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Novice Super Power
- India now has a chance to recreate its past golden ages WRITING ON THE WALL - ASHOK V. DESAI
In 1916, as the First World War raged around him and killed off a generation of young men, Oswald Spengler started writing his Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West). It took him 10 years to give final shape to the two-volume magnum opus. When it was finished, it gave a grand view of human history from the beginning to the end. There are many diversions in it, but its central assertion was that there have been three major civilizations the Greco-Roman in the first millennium before Christ, the Jewish-Arabic in the first millennium after Christ, and the Western civilization in the millennium that has just ended. Every civilization rose, reached a zenith and declined. The sun was just about to set on the Western civilization.
Spengler did not survive long enough to see its end. The Western civilization went on to wage an even more destructive war, and emerged from it with all its technological guns firing. The dynamism imparted to it by major innovations led to its greatest boom in the second half of the last century. But in recent years it has shown signs of decelerating on both sides of the Atlantic. That has led to new fears of its last gasp. Although Thomas Friedman would not cast his thesis in Spenglerian terms, his message is similar: the East is about to overtake the West. And while the decline of the West may not be as spectacular as the rise of China, it is difficult to ignore the fact that the world is being rebalanced and reshaped.
In this world, India can heave a sigh of relief that it is not on the declining side. If at all, its sun is rising. But it is not a part of the empire of the rising sun. Empires today have a global reach; India cannot quite ignore how the global balance is changing. The forces that change that balance have also changed. It is not that war has disappeared as a force for change. Nuclear weapons have made major wars costly enough to rule them out. But they have also in a sense distributed punitive power more equitably. Fifty years ago there were three nuclear powers; today there are at least eight, including such Lilliputians like Israel and North Korea. Fifty years from now, there may be 50 such powers. But the dominant form of competition between great powers is now economic.
At the moment, there are only three economic global powers China, the United States of America and the European Union. Many Indians yearn for global power status; they have friends in the West who would like India to emerge as a major power. But size of the economy is not enough to make a global power; it has to project itself outside, with trade and investment, and India has not been able to do so.
China has grown its trade much faster; that is what has projected it outside its frontiers, and made it a global power. Its sea trade carries it everywhere. On land, it has been expanding westward. It has absorbed Tibet and almost finished digesting it. It is the dominant trading partner of Central Asian republics.
At the same time, the EU has been expanding eastwards. It has annexed one east European country after another. It is balking before Turkey on account of the religious divide. But sooner or later, it will succumb to the logic of global power, and reach up to the Baltic. Sooner or later, its economic frontiers will coincide with those of China. The Eurasian continent is on the way to being divided up between these two powers. The fate of Russia is still undecided, largely because the Europeans are as prejudiced against the Russians as they are against Turks. But Russia is a fairly empty country; it is getting emptier as its population declines. Both China and the EU will want to access Russias natural resources. So it will probably be informally divided up.
This division does not impinge directly on India. But it can neither do anything about the division. It can wait and watch as the global powers to its north extend their reach. Is that all it can do? Or does it have any freedom of manoeuvre?
I think it has some; its freedom of manoeuvre lies to its south and west. It has forgotten after 60 years of inward-looking nationalism that it was once the worlds biggest maritime power not militarily, but economically. The trading area centred on India was so rich that Western powers fought wars over it; it is the area that made the British great for a century. Its fortunes have declined; it has become a pond of less-developed frogs. But growth today is no ones monopoly, nor is it denied to any country. The Indian Ocean area is Indias backwater; it must work on developing this area, and tying it to India with economic interrelationships.
Some of it has happened without India trying. The United Arab Emirates is Indias largest trading partner; through the UAE, India exports to Iran, Pakistan and Iraq. The UAE is the second biggest importer of Indian labour. But this is just a fraction of the potential. India must expand its relations with the entire Indian Ocean area lying between Australia, South Africa and Sri Lanka, and every kind of relationship including trade in goods and services, labour and capital.
This strengthening must proceed in a number of directions. In trade, India should offer these countries a market. It must offer them unilateral free trade: it must abolish all restrictions on imports from these countries, irrespective of what they do. It must offer capital to them. To some extent, Indias emerging multinational corporations are already investing in these countries. But not enough; they are more focused on the markets, the skills and the technology of the West. And government grants and loans will not work. What India needs to do is to develop a large, diversified capital market, and to let its southern neighbours raise capital in it. And finally, it must develop a unified labour market. It must create an Anglophone educational system that would be accessible to all, and give all young people from southern countries free access to it. And if, after an Indian education, they want a job in India, it should let them work in India.
This last idea would raise many hackles; Hindutwits, for example, would go crazy at the thought of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis coming and working in India in millions. But they will not unless they are better than Indians; and if India befriends its neighbours to the south, millions of Indians will be working abroad. India cannot become a global power without becoming more cosmopolitan. It was cosmopolitan 400 years ago; any Persian, Turk or European could rise high in a court if he could speak and behave like a local nobleman. The 21st century gives India a chance of recreating its golden age its many past golden ages, with a modern twist. We can continue to be parochial little-Indiamen; that would be just the way to miss the big opportunity of this millennium.
