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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (8238)	10/30/2001 3:51:05 PM
From: k.ramesh	Respond to of 281500

Thanks for restoring the usual mediocrity to this thread, I was getting a bit intimidated by all the erudition! It is such a pleasure to talk about distant lands without actually having to know anything about them. After an endless assault of factoids and opinions I have come to the conclusion that a fact free diet is essential for true nirvana. Oh India was better off under the Brits ? Better off of whom? If you read VS Naipauls earlier book India a wounded civilisation you might come off with a picture of heat and dust and poverty and crowds, but in his later book A Million Mutinies now, he paints a much more realistic picture of a country that faces enormous odds just to survive as one democratic country, and one that has been doing a good job given the circumstances. Layer after layer of people have been getting their rights. Most recently Nov 2000, 3 new states were created Uttaranchal, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh the rationale being that certain tribal people were not getting their share of representation. To create 3 new states after 54 years goes to show that democracy is a constant work in progress and one of these states Jharkhand actually is quite large in population - 30 million. If 30 million people can stay satisfied with just a state, what is so different about Kashmir and its 10 million people. India has a process for resolving problems and anyone within its boundaries better follow the same rules or consider themselves seccesionists - the same that any other country would do. Here again the NYT and others have lately decided that they will refer to Kashmir as disputed and the whole gang follows the same tune. Every article has the same cut and paste stuff about, 'Muslim Pakistan and mostly hindu India' , 'they have fought 3 wars' , ' each claims it as its own' - Some crap about parity . With that kind of steady drumbeat, some of the even handed folks here also claim that India should rethink the issue, or whatever and probably pat themselves on their backs for being so impartial. Then there are questions about economic management, how socialistic policies are supposed to have ruined the country. I thing HG also mentioned here that those policies were not so bad actually, furthermore a majority of Indians think they were not so bad which is what matters most. Those policies are responsible for giving India a broad industrial base and intellectual capital base. There is nothing better that a giving one generation a guaranteed 30 job in the railways or something to produce a solid middle class. All those wasteful public sector white elephants have actually paid off in spades if you consider the huge pool of educated talent in every field. The usual complaint here would be be to point to the asian tigers and whine about what India could have been - today some better off indians also will moan about socialistic policies - This is similar to a guy in the US suddenly turning republican and anti tax once his own income creeps out of 28% bracket. A certain period in time, a certain set of global circumstances, the electorate's demands all these made India choose a certain path- better or worse it was indians deciding their destiny and they will be very happy to live with the consequences thank you.