Opinion A century of change
One hundred and two years ago,the King Emperor was crowned in Delhi.
One hundred and two years ago,the King Emperor was crowned in Delhi. At that time,the sun never set on the British Empire and the map of the world was covered in red,the colour of British Raj,everywhere. That was the high point of empires,though few could have foreseen it. The rest of the Twentieth Century witnessed various revolutions: the demise of empiresGerman,Russian,Ottoman,Belgian,Dutch,French and British; the rise and defeat of fascism; and the rise and collapse of Bolshevism.
It has also seen the rise of Asia in a way no one could have envisaged in 1911 despite the then recent victory of Japan over Russia. Now,India and China are powers which attract leaders from around the world coming for trade and investment. Even as late as the 1960s,Left-wing doctrine held that western monopoly capitalism will never allow the Third World to develop. The answer was to reject capitalism and adopt socialism. Many fell for that ideology. China did for a while but escaped to become the second largest economy in the world. India has not yet quite escaped socialist delusions so it is hobbling along behind China.
The arrival of David Cameron hot on the heels after Francois Hollande shows the transformation the world has gone through. Western world is stuck with a geriatric capitalism,ageing population and large debts. It faces a stagnant decade of near zero growth rate and is desperate for new markets since selling to each other is no longer profitable. Their welfare states are unsustainable and the political system in Europe as in the USA faces the challenge of paying off debts while at the same time sharing the burden of adjustment in a fair way.
China,India and Asia as a whole are pulsating with innovative dynamic capitalism as are the Latin American nations Brazil,Chile,Mexico. After decades of misery,sub-Saharan Africa is suddenly coming on the scene as a fast growing region. All these regions have a young population,save a lot and work hard. The future belongs to them.
Because capitalism came to India in its western guise,there is still the feeling that it is a western conspiracy. We have been brought up on stories of the rapacious East India company,chopped fingers of silk weavers,and the drain of wealth from India. But even so India was the first Asian country,even before Japan,to have modern manufacturing and railways and telegraph. Indians were no stranger to money and banking or trading across the world. They adapted the new technology and could have been in the forefront of the global economy with their textile industry.
But unlike America,Britain went into depression in 1920 and stayed there for 20 years. It dragged India down into a similar depression. The Independence movement saw the problem as imperialism as well as capitalism. It wanted to reject both. So India wasted 40 years experimenting with models of Soviet-type industrialisation,not knowing that the Leninist experiment would bite the dust so soon. China saw the
writing on the wall much sooner thanks to Deng Xiaoping. It left the Leninist model behind and went for export-led growth. India waited till the actual collapse of the USSR before embarking on its return to capitalism.
Even now there are detractors who pine for the Hindu rate of growth of 1.2 per cent income per capita,who inflate the numbers of poor by various devices and wish to get back to the good old days of nationalised telephone services. But India has made its choices and the growth it has experienced will be permanent. For anyone born since 1970,the whole idea of socialism as a way of running the economy is bizarre. As my students at LSE used to ask me in the 1990s,How did anyone think this sort of economy could ever work? The answer was it didnt,but those who gained from scarcity put out clever propaganda to extol it and jailed those who objected.
The leaders of the previous Masters of the World will keep coming to our shores as long as we do not lose our senses and go backwards.
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