This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Sol Sanders | Follow the money No. 82 -- India: a perfect storm
Latest from uncle Sol. A version of this column is scheduled to be published in The Washington Times, Monday, Labor Day, Sept.5, 2011 -- Chris
Follow the money No. 82 -- India: a perfect storm
Sol Sanders <solsanders@cox.net>
Pollyannas had looked to“the emerging economies” – China, India, Brazil, etc. -- for growth to help ward off worldwide economic recession, as the Western economies and Japan stumbled.
It’s clear that isn’t going to happen. China is trimming its sails to dampen inflation, braking unlimited infrastructure expansion at any cost to produce jobs while trying to meet increasing constraints on its subsidized exports. Brazil, with a new administration enmeshed in traditional corruption, faces a commodities export crash while fighting off devastating import competition for its domestic manufacturing from its major customer, China.
But largely ignored -- what with the dramatic Euro crisis and a threat of double-dip American recession – is the more important emerging economy, India, now slipping back into its traditional morass. At stake was the hope 1.5 billion people, almost a quarter of the human race, could move with democratic values into a modern society. That possibility was long seen as counter to “the Chinese model” which economically successful, possibly temporarily, is essentially oldstyle Oriental despotism.
Heading the list of New Delhi’s woes is a leadership deficit. Italy-born, 64-year-old Mme. Sonia Gandhi, widow of a former prime minister and backseat driver to the ruling Congress Party, has been secreted away to New York for cancer surgery [if by a noted Indian émigré physician]. She leaves behind a power vacuum, not only in her ruling Party but in government. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a technocrat, increasingly is drowning in massive corruption, growing inflation and a flight of capital escaping crippling bureaucracy.
Rahul Gandhi, Mme. Sonia’s 41-year-old son, has yet to prove he has the charisma of three generations of independence leader Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s family who imperiously have dominated politics – if, arguably, preserving national unity. Caught in India’s worship of priestly figures, a traditional hunger strike by an anti-corruption hero, Anna Hazare, was mishandled. [Mr. Singh has had to backtrack from Mr. Hazare’s arrest.] The government, correctly, is terrified Mr. Hazare’s high-minded tactics could be appropriated by mushrooming anti-government, anti-business campaigns, further paralyzing governance and the economy.
India’s international role, too, is in jeopardy. Naïve Washington hopes for a U.S.-India alliance against Beijing’s growing aggressiveness have been dashed. American forgive and forget efforts have dawdled in extending nuclear and other advanced technologies after New Delhi defied the world to build atomic weapons -- matched by Pakistan with Chinese and North Korean assistance. American vendors recently were shockingly left off the short list for a $10 billion fighter plane bid. There’s suspicion stricter American anti-bribery laws than notorious European “incentives” played a role. A 25-year-old case against Mme. Sonia’s deceased husband, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, for a Swedish purchase was recently shelved, more or less indecisively.
Meanwhile, decades of addiction to a Moscow alliance continues among India’s diplomats, illogical as it might be what with growing Russian arms delivery failures and Moscow’s massive military sales to China. Furthermore, India’s proposed huge overseas defense purchases may not meet its security requirements. Mr. Singh has called India’s greatest threat “Maoist” insurgencies in a dozen Indian states. New Delhi and state governments have passed responsibility for their suppression back and forth with little success. These social conflicts grew out of pro-Chinese proclivities of Bengal’s Communists whose 30-year hold on Calcutta, India’s second city, was recently broken, probably only temporarily.
After three and a half wars, negotiations continue fitfully to reach a compromise with Pakistan, the twin regime bloodily carved out of British India over half a century ago. With its own Muslim population as large as Pakistan’s, Indian leaders increasingly appreciate an implosion there would threaten its own breakup. But terrorists with tentacles leading from Pakistani military through the perennial dispute over Indian occupation of Kashmir are torturous, made even more dangerous by occasional clashes of regular forces such as took place in early September. Washington, after fitful attempts, has failed to mediate the feud, caught between aiding a bankrupt Islamabad and attempting to warm post-Soviet Cold War relations with India.
This picture is clouded further by New Delhi’s fishing in troubled ethnic waters in Afghanistan, and Pakistan itself. The Pushtoon terrorist hotbed on the Afghan border is where Pakistani, Indian and Chinese interests conflict. China, meanwhile, continues a campaign of seduction of Pakistan, a massive Tibet buildup, including missiles and probably nuclear weapons, as well as infiltration in the Himalayan border states of Nepal and Bhutan and at both eastern and western ends of the 1500-mile frontier.
sws-09-02-11
»
- rcwhalen's blog
- 17088 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Wholesale Pen
Lunch Box
Health Care Products
Wholesale Ashtray
Muslim Products
Silicone Products
Wholesale Compass
Consumer Electronics
Wholesale Scissors
Wholesale Puzzle
Wholesale Fan
Wholesale Scissors
Wholesale Shoe
Wholesale Stress Ball
Wholesale Magnifier
Wholesale Dartboard
Promotional Items
Electrical Gifts
Wholesale Clothes Rack
Wholesale iPod iPhone
Wholesale Flag
Personal Safety Products
Industrial Supplies
Wholesale Compressed Products
Silicone Products
Wholesale Massager
Wholesale Swimming Products
Inflatable Products
Name Card Holder
Wholesale Raincoat
Wholesale Banner
Flash Gift
World Cup Products
Eye Mask
Wholesale Compass
Valentine Gifts
Wholesale Clap Hands
Wholesale Radio
Wholesale Calculator
Wholesale Sticker
Wholesale Halloween Gift
Wholesale Lighter
Wholesale Bedding
Silicone Bakeware
Personal Safety Products
there seem to some india boosters on this thread who are convinced india is the bees knees. i dont think people outside india understand that
a- india is not a country ... its a collection of peoples who share a vague over arching culture.
b- india is corrupt because indians are corrupt. there is no concept of absolute right or wrong in indian culture. what helps me is good and what harms me is bad.
c- the maoist insurgency is not a threat to india , its a threat to the dominant land owners and mining companies which mainly operate in india's tribal regions.
d- india has 200 million muslims , and a porus border with bangladesh which adds 200 million more. potential problem
e-400 million people live on less than 1$ a day , and the education system has no room for 'thinking' only memorizing.
this a non pc viewpoint. and zero hedge is all about non pc contrarian viewpoints .
Your post is perhaps closest to the reality when it comes to its observations.
However when it comes to its conclusions, you are as right, or wrong, as Churchill was about 70 years ago when he said:
"India is an abstraction.... India is no more a political personality than Europe. India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator. "
I guess Churchill would never imagine an EU type system emerging. Yes, I also know that the system has severe economic flaws and the absence of fiscal integration left it still-born.
However from a cultural, social & even a political point of view, the EU is a success. People, and ideas have moved across old national borders with ease, and the chance of EU nations fighting each other in a war are next to zero in our life-time.
Incidentally, Churchill did change his views, and two decades later was all praise for the emerging Indian nation and her leaders. ... "...Nehru as a man who "conquered two great human infirmities: fear and hate. In one fanciful moment, he even saw his fellow Harrovian as the "Light of Asia", who was shaping the destiny of hundreds of millions of Indians and playing an "outstanding part in world affairs". "
====Further the ability to understand and interpret Indic/Dharmic (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jains, Sikhs) philosophy is clouded by the need for, as you put it, "concept of absolute right or wrong"
During the past two millennia schools with a strong sense of "absolute right or wrong", primarily Islam/Christianity, have wreaked a lot more havoc on those who do not believe in their version of "absolute right or wrong", than the Dharmic schools who have a more nuanced approach towards "right or wrong".
In the current discussion regarding corruption, the irony could not be more obvious. Corruption in the West is the privilege of the Elite. Cronyism is legally sanctified under a framework accessible to the Elite which places them above the laws designed for the commoner. Western societies may have reduced corruption in their day to day activities, but the oligarchies which rule us have siphoned out immense amount of wealth while leaving the common man in deep pain. In India it is more democratized where the lowest level person taking a share of the loot.A lot of Westerners who visit India, judge India based on what they are used to in the West. They then project how the not so well-off Indians will react. That is the wrong prism; it projects your perspective on those who never had that view.
What you need to compare it with is what India was 30, 20 or 10 years ago. That is the prism with which Indians view India, and will shape their visions and actions in the future.
Perhaps even more important is where things are heading:
The banksters are getting ready to another few billions in bonuses and Ben starts checking the engine on QE3,4,5.... India on the other hand is raising interest rates.
India went through a major anti-corruption mass movement which resulted in the legislature agreeing in principle to appoint an ombudsman who can investigate even sitting Supreme Court Justices and the Prime Minister. Indians of all social strata rallied behind that call. Some call it the second awakening of the nation, comparable to what Gandhi did 70-80 years ago.
The common Indian on the street is actually doing something to tackle institutionalized corruption. What is the West doing to rein in the banksters?
Since you have opinions -- I'll ask for some more.
How about the caste system? Is it universal? Is it an absolute barrier to class mobility, or do many people find some way around it? If so, what ways do they find? How bad is the Hindu/Muslim conflict within India? Should present-day India really be 5 (or a dozen) countries?
India will be still around in whole shape in 2030 , are you sure about USA the same way ?
Oh, we see Wall street and Fed are the epitomes of moral rectitude.
Blacks and Hispanics in USA are very happy with the life style they have , correct ?
All Indians are corrupt, great, what about Bernie Madoff, Bernard Ebbers, Kenneth Lay ? May be they were Indians too ?
Indians can memorize, I bet most of the guys in USA cannot add say , 35+57 together in even one minute mentally, so what is the big deal ?
I will say one thing, in the western world you have discipline, you obey the system till /even if you get killed, but in Asia people are not stupid that way. I rest my case.
I had long been hopeful and optimistic about India. I spent a good portion of the last year there, and now my opinion has changed. I don't expect any great collapse---as little has changed from the days of the Maharajas or Colonialists, so the country would not have far to fall---but neither do I expect the country to be a major player for the foreseeable future.
The infrastructure remains abyssmal, and projects only seem to be initiated when there is at least three hundred percent worth of skimming possible. Even when projects are carried out, the work is quite poor by international standards. I don't know the cause of the poor quality, as it could be poor engineering, improper supervision, bad technique or that the managers spend too much of their time trying to game it to their own financial advantage. The Commonwealth Games fiasco highlighted the shortcomings. Without a solid infrastructure, the country remains unconnected and inefficient, with lots of waste due to an inability to transport goods from source to user.
Power also remains a problem. The area where I reside is considered the toniest area of the city and the residence supposedly has a market value of $25-30 million, but power goes off dozens of times a day and requires backup generator systems.
Perhaps the country has made progress restructuring its social system, as some have stated here, but one would have had to have had vast previous experience to appreciate the supposed improvements. I was often uncomfortable listening to comments about various types of people, and was offended by the manner in which the financial elite treat their sizeable household staffs. The same goes for construction work crews. Conditions are bad and treatment worse. They also have a way to go regarding gender equality and in general respect toward women. "Eve teasing", as it is called, is quite a problem. Young women are well advised not to go out alone. Besides being morally upsetting, the general lack of opportunity for all castes and both genders is terribly inefficient. The US is far from perfect, but also far ahead of India in social equality.
The country is visually stimulating, vibrant, has a varied and interesting history (and unlike China has most of its history physically intact) and has been the source of a good portion of the world's philosophy. The cuisines are flavorful and the music appealing. If one is affluent, then the country can be comfortable, although some inadequacies cannot be avoided and even the most affluent have a standard of living below what one can have for far less in dozens of countries. Those below the level of the affluent, in other words the vast majority, have a low standard of living relative to the rest of the world.
Undeniably the country has created a lot of wealth in the last decade, but that wealth is concentrated amongst a small segment of the population, many of whom (the Ambanis are good examples) seem to consider themselves reborn Maharajas and do not give the impression that they have any consideration whatsoever for the wants and needs of those not in their class. That might have been accepted by the masses in times past, but it generates a lot of resentment now.
While no country in the world is doing particularly well at the moment, and social problems are universal, I guess the bottom line for me is that the country has a good deal less potential than I might have thought before, which is why in my opinion India will not be a major player in the world for at least another fifty or a hundred years. It shares the same sort of self-congratulatory bias as the US and many other countries, but few of India's historical achievements---unlike the US---are contained in the lifespans of anyone now walking the planet.
i have no idea what shape america will be in 2030. all multi racial multi ethnic societies eventually end in failure. the american govt is not to be confused with america which was once great but is now being slowly destroyed from the inside.wall street is part of the problem and so is hollywood and the MSM.
i dont think all indians are corrupt , i think Indian society has no collective sense of right and wrong.
Hispanics must like something otherwise they wouldn't be here. blacks in america have been complaining for the past 150 years and i'm sure they will be complaining for the next 150. if minorities stop complaining about whitey then how will 'diversity counselors' etc earn their bread?
adding numbers mentally is not the greatest asset to scientific progress , being able to come up with solutions is.
i am not taking the piss out of India or indians. no offense intended. my point was that India has a lot of issues and simple statements like ' India is the future' don't add much to the conversation.
"what with the dramatic Euro crisis and a threat of double-dip American recession"
Mere recession in the US?...ha ha ha! USA is going the way of USSR, there won't be any USA left by 2020.
Guys, I am an Indian and I am really surprised at the level of generalisations and stereotypes some of you guys are applying to India.Sour grapes may be ! or is it frustration at being Bangalored ?
BTW , your own Steve Jobs came to India after dropping out of college , for spiritual enlightenment , became a Zen Buddhist and went back to the free world called USA.
Being ZH readers, the least one can do is to look at things in an unbiased rational way , or is too much to expect from the best brains in the free world, lol.
I wrote some question for 'misled', above. I would sure be interested in hearing your answers to them also!
I'm afraid I don't have many opinions about India, but I am recently (for unclear reasons) very interested in it. There are some questions you can't find answers to in Wikipedia.
I wrote a comment in response to your later comment. Perhaps it is biased, perhaps not. India has a rich past, not such a rich recent past and present, but won't crash like the US might, because India isn't far from its nadir. There is an advantage to not being in first place, because the expectations are low and even if one falls, the bottom isn't so far away. Take solace in that.
India is going to break up and it will be a shock to them and the whole world.
Interesting theory, Buck; have any further elucidation?
All Asian industry is based on Western innovation, period.
All Asian economies rely upon the west for sustenance. period.
As western economies contract into a self sustaining survival mode in the near future, Asia will revert to it's natural state.
Silk, paper fans and opium.
Warlords and Maharaja's.
Greeks will never think or act German, The Spanish will siesta until the end of time,(and why not?).
Brazil will always show the world how to dance and play soccer but they will never invade mars, it is not in their cultural make-up.
The farcical wet dream of Globalism is imploding in the laps of it's creators, you know who they are.
It is strange that such clever minds could not figure out this obvious aspect of human nature,2 wongs don't make a white.
IQ,
mathematically, 2 wongs (-ve if that's what you implied) do make a white (+ve if that's what you meant)...and 2 wongs (+ve thats not what you meant) do not make a white (-ve thats not what you implied)...I am just teasing you, 4give me.
And on the innovation, survival mode, and natural state, I agree.
Globalism imploding and clever minds not figure out this 'obvious' aspect of human nature, hummmm, I say I disagree, with this view:
Let's 'pretend' they did figure out (human nature) and make NWO its hidden goal and for 30-66-100 (1980-1945-1913 just a selective few) years they execute their plans perfectly ('pretend') including the outsource of manufacturing, services, and world presence; wouldn't you wonder the 'gobblism' (all over the globe) is working towards one central authority?
And if so, wouldn't you say they still have something up their sleeve (the hidden arm)?
Thanks for sharing.
Author should have mentioned that Rahul Ghandi was admitted to Mass Gen Psych Unit.I do not know the diagnosis.India is very much like Yougoslavia,with a strong military.Wealth is not trickling down.Despite Illuminati hype,future porabably does not bode well.
This article lists a "wall of worry" for what is, I suspect, going to be one of the success stories of this century.
I am short almost everything that moves, including PM, but I am long India.
I just looked up the Forbes list.. 8 of the top 20 richest persons are Indians.. The world may hate them for they take the jobs away.. but the jobs go away cause the western worlds employee are suddenly dispensible.
Maybe we are not able to fathom the fact that we are now dispensible in this global economy.. but common sense tells me before we call the indian coding skills as substandard we should look once towards detroit..
The article fails to address economic hardpoints like, deficits, non-performing loans, trade balances etc and seems to take the age old INdia is corrupt(everybody knows that), the infrastructure is failing(known again), there is political instability possible (well so what).
WHat the article fails to illuminate is that the Indian banking system is exceedingly sound with the central bank committed to fighting inflation and raising interest rates. ALso India does not have huge exposure to US currency assets. etc etc etc. From these aspects and observation points INdia is safer than the USA except Moodys and Fitchs are too darn dishonest to report as such. While Indian corruption is very low level whiskey bottle stuff the American masters have essentially sold the country. The rumor was Indian elites were now studying the schemes that the Yanks are pulling. They are getting ideas. Bad bad influence- Wall street and cronies!
Ludicrous analysis. India first of all is not a monolith. Its essentially a union of mini-countries.
1)It is exceedingly corrupt. Good news is we know that and so the briefcases full of moollah are readily available. No surprises here. Corruption does not hinder business it restricts the poorer parties (big deal). Corruption is agreat motivator too, I mean would rather have a honest government that took forever to get things done or a corrupt government that got things done at alternate arrangements?
2) The population is very young and conservative. No booze, drugs or divorce and the worlds company loves an Indian employee. Total fact as of the 21st century (Chinese employees are loved too). Frankly nobody wants to hire an AMerican or a European given an equivalent Asian. (I am not bigotted its just reality- I myself am seen as been living in AMerica too long to be considered a good worker!).
3) Political instability is possible but corruption ensures smooth business operation.
4) The nuclear power agreement is a game changer. The key issue with INdia is power shortage. Its solved now.
5) Pakistan is no longer a threat as it has already gone through its hate INdia phase with little success and after 9/11 nobody will support Islamic causes out of Pakistan.
6) The biggest security threat for India is the Maoist.
7) All in all India is the most likely to succeed major country not beacuse of democracy but because of its education system, English, willingness to travel for a job and generally nobody has anything against Indians(barring the usual ethnic snides- its amusing that the smelly curry chicken has replaced fish n chips in England as national food and fast becoming the #1 ethnic cuisine in US-hint: Curry is considered medically addictive).
8) All the top investors in INdia I know are staying in the market.
Talk about ludicrous analysis....,
" Corruption does not hinder business it restricts the poorer parties (big deal). "
.....and all the dreck you wrote after regarding corruption.
Corruption crushes innovation and growth. It absolutely hinders business. It also destroys environments and community health.
I hope you hold NO position of authority nor have children.
...Corruption does not hinder business it restricts the poorer parties (big deal). Corruption is agreat motivator too, I mean would rather have a honest government that took forever to get things done or a corrupt government that got things done at alternate arrangements?...
Are you a stupid person or do you just play one on Zerohedge?
This is perhaps the most moronic, non-racist remark I have read on ZH. Corruption is the insidious cancer that eats away at the fabric of a culture and eventually destroys it. Ultimately it results in a loss of hope; and someone without hope will do anything to get it back.
India is where once great tech companies go to die: Adobe, Microsoft, etc... Steve Jobs to his credit stayed the hell out of India and Apple customers & shareholders are enjoying the fruits of that great decision today. IBM is next to go off the Indian cliff. The so-called demographic dividend India claims to enjoy is nothing but a giant Malthusian disaster. 6th World infrastructure. Crap everywhere. Don't believe the hype. Lock down our borders, because even more of them are trying to escape here.
THats an awseomely skewed analysis. FYI Mercedes plant in Pune INdia beat all worldwide Mercedes plants in quality,so must we conclude the INdians are better than Germans? There are a number of companies like INtel which are on top of their game and have their key designs in INdia. Oddly a company now in trouble is Cisco which has only one way to survive is moving to India as the competition is Chinese HUawei which too has operations in INdia. The only smell in INdia is the smell of success.
Folks India is the future believe it. I am a US citizen of INdian descent (obviously) but me too ready to pack and move to India to start companies there. Its just booming. US and Europe are just too saturated (I mean can you afford a new McDonalds franchise here? can you afford to start an IT company here? The only thing we can afford to buy is an iPad. You can easily start a 10 person IT company in INdia for servicing customers in Turkey, try that in US without getting an ulcer.
That "smell of success" is just a smell. There's no success. Mercedes Pune assembles less than 5,000 cars per year. This is the tiniest Mercedes market on earth on a per capita basis. Intel is doing horrible. The stock hasn't moved in 10 years probably because of those engineers in India. Are you done with the clueless hyping????
India IT is horrible. I have never heard a non-Indian say anything positive about it.
Indian IT is horrible ? LOL u r funny. I rest my case. The algorithms for the GOOGLE search engines were written by INdians, if thats any indicator.
yes, sergey brin and larry page are Indian. Stanford is 200th ranked IIT Bombay.
No Indian finished in the top 250th place in Google Code Jam despite 10,000 entries. Stop the lies. You guys suck at coding.
Aramsogo... they should take ur posting privileges away= ur statement "you guys suck at coding" is pure bigotry and ethnic hatred.
Intel products are still the best and what on earth has Intels stock anything to do with engineers in India? thats laughable, all the Intel engineers in Santa Clara are Indian anyways. The clueless hyping is on your part- here is your hype-Apple succeeds because it has no overseas operations- I won't respond to this further as it seems you have something against Indian engineers when there are 1000s of succsseful operations by engineers of ALL ethnic groups all over the world.
Intel is getting its lunch eaten by Qualcomm, Nvidia, Apple and Telechip in the Tablet CPU space. Boy did those Intel engineers miss the boat completely. Stop hyping India. More Indians flee India than any other country on earth (over 10 million a year).
10 million a year? who takes them? US allows 20,000 to 40,000 a year + 65000 H-1s, England some, Australia some, Saudi some, UAE some. Total is less than 300,000 per year. WHere do u get 10million?
World Bank Migration. Look it up. Most are slave laborers in Dubai or what not.
@ aramsogo
Every country has its own shit to deal with. The only solace they think they get is by bashing some other country or wallow in a sort of " look how they suck, he he he we are better than them". Ultimately, everyone has to face the music, pay the piper and move on. Wars are fought and people get killed due to this tendency.
In Dubai, there are only a million of them(Indians)-total.
"Don't believe the hype."
Sadly, U.S. corporate executives do -- who then send U.S. jobs over there which will never return.
I just came back from India.
They are kicking our asses over there!
Sure thats why they all try to come here. India is a shithole with worse corruption than the USA. Even my Indian manager told me so.
Sun Tzu, must you sound so ignorant? If India is so corrupt and it is known whats the issue? Pay your bribe and get things done. Its simple. Its very cheap to get things done there and corruption is not unmanageble. A few bucks here and there...thats it. Big deal. Corruption is not the problem, the problem is an unresponsive government or system.
A very poor article; looks like someone went and collected some Google Headlines and put them together.
Congress is an ally of the Maoists. The only reason they survive is because the government is not willing to crack down on them.
The primary resource India is not rich in is oil. It has among the largest deposits of coal, iron-ore and other materials. Even with oil and gas, there is the potential for discovering massive resources; it is an underexplored, underdeveloped region.
The reason the US did not get the fighter deal is because US aircraft performed badly and the US has a lot of export control laws which limit not only the access to technology but also put checks on how and where the weapons are deployed. The F-18 is designed for sea-level operations, and had a problem starting its engines and taking off from the high-altitude airfields during the trials. Boeing countered with the offer of a yet to be delivered higher performance engine. While India is not buying fighters, it is spending an almost equal amount on US non-fighters, C17s, C130s, P8s
The biggest problem is that the US and the West in general, are unwilling to give the Indic Civilization a place at the table. The Chinese lost millions during the various wars they fought directly or undirectly with the West, and forced their way on the table. The Indics being more inward oriented, and a lot more pacifists, were unwilling to fight their way on to the table. The West continues its effort to split India, with the Evangelical-Jehadis harvesting souls by the bucketful by offering financial incentive, while securing votes for the Congress. The Maoists too have strong E-J connections.
So while the US may have helped India get the nuke deal, it is the Russians and the French who are actually benifiting from it. The Obama administration has been cool to that initiative and putting up all kind of road-blocks. Australia is refusing to export the Uranium needed to drive the plants to India while it has no qualms about exporting tons to China, the worse Nuke Proliferator of the past half century.
Economically, India is perhaps the best positioned compared to the rest of the world economy. It is the least integrated to the global economy and much of its growth is organically driven. It has huge infrastructure needs which itself can sustain GDP for years to come. And India has gold, a lot of gold. And it is spread across all economic, social and geographic stratas.
India muddles along until outside pressures step in. China is the new unknown .
As a theoretical question:
Is it possible to take a country serious as a world contender that has such rampant corruption for everything (i.e., you need to bribe a doctor to even see you if your sick). And is it possible to take a country serious as a world contender that has a cast system based on family heredity for base-level valueation of a person's basic human value?
Hardly first-world material... I'm just saying... Having said all that, its not like the first-world nations are exactly knocking sh1t out of the park as an example of virtousness either, but it's not a least-stinky-shirt-competition though.
It seems to me that the 1st world has been turning more 3rd world since we started the "diversity/equality" thing. Maybe they're on to something...maybe genes ARE important!
You do not need to bribe a doctor. In fact an example an hernia surgery costs $2000 in India and $25000 in California. Medical costs are rampant in US and low in INdia due to free enterprise. Caste system is no major issue, US too has a caste system, the permenant underclass in US is the low caste and wall street and DC is the high caste. India by itself will never be a 1st world country due to is huge population but very few countries hold first world status.
India could be the #1 country after 2050 or so, but not per capita basis, cumulatively its possible largely because its so non-threeatening as opposed to China which scares US and Europe. I always said that India was the true next contender for global #1 because they speak ENglish, get along with Europe and US who will not hinder its ascent, its huge population and emigres, and being democratic its very non-threatening. But USA is still very strong and could suddenly absorb a lot of immigration to maintain its lead. But no way can USA retain #1 status when China and India have 1.5billion each and developed economies.
Nobody said that India is a candidate for first world material.
I want to put the caste issue to rest. India is at the very stage that the United States 25 years ago in terms of racism - there was racism then but every generation since then learned to think differently about the race issue and now you actually have a black president. I am a so-called Shudra myself (at one of the bottom tiers of the caste pyramid), but no one in my life has discriminated against me on the basis of caste. And I never discriminated against any one as well. In fact they can't discriminate because, there are proven achievers from every caste in Indian society (for example, at the elite college that I went to, the top five academic ranks (in terms of GPA) were NOT from the "upper castes").
Stop trying to belittle other systems that are trying to improve - look at the direction it is going as well.
Stop what you're doing right now! Keep your system! Look what "diversity" has done to the US and Europe! We've never been worse off!
DP.
That's double post, not double penetration!! Woo~! DP!
New item in your series of interest:
Working Paper No. 11/210: Public Debt in Advanced Economies and its Spillover Effects on Long-term Yields
Author/Editor: Alper, Emre ; Forni, Lorenzo
Summary: Several models establish a positive association between public debt ratios and long-term real yields, but the empirical evidence is not always conclusive. We reconsider this issue, focusing in particular on possible spillover effects of large advanced economies’ debt levels to other economies’ borrowing yields, especially in emerging markets. We extend the existing literature by using real time expectations of fiscal and other macroeconomic variables for a large sample of advanced and emerging economies. We show that an increase in the public debt levels of large advanced economies - especially the United States - spills over to both emerging markets and other advanced economies’ long-term real yields and that this effect is significant at the current levels of advanced economies’ debt ratios.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=25201.0
I have to laugh at all the needless complications here. Everyone refuses to see the elephant in the room (sorry, near pun), it's all simple.
Several times I've made the statement that India doesn't have the physical resources to be any significant player. Further, it's got a HUGE population. This adds up to a country that requires MORE imports and exports LESS. Not exactly a winning combination...
India was duped by the West. Big (primarily driven by US-based) corporations sold Indians on "the dream," pushed service-sector jobs there in order to improve their bottom lines. Suck the people dry and then move on... India will now be left with big desires that it won't possibly be able to indulge. Gold that India now holds will be racing out of the country in order to acquire resources that it's now hooked on.
As things continue to crumble we'll hear more talk of the "commies." That will work to the advantage of those in power, justify greater control (in order to save their asses). Sad, it's always the same, they will become what they fight to oppose... (just like in the US) The REAL story is told from the farmers there, all else is primarily BS propaganda.
Seer, sadly I agree with you India is likely to be the poster boy of Malthusian collapse, but I further believe that it is only a matter of time before the west follows down the path of the Olduvai Gorge.
Monsanto connected to at least 200000 suicides in India