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India: A starving Democracy (perhaps then it is not a Democracy which is serving the people)
By
Today’s New York Times reports that in India a shocking 42.5 percent of children under 5 are malnourished. Shocking, because we’ve spent the last decade marveling at India’s economic dynamism and democratic achievement. When terrorists attacked Mumbai last November virtually every report mentioned how much the city resembled a great American metropolis. Every analyst discussed India’s challenge as that of any other open democracy faced with a serious national security crisis. But a child population with 42.5 percent malnutrition doesn’t much resemble our democratic ideal. Nor does this:
A World Food Program report last month noted that India remained home to more than a fourth of the world’s hungry, 230 million people in all. It also found anemia to be on the rise among rural women of childbearing age in eight states across India. Indian women are often the last to eat in their homes and often unlikely to eat well or rest during pregnancy. Ms. Menon’s institute, based in Washington, recently ranked India below two dozen sub-Saharan countries on its Global Hunger Index.
We’ve heard a lot about the threat to America posed by emerging powers such as India. Such fear-mongering misses the point on two counts. First, a freer and more dynamic Asia is a good thing for America. It means more trading partners, more shared goals, and more easily persuaded allies. Second, free markets and elections don’t say much about a country’s endurance or stability. India is at an exciting and promising point right now. But it is also partially paralyzed by copious amounts of bureaucratic red tape, the legacy of a brutal caste system, cultural paranoia and hyper-plurality.
(The British destroyed Indian industry from 1750 onwards. Up to that time India accounted for 25% of global manufacturing, producing high quality manufactured goods that people around the world wanted, such as Dhaka Muslin and Indian steel goods....swords, housewares, ornaments and other arms; Canon, muskets.
In the 19th century the British destroyed Indian industry through bureaucracy/red tape.........basically making it difficult for ordinary Indians doing business through the sheer red tape that simply had to be passed through by any aspiring INDIAN businessman........this particular legacy of the British empire as with much else still survives in India to this day, after 61 years of "independence".
For Indian business the main "enemy" is not a foreign business rival, or local competition, or the lack of the ability to raise sufficient capital {$3,500---$4,000 billion economy by PPP} ...............It is the incessant demands of dealing with the bureaucracy of India and the sheer volume of red tape, which is in itself tide up with CORRUPTION/graft, patronage, and just plain stupidity "more than my jobs worth " mentality and colonial culture of the wing nut bureaucrat which makes starting, sustaining and doing business in India a nightmare...what a pity......because all the Indian economy, and businessmen require is a bit of imagination, and quick reform of what is essentially an apolitical cross party issue; everybody from the Communists to the Shiv Sena want their local business to succeed. )
Let’s hope the subcontinent lives up to its P.R. If nearly half of India’s future generations will have suffered from malnutrition, it would constitute a humanitarian tragedy and, also, the loss of an American ally. A country that can’t feed its population can’t pose much of a threat. But more important, it won’t make much of a lasting contribution to the civilized world.
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India aspires to be "Great Power", egged on by the solemn promises of America no less. A blue water navy no doubt must follow, and Indian "intervention" around the world to spread the ideals and value of Indian civilization, with overt/covert interventions in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan as practice runs.
We can debate the wisdom of aspiring to be a "Super power", but in all practicality one must get the basics in order and right before one sets forth in that gigantic egotistical false pursuit.............such things as feeding the people, decent housing, decent basic education, and finally decent basic infrastructure.
The American hyperpower.
The Chinese Superpower.
The Indian dwarf (on average)
Indian housing.
The great Indian education system.(The elite go to Colonial era exclusive schools, being imbibed with Chaucer, Latin, and Shakespeare, and then they are polished off with stints in Oxbridge, and the Ivy League.........whilst the poor don't have any schools to speak of)
Indian infrastructure.
Well obviously India is going to shake the world very soon!!!!!
The solution is to have an effective family planning programs like China and other nations in South East Asia. The average Indian girl gets married at 15 I believe, which medically is not good, and family panning wise not good, and socially generally not good.....basically you are producing more and more subnormal children demanding more scare resources. The solution here is not greater food production only, but stricter family control, and birth control, and since Indira under Emergency 1975-77, nothing substantive have been tried in this direction, and the traditional corrupt, and generally useless Indian governments have not done anything about it........which multiplies the socio/economic and political problems for India now and into the future.
I am not having a go at India, because I don't like the country, but obviously given the nature of my writing, I am concerned about the nations development. That its been 62 years since independence, and that due to the short comings of the Neta's and Babus's the problems inherited from the evil of the British Raj still persist to this day after 62 years of so called independence....for the majority of Indians......poor education, housing, infrastructure, poverty, corruption, inequality in wealth, police brutality, a decline in the moral fabric of society, over all.
That such things in equal measure are also applicable to Pakistan and Bangladesh.....South Asia is one entity, and share very much similar problems. Pakistan's unofficial population is now 180 million and will reach 400 million by 2050......with the background of being a failed state. Bangladesh's population is now 150 million, and its population will 350 million by 2050...........so these are some of shared problems for South Asia which need to be addressed together........for example the over populated "surplus" of Bangladesh goes into India and so forth.
