China: A Marvel or a Cesspool?
I recently read an article on the BBC News Web site comparing India and China. The reporter spent a few days in New Delhi, after years of living in Beijing, and concluded that India was far from catching up to India in almost all economic aspects.
The reporter's observations may be accurate, but I cannot disagree more strongly with his conclusions. Let's explore a few of them.
"[In New Delhi] The streets groan under the weight of people. The air is filled with deafening noise and sumptuous smells."
Yes, that is true. But unlike China, people in India have human rights and come to the city in search of a better life than in the countryside. Authorities can't just sweep them away like one would dust under a carpet. It's easy to pick and transplant human beings in China where the military junta calls the shots, but tougher in a multiparty democracy (however flawed it may be) such as India.
"The hotel was expensive and bad. In my room I searched for a high speed internet connection, a standard feature in any hotel in China. There was not one.
Then with the night-time temperature still well above 30C (86F) the power went out.
I lay for hours soaked in sweat trying, and failing, to get back to sleep and wishing I was back in Beijing where the lights never go out."
China is far ahead of India in terms of information infrastructure because the government there set it up without any delay. Once again, that is quite easy in a military dictatorship. But India's chaotic democracy moves three steps back for every step it takes forward and any modernization here is solely due to private enterprise and human ingenuity (and this too was stifled with 44 years of socialism), so things will take time. And with power, India's biggest problem is power theft, which is once again a rampant problem in rural areas with the government turning a blind eye to it in order to gain rural votes.
These are all problems that India faces, and China doesn't face, because India is a democracy and China is an autocracy. However, I can say with certainty that we would not trade our freedom and human rights in exchange for materialistic prosperity, even at the risk of the likes of Mr. Ruper Winfield-Hayes, BBC China Correspondent, not having electricity at night the next time he comes to India.
And just in case you're tempted to say, "Well, Vivek, that's all well and good for an upper middle-class person like you to say, but what about the hundreds of millions of rural poor for whom autocracy may be a godsend?"
I have an answer to that as well. I remember showing Mani a news article on the BBC News web site about West Bengal's rural poor. In it, farmers in a village as well as a person lugging heavy sacks of rice who made $1 a day were asked if they would give up their vote if they could dramatically improve their living standards. Each and every single one of them said no, which surprised me greatly back then and which made both myself and Mani's respect for Indian villagers grow immensely. Showing extraordinary intelligence, all these uneducated farmers and daily wage laborers replied that if they had the vote, they could influence government to make things better.
The final paragraph of this article summarizes this blog post best.
"If the state's ruling communists do begin to follow China as they once followed the Soviet Union, their supporters - rich or poor - would draw a line on the Chinese formula of curtailing rights in order to create wealth."
India is not China and Indians will never sacrifice their human rights regardless of how wealthy they become. And who ever said that material wealth is the panacea of all problems? In case you haven't heard, China is the second largest consumer of fossil fuels in the world. It's highly inefficient factories and manufacturing processes are carrying harmful toxins and causing acid rain and all sorts of toxins in Korea, Japan, and even the U.S. West Coast. China's environment is excessively degraded with no ecological forethought going into any construction project, and this too in a society where the public have no method of redressal.
If the BBC China correspondent would be kind enough to leave the gleaming buildings within China's diplomatic quarter in Beijing, perhaps he would see the other side of China. He needn't even do that, all he has to do is read news printed by both the BBC News as well as the New York Times.
The reporter's observations may be accurate, but I cannot disagree more strongly with his conclusions. Let's explore a few of them.
"[In New Delhi] The streets groan under the weight of people. The air is filled with deafening noise and sumptuous smells."
Yes, that is true. But unlike China, people in India have human rights and come to the city in search of a better life than in the countryside. Authorities can't just sweep them away like one would dust under a carpet. It's easy to pick and transplant human beings in China where the military junta calls the shots, but tougher in a multiparty democracy (however flawed it may be) such as India.
"The hotel was expensive and bad. In my room I searched for a high speed internet connection, a standard feature in any hotel in China. There was not one.
Then with the night-time temperature still well above 30C (86F) the power went out.
I lay for hours soaked in sweat trying, and failing, to get back to sleep and wishing I was back in Beijing where the lights never go out."
China is far ahead of India in terms of information infrastructure because the government there set it up without any delay. Once again, that is quite easy in a military dictatorship. But India's chaotic democracy moves three steps back for every step it takes forward and any modernization here is solely due to private enterprise and human ingenuity (and this too was stifled with 44 years of socialism), so things will take time. And with power, India's biggest problem is power theft, which is once again a rampant problem in rural areas with the government turning a blind eye to it in order to gain rural votes.
These are all problems that India faces, and China doesn't face, because India is a democracy and China is an autocracy. However, I can say with certainty that we would not trade our freedom and human rights in exchange for materialistic prosperity, even at the risk of the likes of Mr. Ruper Winfield-Hayes, BBC China Correspondent, not having electricity at night the next time he comes to India.
And just in case you're tempted to say, "Well, Vivek, that's all well and good for an upper middle-class person like you to say, but what about the hundreds of millions of rural poor for whom autocracy may be a godsend?"
I have an answer to that as well. I remember showing Mani a news article on the BBC News web site about West Bengal's rural poor. In it, farmers in a village as well as a person lugging heavy sacks of rice who made $1 a day were asked if they would give up their vote if they could dramatically improve their living standards. Each and every single one of them said no, which surprised me greatly back then and which made both myself and Mani's respect for Indian villagers grow immensely. Showing extraordinary intelligence, all these uneducated farmers and daily wage laborers replied that if they had the vote, they could influence government to make things better.
The final paragraph of this article summarizes this blog post best.
"If the state's ruling communists do begin to follow China as they once followed the Soviet Union, their supporters - rich or poor - would draw a line on the Chinese formula of curtailing rights in order to create wealth."
India is not China and Indians will never sacrifice their human rights regardless of how wealthy they become. And who ever said that material wealth is the panacea of all problems? In case you haven't heard, China is the second largest consumer of fossil fuels in the world. It's highly inefficient factories and manufacturing processes are carrying harmful toxins and causing acid rain and all sorts of toxins in Korea, Japan, and even the U.S. West Coast. China's environment is excessively degraded with no ecological forethought going into any construction project, and this too in a society where the public have no method of redressal.
If the BBC China correspondent would be kind enough to leave the gleaming buildings within China's diplomatic quarter in Beijing, perhaps he would see the other side of China. He needn't even do that, all he has to do is read news printed by both the BBC News as well as the New York Times.
posted by Vivek at 10:06 PM
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