Monday, November 14, 2011

Why the decline of the West is best for us – and them By R Vaidyanathan

But do we, as Indians citizens and Indian Govt, have a strategy to use the decline of west in our favor?

Received from a friend through email.

Why the decline of the West is best for us – and them

By R Vaidyanathan

It is important to recognise that the dominance of the West has been there only for last 200-and-odd years. According to Angus Maddison's pioneering OECD study, India and China had nearly 50 percent of global GDP as late as the 1820s.   Hence India and China are not emerging or rising powers. They are retrieving their original position.

In 1990, the share of the G-7 in world GDP (on a purchasing power parity basis) was 51 percent and that of emerging markets 36 percent. But in 2011,  it is the reverse. So the dominant west is a myth.

Similarly, the crisis. It is a US-Europe crisis and not a global one. The two wars – which were essentially European wars – were made out to be world wars with one English leader commenting that 'we will fight the Germans to the last Indian'.

In this economic scenario, countries like India are made to feel as ifthey are in a crisis. Since the West says there's a crisis, we swallow it hook, line and sinker.

But it isn't so. At no point of time in the last 20 years has foreign investment – direct and portfolio – exceeded 10 percent of our domestic investment. Our growth is due to our domestic savings which is again predominately household savings. Our housewives require awards for our growth not any western fund manager.

The crisis faced by the West is primarily because it has forgotten a six-letter word called 'saving' which, again, is the result of forgetting another six letter word called "family". The West has nationalised families over the last 60 years. Old age, ill health, single motherhood – everything is the responsibility of the state.

In India, society is organised and government disorganised. Because of disorganised society in the West the state has to take care of families. The market crash is essentially due to the adoption of a model where there is consumption with borrowings and no savings. How long will Asian savings be able to sustain the western spending binge?

Declining empires are dangerous. They will try to peddle their failed models to us and we will swallow it since colonial genes are very much present here. You will find more Indians heading global corporations since India is a very large market and one way to capture it is to make Indian sepoys work for it.

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