Time for Fortress India

Photo by Frans van Heerden: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-castle-under-clouds-1022698/

The world faces an epochal change in the way that the post Second World War global order, put in place by the United States and its allies is getting replaced by one in which nations are being increasingly guided by narrow self-interest and forging strictly transactional relations with other nations, in place of strategic alliances. The Americans who propped up the now fast disappearing global order that put a premium on international trade and stability are increasingly playing a diminishing role in ensuring that there is order and respect for rules and conventions in different parts of the globe. The troops pull-out in Afghanistan is, just a culmination of their lack of interest in what goes on in other parts of their world as long as the US and its people get by just fine.

Their sole long term now objective is to ensure that a rising belligerent China does not replace the hitherto American led global world order with a Chinese led one-not because of American hubris, but because a rising threat would prove to be detrimental to their long term national security threat. They may have been temporarily forced to play a prominent global role again thanks to the happenings in Ukraine and Israel, but their primary focus is China and the Indo-Pacific region.

That explains their burgeoning strategic relationship with India which they want to build up as a strategic bulwark against Chinese expansionism. This suits India as well, who have the misfortune of having to be sandwiched between two sworn enemies on its western and eastern flanks. While Pakistan with its collapsing and imploding economy can be dealt with by India quite easily, it is China with its much larger economy and expanding defense forces that shows every intention of using force to seize Indian territory that requires India to shore up its defense capabilities like never before .

It is, therefore, in India’s interest to join forces with the United States and its allies in trying to contain China.  The unreliability of a steady supply of weapons from a failing Russia has also necessitated that India buy more and more arms from the West, which it is doing. Its entering into the QUAD alliance which envisages close strategic relations with the US, Australia and Japan is also a step in the right direction. While India’s growing ties with the West in the economic, cultural and strategic spheres are indeed very welcome and in its national interest, one should never lose sight of the fact that the new found bonhomie is on account of strategic reasons and not on account of any special affinity the West has for India.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. India has a lot going for it. It has the world’s largest population, most of which is young and able to work unlike the rapidly declining and fast aging population of China. Its economy which is already the fifth largest in the world is going to hit $5 trillion by 2027 with India becoming the third largest market in the world, on account of it being the fastest growing large economy on Earth.

India is self-sufficient in food in an era where the very real specter of global food shortage is spooking half the world (including China). That counts for a lot in a world threatened by climate change, global pandemics and internecine warfare in different parts of the world. In the days ahead, the world will need India more than it needs the world. Look at the way the British are pursuing India to sign a trade deal with them. People of Indian origin are working and doing well for themselves in all parts of the world, thanks to their great work ethic and the drive to excel giving India an increasing say in world affairs. India as a nation is not averse to projecting power overseas when required. Look at the way it organized the rescue of Indians and indeed citizens of other countries in conflict zones like Ukraine and Israel.

While India should engage with the world, where its interests are involved, it should do so strictly on a transactional basis like the US does. Ever since the latter have acquired energy security, they have largely lost interest in the Middle East, withdrawing from Iraq at the first opportunity. Once they had Bin Laden, they lost interest in Afghanistan and withdrew. Today they are engaged in an epic mission of degrading China’s manufacturing capabilities and ridding the world of over reliance on the Chinese dominated global supply chains, by shifting manufacturing to other countries and increasingly back to the US or its neighbouring nations on the American continents like Mexico.

 

Long before they and their sworn allies lose interest in India strategically, India should like the US become a self-contained world in itself where it manufactures all or most of its defense equipment itself, and grows its economy by catering to its large domestic market, apart from its exports. That will ensure, it does not have to fear being left high and dry by any other nation it took to be its lifeline. India with its long experience in maintaining a neutral nonaligned position on world affairs from the days of the Nonaligned Movement is well positioned to do so.

Besides, the world is increasingly going to need India with its large market, its technological prowess, its military might capable of force projection beyond the borders if required, its ability to grow enough food to not just feed a billion and a half people but for export to other nations as well. Its fortuitous geographical position where all the major sea lanes pass below it gives it a vantage position to not just protect its maritime interests, but also ensure that nothing detrimental to its interests happens in the region.

Fortress India can not only secure the future of its citizens for perpetuity, but also become a force for global good, and a template of self-reliant progress that others can emulate.

 

Why is English news so bad on Indian TV channels?

Photo by Amanna Avena on Unsplash

 Anyone with a half bad command of the English language would know that what passes on as English news on Indian TV channels is English only in the opinion of the people who mouth the gibberish that issues from their mouths. They might as well be speaking Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi or whatever their mother tongue is. Don’t get me wrong here. All of our Indian languages are amazingly beautiful and boast the most incredibly rich and diverse literature of any language in the world, but so does English and you have got to respect that or the flavour of the language does not come across. Don’t we make fun of foreigners when they speak our languages in a funny manner?

I object to the fact that the news readers and anchors who deliver the news on our TV channels don’t know how the language is to be used. Not a single one of them. Even the most exalted ones can’t pronounce Europe right and pronounce it the same way that one says rope. Israel is pronounced as Israeel and with so much conceited confidence as if they are the font of all wisdom in the world. Instead of speaking softly in a low-pitched and polite voice, they screech, harangue, hector and sermonize with messianic zeal. Like they are on to something, even though they come across as crass dolts.

There was a time when TV news in India in English sounded like English. News readers like Tejaswar Singh, Neethi Ravindran, Geetanjali Iyer, and Sunit Tandon read the news without fuss and without murdering the English language. News readers, news anchors or performers call them what you will have no business reading the English news if they don’t have a clue about the words they spout.

It is sad that many of the owners of such channels who are so erudite themselves, don’t seem to care about quality going down the drain, as long as they can line their pockets. It is a case of the blind leading the blind (no offence meant to the visually impaired-am using only an old English idiom) and nobody really being bothered about the impact it will have on the viewers, especially those of an impressionable age.

This encouragement of mediocrity, where everyone imagines that they are extraordinarily good, when they are plain incompetent and ignorant will not lead us to be the world leader that we aspire to be.

A good command of the English language has always been a quality that many Indians have possessed since a very long time ago indeed. They have brought great glory to the nation in that many Indian writers are counted amongst the best in the world. It is also a fact that most of our countrymen know the language only partially and could always look for some improvement. English is after all a foreign language, even though it has been around for a couple of centuries now.

My point is that you cannot have people speak and write an English language that they have themselves manufactured. Imagine, if you were taught the kind of pidgin English that many of us speak due to a lack of the right kind of exposure, in our schools and colleges. That would be disastrous, right? So, how can they be allowed to have such horrible English spoken on Indian TV channels, by people who are supposed to be anchors and news readers? Just look at the English language channels of non-English speaking countries like France and Germany and you will understand what I mean.

This malaise of mutilating a language to suit the pathetic language skills of low-quality English news readers and anchors is thankfully confined to the electronic media. Print media for now continues to provide us news in correct English. That’s the last bastion standing.

Is the cost of living crisis in the West indicative of something serious?

 

                                          Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/grey-metal-case-of-hundred-dollar-bills-164652/

The Western nations with their high standards of living have been both a cause of envy and a beacon of hope for people living in the countries of the third world. The incredible material progress achieved by leading Western nations like the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France and even Australia, (which is not in the Western hemisphere, but is very much a Western nation) exhibited a template of what an ideal life could be. Well-fed and well-educated people living in fabulous houses, earning extremely well and living life to the fullest in every sense of the word. From driving expensive cars to holidaying at exotic locations, everything pointed to a very happy existence indeed. Add to that the fact these countries were by and large safe, followed a rules-based order and provided top-rate healthcare added to the allure of living there.

Things seem to have changed dramatically in the last few years, especially since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. One began to hear of job layoffs, businesses going under and a rising cost of living crisis that threatened to forever change the paradigm of the "beautiful Western" lifestyle. From education becoming unaffordable with the accompanying student debt crisis and the inability of young people to buy homes and the rising food and energy crisis, the much-vaunted Western way of life seems to have become very shaky indeed. So what is going on? Is the cost of living crisis in the West indicative of something really serious?

Everybody is impacted

 

The fact of the matter is that the food and energy price rise has impacted everybody-rich and poor nations alike. In fact, tens of millions of people around the world run the risk of relapsing into poverty because of that.  The supply chain disruption caused by the pandemic has been further compounded by the war in Ukraine leading to intense inflationary pressures in nations across the world. The impact of this has been devastating in much of the underdeveloped world with people across Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (with the exception of India)suffering from immense economic deprivation. Very uncharacteristically many people in the developed nation (a quarter of the people by some estimates) are experiencing economic distress. Shockingly many people in the UK, a major G7 nation can’t afford food on a daily basis. With food and energy bills eating into most of their earnings, a large number of people are in real dire straits.

End of Four Centuries of Western Economic Dominance in Sight?

 

The West's economic dominance which started with the rise of European colonialism and reached its zenith under the United States in the present times. This led to unprecedented global growth, especially after the Second World War, raising the standards of living of not just their Western allies, but many other parts of the world. This unprecedented and unparalleled economic growth definitely seems to be now decelerating, if not stalling altogether. The steady decline in the living standards of the American middle class and that of other leading nations of the Western world has led these countries to gradually withdraw from an openly global trade regime to watch out for their individual national interest above everything else.

The economic rise of China and its striving to dislodge the United States from its preeminent position in global affairs has led to a realignment of geo-political strategies with the US according more importance to its Indo-Pacific allies like India and Japan than to its traditional ones in Europe (though the war in Ukraine has temporarily enhanced focus in that theatre.) China on its part is facing its own economic demons with a rapidly declining economy matched by its falling population and the rise in the mean age of its population.

The world is in a state of economic flux, with no clear sign of what the new economic order will look like in an era of the disintegration of a familiar way of doing things and the need to pivot to a green and environmentally friendly way of growing the world economy against the backdrop of a climate catastrophe. The cost of living crisis in the West or elsewhere may or may not be a foretaste of things to come, but there certainly is not a lot of clarity about what lies ahead.