JLF: Is India jealous of China? Is the West jealous of India?

At the session of ‘Breakout Nations’, featuring Nandan Nilekani, Ruchir Sharma and Gurucharan Das, an audience member asks, “Are we envious of China? And is the West envious of our growth cycle?” “World is driven by envy. That’s not new," says Gurucharan Das. “It’s about how we manage it. I was just sending a small message to our leadership. Not about going to war, but to say our non alignment mindset has not gone away. We should ensure we are not only rising economically but we are prepared from a security point of view to manage that.” “Our politics has been focused on giving things to sectional interests like reservations for the low caste,” adds Das. “Free power to farmer, subsidized rice to poor. Here is a question of law and order than everyone benefits from. Politicians are realising this.” [caption id=“attachment_602460” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Gurucharan Das at the Jaipur Literature Festival.[/caption] “Both China and India believe their destiny is to reach $40,000 capita,” says Gurcharan Das, the same as the US. His comment finally causes the audience to laugh somewhat nervously… “China will be 10-12. India will be 6000. And they will get stuck there,” warns Das. “Don’t worry about an assertive China,” says Nilekani. “Our best strategy is to become stronger internally. The protests in Delhi are about a country that wants the government to meet its aspirations.” “We should have a good dialogue with China and Pakistan,” says Das. “But when one neighbour giving the other nuclear technology on an ongoing basis I feel threatened.” The comment causes the first smattering of applause Peter Hessler, who has written about China for New Yorker, is asked if that fear is warranted. As the American who taught in China he says “based on last 10 years I am more concerned about the United States when it comes to military issues.” Nilekani, says he still continues to be optimistic about India. “There are a lot of execution and challenges. I’d rather have that than execution excellence and strategic challenges. People are demanding a society that is more inclusive, fair and can meet their aspirations. This is very good churn. India is well equipped to make those changes in happen.” Peter Hessler  says young people in China feel that they can’t take time to be involved in politics. “The demonstrations are very localized and specific whereas in Cairo where he lives it’s about changing the system. In China no one is protesting for downfall of Communist party.”  Hessler also points out that groups like Muslim Brotherhood have been around for 80 years who had been focused on changing the system. “They were there and ready to go. It’s not just about a vegetable seller setting himself on fire. You need those organizations for there to be coherence in the demonstrations,” he says. Firstpost editor Sandip Roy asks, “Is that going to be a problem of the anti rape protests?” Gurcharan Das says the mistake we make is that Indian state has become weak in recent years because of coalition politics and weak PM.  “An Indian was always defined by society while Chinese person was defined by state. All our empires were weaker than the weakest Chinese empire. In China the emperor gave the law. In India dharma preceded the king. And its interpreter was not the king but the Brahmin. So there was a liberal division of power that weakened the state. So today India is a bottom up success. China is top down success.” Das adds, “Chinese are assimilators. We are accumulators. China assimilated people into one Han chinese identity. In India we accumulated them into 2200 subcastes. We are a soup. And China is a salad.” “But we need both for a good diet” quips Nandan Nilekani.