India’s long jump

“How green was the valley
How black the rock
How orange the sunset
How scarlet her frock...”
From the Opera Badmash Bahu by Bachchoo

The Commonwealth Games in Delhi are, with their preparations in disarray, with dissent, derision and disclaimers from the international press, from the organisers, from the Indian government, from participating teams, inevitably invite comparison to the more smoothly organised Olympics of yesteryear across the Himalayan ranges. The two great economies destined to inherit the earth, each with its own model of burgeoning capitalism and each with its distinct faulty pretence at “democracy”, presented each its own showcase of organisation to the world.
One has to be careful of assuming that “the world” was watching. I am writing this from Germany and though the British press and TV and the Indian press are equally full of stories of the failures and triumphs of the Commonwealth Games arrangements, there is little mention of them in Deutschland. The people I speak to are oblivious of these happenings. Europe doesn’t seem to care what Britain and its former colonies get up to. Here, in Saarland, crossing the border to Metz in France even, there is no awareness of the debates or the debacle. But a substantial number of countries, 58, are part of the Commonwealth and they know and they can compare.
The common wisdom is a matter of the self-evident facts. China can organise things on time, seemingly without effort. Earthquakes, famine, internal dissent and external criticism are no bar to the march of showmanship. The symbolic operas and the thousands of schoolchildren moving in clockwork unison to produce those mass demonstration patterns that can only be seen from the air, must and did go on. The accommodation was perfect, the temperature adjusted, the carcasses of dogs hidden away from the butchers’ display windows for the duration, the cockroaches, rats and snakes sent off to re-education camps and all was bon homus and efficient.
The contrast between the proficient handling of the Beijing Olympics and the muddle-through impression of the Indian Commonwealth Games has tempted very many commentators to glorify the events into X-rays of the body politic of the two countries and also allegories of the relative promise of each.
While one may admit that the X-ray provides an unflattering but accurate picture of conditions as they are now, the idea that the perfection of one and chaos of the other are indications of what lies in the future is debatable.
That Indian officialdom, government and capitalism are blatantly corrupt is true. I am told by businessmen who do business in China that the private capitalism and even the state-controlled productive economy are not at all free from bribery and corruption. The Chinese take bribes to cut red tape and get things done and to circumvent objections. The difference is that in India a bribe is a speculation, you pay and pray. In China it’s a guarantee: you pay and play.
That the Chinese workforce is subject to strict and draconian disciplines whereas the Indian labourer is held to task by poverty and dire need within an exploited existence is also, to a great degree, true.
The Chinese have, through their enforced one-child-per-couple policy restricted the population of their now growing and future generations to manageable levels — numbers of people who can be fed, clothed, housed, educated, given medical treatment and employment. India has allowed the free market and ineffectual birth-control propaganda to determine family sizes. This may lead to “over-population” and a mismatch between resources and needs now, but what of the future?
What happens to a one-child family in a culture which still prefers boy children to girls? Do the Chinese surreptitiously make sure that they bring forth men children only? Will this result in a generation or two in a complete imbalance between the sexes with two or more men to every woman? And then will the government legalise polyandry, as it is in Tibet, allowing women to have two or more husbands? Or will sex-starved male Chinese armies pour over the Himalayas looking for Indian brides?
Most civilisations have dealt with gender shortages one way and the other by prescribing polygamy, burning widows, exporting girls to dance clubs in West Asia and casinos in Europe and other ploys. But what of the real problem of ageing populations and the supply of welfare and pensions to those who are past their productive working years? If the older Chinese generation has, because of the one-child policy, two or more old people for every working young one, won’t this play havoc with the country’s pension policy? One assumes that the Chinese oldies, with Communist Party bosses traditionally drawn from the geriatrics, will have the political clout to resist any move to compulsory euthanasia.
That’s one policy whose hazardous effects are built in to present Chinese efficiency. What then about the rule of diktat which produces such spectacular feats of production today? The world knows that if the Chinese government wants a piece of land or needs to develop a natural resource for the common good, it can order any tribals or others off it without the possibility of protests or Maoist agitation to stay put. India’s capitalism and corruption on the other hand are regularly hampered in their efforts at encroachment. The Narmada valley, the failed attempt to build cars in Nandigram and now the resistance of the Naxalite belt to intrusive mineral exploitation wouldn’t happen in Maoist China. Beijing’s will will be done.
History teaches us that bureaucracies tend to get more and more rigid and as a consequence less and less effective. Also that one-party rule in the name of the people becomes one-party rule in favour of the party and the people eventually catch on.
It may well be that these deductions from even recent historical examples, together with the population’s age imbalance will affect China in ways that mar its miraculous efficiencies. It may also prove that India’s chaotic, corrupt and even cruel capitalism, coupled with its population growth and battered and abused but extant democracy will assist it in the future long jump, pole-vault and hurdle-jumping events of the global economic games.