TWO columns ago I started a checklist of the 10 principal dangers facing our country as we march on to success in the 21st century. My main points concerned the threat to India's pluralism, the dangers facing our democracy, the persistence of poverty, the strains of overpopulation and the risks of unemployment. Today, I'd like to count on the fingers of the other hand. This is not just a second list, but a secondary one — a checklist of lesser dangers we nonetheless cannot afford to ignore.

The politicisation of development

It's unavoidable, in a fiercely contentious democracy like ours, that decisions on economic development are made as the consequence of a political process. But the great successes of our economy in recent years have lain where the government either played no role at all (information technology), got out of the way after a bad start (cell phones) or eased stifling restrictions (television). When politicians intrude, development almost invariably suffers, as the half-complete flyovers of Bangalore and the saga of the Tata car factory at Singrur testify. The great challenge for government is to strengthen or renovate our dilapidated infrastructure — rutted roads, choked ports, antediluvian airports, collapsing bridges, corroded pipes. Much of this must be left to the private sector, given the many limitations of our public sector. And this requires accepting that quite often, a few may profit but all will benefit. That means politicians will have to resist the chronic temptation to put self-interest before the national interest and let results be delivered regardless of political or financial advantage to themselves. The chances of that happening, it has to be admitted, are slight.

The failure to curb corruption

The rampant corruption in public services in India is not just a sorry shame but one of the biggest obstacles to India's entry into the developed world. We have managed to become a society in which politicians and bureaucrats seek to profit from the power to permit and where every office-holder, however insignificant, seeks to leverage their position for private gain. Corruption drains resources from productive investment, distorts the true costs of doing business, undermines efficiency and rewards influence rather than performance. That we have managed to grow and develop despite the rampant corruption is a small miracle, and proof of our remarkable strength as a society and an economy. But as long as corruption persists, we will find ourselves running the race of globalisation with our ankles tied together.

The risks of demographic imbalance

When people speak of demographics in India, it is usually to talk about the "youth bulge", which results in our country enjoying a population pattern that ensures India a majority of people in their most productive years, whereas the rest of the world is ageing. That's all to the good, but there is another phenomenon that has gone largely unremarked — the unbalanced growth of our population, with skyrocketing numbers in the poorer and illiterate parts of the country, mainly in the North, and declining growth in the more educated and developed South. The obvious danger is not just of the poor reproducing their poverty and illiteracy and so "dragging the country down"; there is also the political danger that a fair reapportionment of parliamentary constituencies according to population would grant the North many more seats in parliament, while the South may actually lose a few. This would potentially enable the rough-hewn political hacks of the cow-belt to override the representatives of the South; alarmists even conjure up fears of a revival of Southern separatism in response. I am personally convinced that, after six decades of Independence, we are beginning to see ourselves more as Indians than just as North or South Indians; I marvel at how masala dosas are just as easy to get in Delhi as chhole bature. But we should not be completely insensible to the danger of "two Indias" emerging, in which the North has the numbers, while South India fuels the economic growth — with all the risks of resentment that could breed.

The limitations of federalism

I have long been convinced that a country the size of India must be a genuine federation — that not every question asked in Dharwar needs to be answered in Delhi. The increasing power and influence of

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