Last night I attended the launching event of Mr. Raghav Bahl's new book Superpower: The Amazing Race Between China's Hare and India's Tortoise in New Delhi. Mr. Bahl is the Founder-Editor of India's largest media house,Network 18.It's really a well organized show and an enjoyable night. Indian Roads Minister Mr. Kamal Nath, CWG Mr.Aiya, Mr.Shekar Gupta, Mr. Rajdeep Sardesai and Congress and BJP spokespersons attracted a lot of attention.
They debated Indian democracy and governance. On the one hand they proudly and collectively admited Indian democracy is messy and noisy and governance a big headache.On the other hand, they accused China as authoritarian and and ruled by dictatorship, and ordinary people live in constant fear and threat. Mr. Nath spoke a lot about India's demographic devident with half of India's population aged below 25. But Mr. Bahl reminded the audience if these people were not well-educated and well-fed, it could turn out to be a curse. Of course when Rajdeep mentioned Commonwealth Games to Mr. Aiya,the latter expressed resentment and said he was no longer sports minister several years ago and could not endure these CWG matter anymore. He concluded his remark by attacking China as authoritarian and no freedom whatsoever. It seemed to me most of them do not have basic knowledge about China.
M S SWAMINATHAN, father of GREEN REVOLUTION of India pointed out on Independance Day that ‘Our freedom was born with hunger, we’re still not free’. I don't know how will the the dignitaries on the podium think upon hearing this. If a democracy cann't deliver daily necessities to its crores of hungry farmers, the overwhelming majority, it's a fake democracy. Because democracy haven't done things according to the aspirations of the majority. I've never read on the Indian newspaper what farmers may say. It's these people who face constant fear and threat of an empty stomach, insufficient nutrition, high motality rate of the new borns and protracted illness an so on. Now you look north and see what have been happening on the other side of the Himalayas. During the past 30 years, Chinese people living in abject poverty have reduced from 250 million to around 20 million. Now even farmers begin to enjoy basic medical care based provided one farmer paying Rs.140 and local and central governments paying Rs.280 annually. Are the Chinese famers living in want and fear? Aren't their biggest needs being met. I have to express my admiration to Rahul Gandhi in this regard. You just look back to what he did before your general election in 2009. He kept on going to consituencies in Uttar Pradesh. He knows well India's future lies in its villages. His efforts paid. His party the Congress Party won handsomely there which was out of the expectation of many elites in New Delhi.
Now let's talk about freedom of expression. China has now more than 400 million Internet users and crores of blogs. How could a government censor the Internet. It's true that we don't allow pornography and block those sites. We are doing that according to the will of the majority.
Now look at what has been happening in Sansad Bhavan all this moonsoon sessions. Important bills were put aside, slogans, walkouts and spreading of papers were the norm. Who elected you to do this? Is this what franchise means to those who voted you? Is this vibrant democracy in the real sense which China should learn. Yes, your democracy is really a confrontational democracy. But nobody here seems care to learn that Chinese democracy is consensus democracy which I'll write on later.
New Delhi
August 18, 2010.
