The Comment Factory

Mumbai, India

I’m getting sleepless nights already. The financial meltdown keeps getting worse by the day. I don’t know how long I will be able to keep my current job. Friends of mine are modifying resumes on a daily basis, applying and re-applying for jobs that are impossible to get.

All this is happening because liquidity has come to an unforeseen hurdle. First it was America’s economy shattered by a sub-prime crisis. Then the European Union with weak consumer confidence, an even weaker Euro, and free-falling property prices soon following. Japan, the now grieving exporter, showed a negative GDP growth over three consecutive quarters. Once the world leaders, these “developed” economies have proven so far that they are not insulated against the current financial mismanagement, a fact that was knowingly hidden for a long time by the U.S. to retain its power, or should we say Superpower.

In these turbulent times, we are preoccupied with worries about our jobs and the current financial scenario. However, a thought does need to be spared, as American wanes, for who will be the next powerful country to drive us all out of this mayhem. Who will be the next torch bearer? The candidate nation must have a cultural identity as well as economic stability. It must be able to communicate its ideas with the world. The two Asian names that often pop up in peoples’ minds are India and China. China and India both have a population big enough to dominate the world’s GDP with a billion individuals each.

If you ask world leaders their opinion generally they prefer India over the other potentials. We’ve heard umpteen times from finance gurus that India would be a good bet as the next superpower (I would be more than willing to swap a rupee for a dollar…) But how willing is India to accept the throne?

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If I say that India would be the ideal superpower, it isn’t truthful. But if I say it would make a harmless superpower, it does make sense. The world has nothing to fear from India. Our past leaders have left behind principles instead of nuclear warheads. We have a judicial system which will keep a terrorist in captivity until proven guilty by “books” (We have not yet hung the culprits of serial bomb blasts that took place in 1993). And who can fear our prime minister who does not dare to sneeze without the permission of Bush administration? We, the responsible citizens of India, will get back to work the day after a horrible terrorist attack on our city, and like nothing ever took place, call this our mighty spirit (i.e. the spirit to work our asses off). But how can we lead the world without the ability to make decisions by ourselves?

We have so far followed the Westerner world and in the process, have repeated their mistakes. Like it or not, Western culture has always been more selfish economically. Take for instance Indian education. It was a learning process until Western culture was imposed and transformed it into an Education Industry. We have roughly 250,000 MBA aspirants applying this year, increasing by 100,000 annually.

If in such scenario unemployment figures touch an all time high (as expected), it has to be blamed upon the excess of supply over demand as well as the unwillingness of the graduates to take up a lesser paying job. There are many other cultural impositions which make us believe what we don’t want to. For instance that speculation is not the same as gambling, and you don’t have to worry about your death once you’ve taken up insurance.

Is the human body such a narrow set of mechanisms that insurance agents and medical goons help you decide how long you will live? And a large chunk of insurance money is drained by these private companies into the ever-falling stock market. Almost every businessman will agree that globalization did expand the markets initially, but killed them later due to cut-throat competition resulting in lowered margins. “Wealth pulls wealth” but in today’s case a large proportion of wealth can only pay expenses.

So does India have what it takes to be the world leader? The potential is there, but when we have ourselves spurned our culture, how can we be the leaders of tomorrow?