Thursday, June 05, 2014

my rediff piece on why how india can make it a tripolar world, with itself as one pole

india's big problem has been lack of 'strategic intent': the setting up of a worthwhile but difficult goal to aspire to. here's one: the third pole. yes, we are far off from that, but in 20 years china came from nowhere to be one of the poles. there is no real reason why we can't do the same, if we have just one thing: leadership. the rest of the ingredients are all there. with namo in place, we have that bit too.

1 comment:

Rajiv Chandran said...

Political leadership is about representing one's constituency. Constituencies in any mature democracy is local both intellectually and demographically. So a Chinese politician would represent his people and work towards their good or welfare. The problem with Indian leadership starting with Nehru is that though they were nominally elected by the indian people what they represented was a grand anglocentric internationalist leftist consensus. Hence their actions were always to the benefit of this consensus and never the Indian people. This lack of local rootedness is behind the steadfast refusal of the nehruvian establishment to represent the india's people, culture or historical geography - all the while paying lip service to the same. Aiming to be a global power (superpower) et al is a valid geopolitical aim and ambition to ensure that the nation has enough say in world affairs to ensure the good of its own people. The nehruvian establishment had no such intent nor ambition. The current government has a leader in Modiji at least who is grounded enough to truly represent the nation. Hope this much needed change in mindsets so India can take its rightful place amongst nations.