’s economy grew at 7.2 per cent per year against South Africa’s 4.8 per cent between 1998 and 2008,⁴ India has not opened its economy in terms of exports and imports to the same degree as South Africa. India’s poverty rate of 34.3 per cent of the population living below US$1 a day is far higher than South Africa’s poverty rate of 10.7 per cent.⁵ Yet India’s income share of the lowest 20 per cent of the population is 8.1 per cent, which compares favourably with South Africa’s income share of the lowest 20 per cent of the population of 3.5 per cent. Comparing the countries across a series of indicators throws up contradictory processes. On a number of indicators, such as per capita gross national income, literacy, internet use and tertiary enrolment, South Africa ranks favourably against India. These achievements, however, have not translated into increased youth employment, nor have they produced the phenomenal growth rates found in India. At the same time, India’s spectacular growth has not increased literacy rates or reduced poverty. Clearly, these are complex societies with contradictory processes shaping the countries’ development trajectories; see Table 1.

       Table 1: India and South Africa compared

Indicator	India	South Africa
Population	1.1 billion	48 million
Gross national income per capita (Atlas method) (2009)	US$1,040	US$5,820
Gross domestic product (GDP) growth, % per annum, 1998–2008	7.2	4.1
GDP growth, % per annum, 2008–10	7.3	1.2
Openness: exports + imports, % of GDP (2006)	32.5	53.2
Income share of lowest 20% (2006)	8.1	3.5
Poverty rate, % of population < US$1 per day (2006)	34.3	10.7
Infant mortality, per 1,000 live births (2009)	52	48
Youth unemployment rate, % (2006)	10.5	60.1
Literacy rate, % (2009)	66	88
Tertiary enrolment ratio, % (2006)	11.4	15.3
Internet users, per 1,000 people (2006)	55	109

       Source: World Bank (2006a; 2006b; 2009a; 2009b)

      Given these similarities between South Africa and India, one might expect a strong tradition of comparative work. This as yet does not fully exist, part of the reason being that under apartheid Indian scholars could not visit South Africa. The situation is fortunately beginning to change and a field of comparative work is starting to emerge. A problem with comparative work, however, is that it often focusses on large-scale policy-oriented studies. Put simply, these studies tend to compare very general phenomena in as many cases as possible in order to draw policy outcomes through the comparisons. They are often funded by well-resourced northern foundations that are more interested in the immediate policy implications for South Africa and India than in a deeper understandings of causes, processes and sequences of events. Fortunately, a growing body of emerging work on South Africa and India is providing an alternative body of comparative studies.

      Beyond the obvious similarities that India and South Africa share, such as common histories of British imperialism, iconic liberation movements, successful democratic consolidation in two heterogeneous societies and two of the most remarkable leaders of the 20th century (Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela), scholars are also exploring the less obvious areas of comparison. The work of Crain Soudien (2007), for example, looks at inclusion and exclusion in Indian and South African schools. Soudien shows how similar processes of elite values (Anglo, middle class in South Africa and upper caste in India) reproduce exclusion despite advocating normative inclusion. Another example of comparative scholarship is Claire Bénit-Gbaffou’s and Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal’s emerging research on urban governance, participation, and the voice of the poor in South African and Indian cities, which looks at the relative incapacity of the urban poor to influence policy, despite the fact that they constitute a numerical majority. The chapters in this volume contribute to this tradition of comparative work that seeks