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21 November 2022

Video of the day -- land of potential


India is becoming what some naïve Westerners imagined China would be.  We've heard of its problems -- inequality, poverty, subordination of women -- and those are real, but most of the countries which are now advanced had such problems in the past and overcame them.  What Americans understand less well is India's potential.  While the West and Japan suffer from birth rates too low to maintain population size, and consequent "top-heavy" age structure with ever more elderly and fewer young people -- and China remains crippled by the aftereffects of its disastrous one-child policy -- India is still a youthful and growing society.  With an entrepreneurial culture, vigorous democracy and openness to the world, and ability to assimilate modern technology rapidly, India's rise in the years to come is likely to startle and realign the world.  Given enough time, it could even supplant us as the leader of the democracies.

2 comments:

  1. Naïve? More like greedy and short-term thinking.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I was referring to the formerly (and perhaps still) widespread belief that China is rising to become a superpower or even dominate the world. The more one learns about China, the more obviously preposterous that idea becomes.

    ReplyDelete

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