West to East

This week, Newsweek looked at the world through the eyes of the foreign investor and voted India the shiniest destination of them all. This ...

This week, Newsweek looked at the world through the eyes of the foreign investor and voted India the shiniest destination of them all. This month, in the very influential journal Foreign Affairs, editor James F. Hoge, Jr. caught up with a more panoramic shift. The global power shift from the West to Asia is quickening, he wrote. In Asia, China will be replaced by India as the centre.

While China is the 8216;8216;most obvious power on the rise8217;8217;, Hoge pointed out why 8216;8216;India also looms large on the radar screen8217;8217;. India8217;s growth rates will carry it to the top of Asia8217;s heap in the foreseeable future 8212; 8216;8216;if India sustains a six per cent growth rate for 50 years8230;8217;8217; Economic reforms, even if 8216;8216;partial8217;8217;, have led to the emergence of a 8216;8216;dynamic8217;8217; private sector and a change in attitudes 8212; 8216;8216;many Indians are finally discarding their colonial-era sense of victimisation8217;8217;.

Hoge argued that the transfer of power from West to East will soon change the ways in which international challenges are framed and dealt with. Asia8217;s growing economic power, fast translating into greater political and military power, invests the region8217;s old hostilities with a more international edge. Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, Kashmir 8212; 8216;8216;Any of them could explode into large-scale warfare that would make the current Middle East confrontations seem like police operations8217;8217;.

But Hoge8217;s real worry was this: that the West, or the US, was not preparing itself for the changing lay of the international field. From Washington8217;s perspective, he said, it is necessary to concentrate on engagement with China and India.

Hoge immediately pointed out the difficulties in the first relationship: China and the US may be destined to be rivals. Chinese analysts, he said, are already suspicious of US moves to realign its military forces by moving from the Pacific rim into Central Asia. They suspect that these new positions could combine with Washington8217;s 8216;8216;newly intensified military cooperation8217;8217; with India, to add up to the 8216;8216;soft containment8217;8217; of China.

Washington, said Hoge, would want to use India as a counter-balance to China and as a strong proponent of democracy in its own right. But, 8216;8216;to step into these roles, India needs to quicken the pace of its economic reforms and avoid the Hindu nationalism espoused by the Bharatiya Janata Party8230; unless Congress follows its secular tradition in governing, it will undercut any utility India might have for the US campaign to counter the influence of radical Islamists.8217;8217;

Over to February!

The Economist is already anticipating P Chidambaram8217;s next. India8217;s FM is getting down to work on reforms for his full annual budget in February next year, it said. It listed out the areas: taxation, subsidies, development expenditures.

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The magazine sounded worried about the likely opposition to the proposals to 8216;8216;refocus8217;8217; the planned development expenditure and to devolving responsibilities to local bodies. In the end, it seemed to count on Montek Singh Ahluwalia having got it right. India has a 8216;8216;high noise to signal ratio8217;8217;, he said, which makes the opposition sound more stubborn than it is.

Ten years later

Tony Blair completed 10 years as Labour leader this week and along with him, the idea of New Labour. It was the occasion for many, in the Left wing and Right wing media, to look back in different shades of anger.

It is Iraq, of course. A Guardian/ICM poll to mark the day revealed that 55 per cent believe he lied over Iraq and an unprecedented 56 per cent believe the war was unjustified. Commentators accused Blair of being much too 8216;8216;presidential8217;8217;, especially on Iraq. Comments about his 8216;8216;sofa diplomacy8217;8217; were given a persistent airing.

Ironically, it is also on Iraq that commentators seemed to concede Blair the most. On Iraq, he took on his opponents and argued his case, miscalculated though it is turning out to be. For the rest, an army of critics accused him of an imitative political project.

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Jackie Ashley in the Guardian counted out the pieces of rhetoric in Blair8217;s Britain 8212; more choice and less bureaucracy in schools and hospitals; an end to 8217;60s liberalism in the criminal justice system; tough asylum policies; stubborn, if disastrous, privatisations 8212; and exclaimed on their uncanny familiarity to those who covered the Tory administrations of the 8217;80s and 8217;90s. New Labour wore the clothes of Thatcherism effortlessly, lamented Martin Jaques, in the same paper. New Labour cloaks even its redistributive policies in a larger welter of administrative measures, he said.

P.S.: A few months ago, the Economist had announced: 8216;8216;Until further notice, In Defense of Globalisation becomes the standard general-interest reference, the intelligent layman8217;s handbook, on global economic integration8217;8217;. Well, this week, the magazine has given notice. In its view, Jagdish Bhagwati8217;s tome has been bettered. Martin Wolf8217;s new book Why Globalisation Works is the book the Economist now hails as the 8216;8216;fullest and most sophisticated treatment to date of the case for globalisation8230; the definitive treatment of the subject8230;8217;8217;