Rise of China vis a vis India

Happened to watch a video of Martin Jacques where he has been illustrating why China's rise is imminent and how its growth will shape up the 21st Century.. He elucidates the same using 3 building blocks:

1) It has been able to maintain the ancient culture till date and able to keep itself united despite the challenges being thrown upon.
2) It doesnt go with the conventional norm of Nation state which is a western concept
3) The government even though the west perceives that  it is authoritarian, enjoys pretty much the legal state and enjoys more support from public than the democratic govt in west.

Some of those points are valid and applicable and in this blog I want to take some of these points to see which ones can be applied to Indian context. We were the "Golden Bird" till 15th Century and that is why every body in west was seeking India.. Columbus was in pursuit of India and he found US... There would have been countless expeditions just to find India.. Alexander himself, who came to conquer India, got fascinated by the culture and the wealth and went back only with good memories and experiences. There was always something unique about this country and it continues to have.

Similar to china, we have been largely successful in maintaining our ancient culture through many ways..My childhood went by reading through many of the Indian Mythology stories published in comics and books... making us realize of the wonderful past we had. The same acts as a unifying thread across the nation which has been able to keep us together. However the aspect which pulls us back is the caste system (which I am not sure why was it created).. This can be fairly equated to race and this has largely created lot of differences among us and lot of inefficiencies in the nation system. Chinese enjoy superiority on this ground as they have single race system.. (well 90% of the population belongs to one race).

But on the other ground, I have no doubts in saying this loud that Indian system is way far more chaotic than most of the democratic nation systems out there. We are a crowd of 1.2 billion people and if each one of us contribute effectively, we would have been a super power by now. But that didn't happen.. why.. ? Because we as a nation never had a strategic vision (till recently).. China is literally run like a corporate by this government, setting targets for its internal departments, policies channeling growth at all quarters..Chinese Government runs as if it is entrusted with ensuring continuity of Chinese culture at a larger.. They sponsor entrepreneurship and ensure their guys move across every place in world.. I have been to mexico, US, and have been in airports of South Africa, Brazil too .. and everywhere I could notice we have at least one Chinese restaurant.. How many Indian restaurants do we have across the globe?

We as a nation still lack this endeavor..The drive to make an impression onto the world.. No doubt with our IT skills, we have been able to build several landmarks, but let us remember we still dont have any Google or Microsoft or any other major entity carved out of India. We have done good, but not enough.

Goes without doubt that we have all the ingredients that are required to be the world number one. Many people suggest we lack  a strategic vision, leader who can ensure we all can collaborate effectively to build out our nation, but in this web 2.0 era, why are we still hanging onto the old convention of having some one like Sardar Vallabh Patel to help unify the nation again.. ? Learning from the Egyptian revolution which started with one page in Facebook, led to collaborative efforts across the nation to overthrow a dictator who had ruled the nation for over 30 years in a matter of few months.. We dont need a revolution to overthrow a ruler here, just equal and effective contribution from each and every one of our citizens in building our nation.. Some things to start would be to ensure we keep strict monitoring of the development projects that are in and around us and sharing the info as they come out... Coupled with the power of RTI, web 2.0 can do marvels for us, just that we have to start engaging ourselves onto it with a vision in mind..
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