India's unwarranted China phobia
- Elation at being one of twenty while the other Is one of two -

Amar Yumnam *

Whether any Indian enjoys it or not, we must accept the reality that China is already far ahead of India. There are so many Indians comparing the Indian achievement with that of China, and a less equal number globally who indulges in Sino-India comparisons. Indians particularly feel elated and euphoric when some comparisons depict India competitively.

While most of the western scholars appreciate the "democratic" polity of India, they do so mainly to uphold and display in good light the values of Indian style "democracy" which at least overtly follows their model. But if anyone ventures to read between the lines, one would be struck by the level to which the scholars have been awestricken by the power of Chinese performance.

The world is now fast moving to a bipolar one of G2 consisting of the United States of America and the Peoples Republic of China, at a rate more realistically than a world of G20 wherein India appears as a strong candidate no doubt.

Two features: Two features are worth pointing out while examining the relative scenarios of India and China. Anyone who has seen China and India across the provinces and studied the comparative performance of the two countries in recent years would be hard hit by the differences in at least two areas.

One is the Indian scholastic as well as politic inertia of Indian phobia in her policy-making and thinking process. This aspect is particularly manifest in her policy towards the North Eastern Region. The second is the vastly different regional policy and regional performance of economic growth in China vi-a-vis India.

We are already aware of the purely security-oriented policy of India towards the North Eastern Region of the country. Now this has got an inertia whereby both scholars and think-tanks of the country keep on indulging on mind innovativeness in order to justify the security orientation of the country's (not nation's) policy.

In the earlier avatar of the policy, the fear of getting the region exposed to the primordial cultural affinity of the South East Asian neighbours (particularly China) that held back genuine developmental interventions in the region. Now we find many scholars at both traditional institutions and national think tanks speaking about the "foreign connectedness" of the insurgents in the region and thereby justifying the continuation of the time-tested and terribly failed policy based on so-called security concerns.

In both the old and the new avatars of the policy, what has been remembered is only the territory (territory of India, and definitely not of North Eastern Region for nobody knows in the rest of India the existence of society in the region). At most the region is an exotic piece for transitory entertainment. In the process, what has been completely forgotten is the existence of life of a few millions of populations with cultures and physical features largely different from the "mainland" India.

This, in a way, we may think of as the extension of the deeply casteist social outlook of the larger part of India. While all the policies continue with the efforts to continue possession of the territory of the region, the issues confronting the lives of the people have never been identified with. So, earlier it was country's security and now it is the foreign hand which necessitates the continuation of security-based policies.

The other aspect in which China has beaten India badly is the performance of economic growth at the regional levels. China has done wonderfully well to foster the pace of national economic performance while at the same time catering to the needs of regional economic growth in all her provinces.

The security aspect has prevented India, or rather India has taken the overtly nice excuse of not developing the far away provinces in the name of not exposing the national strength to foreign eyes, China has taken all the steps necessary for putting the developmental needs in all her provinces (including the far flung ones) in place. This has ensured the existence of modern infrastructure in all parts of China while the opposite is the reality in this country.

China's newly acquired economic and hence political clout is based on her country-wide economic base while that of India is founded only on a few pockets. Globalisation and the positive benefits of it have been reaped in most parts of China, while in India globalisation is only an unclear concept in most parts of the country.

While we may come across institutions of global standards in a few pockets of India, the larger parts of India have remained in what they were two-three decades ago. This implies that quite many parts of the country and the institutions located therein have degenerated relatively over the years.

Not Sustainable: The present scenario in this country as picturised above is definitely an unsustainable one. A large and heterogeneous country like India cannot be thought of being under the possession of any group, large or small, and can never be made competitive at the global level in this way.

India hatred has failed to serve the cause of Pakistan terribly. In the same way, Chinese-phobia and distrust of the people of the North Eastern Region can never be the foundation of building India's economic strength. One may continue with this approach if one wills, but the outcome would be something nobody has willed for. The choice before the national policy-makers is very clear.