More belated commentary

I suddenly like Nicholas Kristof a little less.

I’ll let go of the fact that his voice is nothing short of squeaky and I was so profoundly disappointed when I heard it for the first time. I was expecting a mysterious-stranger-in-a-trench-coat-and-fedora-smoking-a-cigar-
while-leaning-against-a-lamppost-in-the-dark-of-the-night kind of voice. A voice – to steal a description from Dan Brown – that is like “chocolate for the ears”. Anyway, not the point.

Mr. Kristof (yeah, no more informal “Nick” – at least not for awhile) wrote a column and filmed a video a couple months ago comparing the relative growth and potential of India versus China, asking readers to place their bets on which country will be on top in 2100. Kristof, predictably, picks China. I’m not surprised by that fact, as he’s more invested in China than he is in India, and not just because he’s married to a Chinese-American. What bothers me, though, is that the idealistic and moral appeal that Kristof usually applies to his writing is absent from this particular column.

Though he has brought up China’s human rights and free speech failures in recent weeks, these factors are strangely absent while he’s weighing the strengths and shortcomings of both countries. It’s easy to dismiss India’s democracy by calling it corrupt and chaotic – or “functioning anarchy” as one enlightened [sarcasm] poster dubbed it – but the fact remains, and it matters. I’m aware that I’m not completely objective here, but neither is Kristof. That said, I’ll try to make my point as objectively as possible.

Kristof pinpoints the fact that India has a long way to go in terms of making the most of its human capital and widening the base of people that reap the benefits of the economic boom. Fair enough. We all know that the Indian system reeks of corruption, lack of discipline and overall inefficacy. Social conduct values that are conducive to efficiency (e.g. punctuality) are seriously lacking in the overall cultural consciousness. Still – the story of India over the past sixty years is a gripping one, and it’s full of successes.

If you’re a young student in China, you can’t Google the truth about what your government did in Tiananmen Square in 1989, or to the Falun Gong throughout the last decade. You can’t get full access to BBC News. You can’t find out what Buddhism really is, or what the Dalai Lama is really about. You can’t have a sense of humour about your people, because sites that mock anything near and dear to the hearts of the Chinese are censored. That. Is. BAD. And I’m pretty disappointed that none of this came up in Kristof’s speculation. The Indians may have issues with sex toys, but as far as I’m aware, there are no comparable instances of censorship. Call me idealistic or what you will, but I value an open society and I take it as a sign that a community or a country is doing well. We have enough problems at the moment with the US government being secretive (DOWN WITH DICK/KARL/ALBERTO) – we don’t need to condone it in other societies as well.

In a different vein, India’s recent history has been ignored in this account. If you’re going to make this sort of comparison, that’s something that you can’t neglect. India came out of imperialism with a fierce dedication to democracy, a truth stranger than fiction, when you consider that democracy had no foundation there previously. The panchayat system hardly counts as a predecessor. It also managed to bounce back from the 1970s Emergency, an event that could've easily destabilised many other post-colonial nation-states. These facts are indicative of how absorbent Indian society is when it comes to outside influence (sometimes annoyingly so, when it comes to Bollywood and pop culture in general). It’s the reason that Indians have maintained a strong sense of identity even after centuries of foreign rule. China, by comparison, retreats further into its introverted and autocratic regime and states for the official record that it is 100% atheist. By deduction, India’s more likely to be a trustworthy ally, either to the US or whoever else is a major player in 2100.

I’m well aware of how idealistic all of this sounds, and I don’t necessarily believe that it’ll be India on top in 2100 for the reasons outlined by Kristof and several bloggers. I just think that the issues outlined above are wrongly overlooked by many when making this comparison.

Much of this can be summarised using Olympic athletes as an example. The Chinese hand-pick young children who show athletic prowess and breed them into successful Olympians through rigorous single-minded training. The Indians, despite all their genuine interest, always fall short of the Olympic dream. So it’s really a question of priorities – do you want to create a society of clones that still bring home the gold, or do want your society to value personal freedom of choice above a superficial, though somewhat glamorous, gauge of success? I think I've made it clear where I stand.