I received this mail from a Chinese man who is an avid reader of the blog. He is very pessimistic about India’s future to say the least and he lays out a catastrophic near future. However, I think his pessimism is excessive, and I doubt if this scenario will actually come into play. However, I will leave it up to my readers. Do you think this prediction has validity? How do you feel about the near term future for India? Pessimism? Optimism? Neither? Any predictions?
Interestingly, in the wake of the current rupee crisis, the IMF is predicting that India’s 1.84 trillion dollar economy (already down from 1.87 trillion last year) will slide further to 1.72 trillion next financial year and climb slowly back up again thereafter.
In the face of instability in Kashmir, border based separatists, Maoists and general incompetence of India’s security system, as well as the government and people’s general ineptness in matters of economy, provisioning of basic amenities and mutual hatred between castes, religions, groups, factions and even individuals, I personally believe that the climb back up will be arduous at best, nonexistent at a practical observation, and in the negative direction at worst.What bugs me is the Western media’s hyphenation of India and China. You and I both know they’re not in the same league. China’s nominal GDP is some 4.4 times larger than India’s, with a wealth distribution ironically better than the USA. And while over the next 2 to 3 years that figure is going to increase to well over 9 trillion, India will languish in it’s 1.72 that is, by then, going to have to be distributed over an even larger, poorer, even less literate and less intelligent population.I predict that a civil war (or rather, series of factional conflicts, many of which are already happening as we speak) will erupt on the basis of basic resources such as food and water. Not even with a Hindu slave mentality can one maintain docility in the face of acute starvation.What happens then is open to speculation. The UN will be forced to deploy some measure of human capital to the country to maintain stability eventually, and Pakistan, the other shithole, will finally grab their piece of Kashmir. Bangladesh may well annex land in the east, and China will probably march at least 100km into the border and re-established a boundary. But having said that, the big question is what happen during the crisis period. I don’t know about you, but even though it is common perception that Islamic nations are “dangerous” with the possession of nukes, I have a feeling the Indian scenario is in fact much scarier. Your thoughts?
