Sunday, August 28, 2005

interesting analogy between fading us and fading uk: guardian

aug 26th
 
forwarded by a friend.
 
the decline of the us is a fact. i suspect the analogy with the boer war is a little strained. i am not surprised to hear that the british (the oh-so-civilized ones, according to their own propaganda) were into concentration camps and exceptional brutality in the boer war; they were so in other campaigns. right bloody-minded, they are (as also demonstrated by their national symbol, the football hooligan).
 
the casual equation of india-china with germany-united states as rising powers now and then is appealing. quite amazing that in the span of a couple of years, india-china hyphenation has become the norm, as opposed to the india-pakistan hyphenation. in all fairness, i suspect jaswant singh had a lot to do with it, and pv narasimha rao.
 
i have no problem with the india-china hyphenation, that is the right perspective for us, as our competition is only the us and china. as a fringe benefit, it vexes the chinese no end :-) as it deflates the 'south asia' playpen into which they want to corral india. (that reminds me of a stephen cohen gem: "india is trying to be the preeminent power in south asia". dear stephen, india already *is* the preeminent power in south asia, while you were no doubt sleeping off the effects of too much pakistani-supplied champagne. india should now be trying to be the preeminent power in the indian ocean, and later, in asia.)
 
india's national goal and obsession should be "beat china". like canon used to have the strategic intent of "beat xerox". india can do it, if india puts its mind to it. of course, india's 'leaders' are too busy with sycophancy and feathering their own nests.
 
why on earth has india been cursed with positively the very worst politicians in the world? the assholes in other countries are at least patriotic assholes who have the national interest in mind.
 

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rajeev,

India was blessed with some wonderful leaders - not exactly politicians - till a little after Independence. Somewhere something went wrong in last 50 years, and now we have a bunch of thugs lording over people. But, I think the main reason for this is that the masses in India also changed in last some years, becoming utterly selfish. Gone are the days when people happily laid down their lives for the sake of the Country. When society degrades, how can the polity remain clean? As someone has said, reform the society, polity will reform itself.

Thanks,

Anonymous said...

Ragu is on the dot. How else can you explain that none of the SC/ST/OBC person has come out against reservations? Common pepole talking about/thinking about the good of the country is a thing of the past. The peak of the present boom is not far.. and India, contrary to the hype created, is more likely to degenerate (as a result of this apathy). People trained in 1960-90 are functioning at the moment. In 10-15 years, there will be a vacuum of well trained engineers and planners.

nizhal yoddha said...

interesting question about why sc/st/obc haven't come out against reservations. this is partly because india is *still* a shortage economy, and the pie hasn't grown. so these groups still have to do collective bargaining to grab their share of the pie (preferably more).

the second reason is that nobody voluntarily gives up privilege. christians and muslims have tremendous advantages over hindus in terms of the fact that hindu institutions are looted by the govt while the others' institutions are not audited, and are the recipients of largesse. has any christian or muslim organization stood up and said, "no, really, dont give us any more money. we'll do the haj ourselves, or we'll voluntarily give up the large estates in city centers that the british gave us"?

i dont think the boom is coming to an end. it's not that india is only composed of engineers doing outsourced work. the economy, finally less hobbled, is actually becoming a big market on its own. in fact, demographics is a big plus for india. i am beginning to think that the 2-child propaganda is wrong. people should start having 3-4 kids if they can afford it: and it is becoming an expensive proposition to put a middle class kid through school and college. contrary to what we have been told all these years, india's population, it turns out, is a plus.

if we need population control, the cassandras tell us lots of indians will die of AIDS. so surely, we need to replenish these working-age people, so let's have more children! i personally think the AIDS fear-mongering by NGOs is strictly self-aggrandizing. no economy in the world has collapsed because of AIDS, just as no european economy did with TB in 19th century, which was similarly endemic.

Anonymous said...

These politicians will always make sure we remain a third world country. Anyway America being replced by China is not something we should welcome. It would be Nazis becoming the next superpower. Anyway India has a long way to go. When the Financial capital is closed for many days due to a few hours of rain, we know where we stand.
As for China, they can first stop exporting bird flu, SARs and pig diseases before making a claim to be a superpower.

Anonymous said...

Rajeev is absolutely right. Over population can not be considered a disadvantage anymore provided we take advantage of it. We have more than 3 times the population of US. Even if we target for 1/3rd of standard of living of US, we have as big as US's economy. We should not forget that US is tilting towards India not because of any change of heart, it's simply because we are a better market. In next few years US economy will be more or less stagnant like Japan, then they have no place to invest. If we have our strategies right, we can play hardball. God, only if pinkos in India were extinct! we would have been in a much better position today.

Anonymous said...

I watched that idiot Stephen Cohen's speech sometime ago, where he denigrates most things about India, including about soft drink Thumbs-Up saying it was a terrible, terrible drink, when nobody in the audience even asked for his opinion.

Anonymous said...

'Shortage economy' and 'Pie' are the concepts one uses in business. Thousands of backward castes have benefited from reservations; and by now, dozens of them must have suffered because of excess reservations. The suffering could have been possibly due to poor medical care; law and order problems (just a few weeks ago, 3 members of a middle class SC/ ST family commited suicide because of harassment by a Muslim neighbour - newspapers didn't blow this up as it does not suit 'secular' ideas, however, the incidence should serve as an eye-opener); or bad teaching in schools/colleges. As it stands, the backward caste Hindus are in the best position to make a difference to Indian Society. If a few of them come out with some open statements about the political exploitation of caste factor and how it is affecting the society as a whole, we might move towards a better society.

Of course, the evengelists will try their best to stop such a move and perhaps, they are doint that even now.

Anonymous said...

"As it stands, the backward caste Hindus are in the best position to make a difference to Indian Society. "

Yes this is very true.
In Kerala , the so-called backward castes like Ezhavas,Viswakarmas etc have recently aligned with so-called upper castes like Nairs, Brahmins to counter the gross exploitation of Marxist-Missionary-Mullah evil triple-axis. Even the tribals are slowly realizing the trap of missionaries since they are evicted by the forest-ganja missionary lobby who are experst in planting crosses and 'bringing St Thomas mythologies or his leg imprints' to that forest.

3Ms are obviously agrieved and clueless as more and more Hindus are awakening to the reality of their temple loot (sabarimala, guruvayoor etc) by the Ganja-Missionary forest lobby, their land and job loot by the so-called 'minority' mafia. The Muslim league is trying hard to islamize the education scene with support of Leftists, they are starting a parallel islamic youth festival since none of the muslims could get the coveted top honors 'Kala prathibha' or 'Kala thilakam'. Recent news is - these top honors are getting eliminated forever by the muslim league education minister.

It's time for Hindus to unite and force the Govt. implement the SC judgement on 'minorities'. It's dangerous to categorize people like 'minorities, majority and obviously the 'minority' communal leaders have totally exploited their 'rights' forgetting about the existence of Kerala hindus.

-Shankar