President Bush to visit India

President Bush is set to visit India (and Pakistan) for the first time tomorrow, and is the first Republican President to visit India since Richard Nixon.  In between, Carter (1978) and Clinton (2000) had also visited India.

Indo-US relations were lukewarm at best for the entire period from 1950-2000.  India, despite being an English-speaking democracy, foolishly chose to participate in the so-called 'Non-Aligned Movement' (more accurately a Non-Importance Movement), yet subsequently decided to make an even worse choice and aligned with the Soviet Union and adopted a socialist economic model, complete with Soviet-style 5-year plans. 

The magnitude of this blunder is apparent when comparing India's economic progress against that of nations that chose free-market policies in 1950.  The per capita GDP of South Korea, Taiwan, and India were approximately the same in 1950, but with South Korea and Taiwan residing under the US free-market umbrella, both reached per capita GDPs of $15,000 in 2000, while India languished at merely $500.  Multiply this by India's vast population, and an opportunity cost of trillions of dollars reveals itself.  That a country containing a sixth of the world's people has, between 1970 and 2005, won merely six Olympic medals, and has been visited by a US President only three times, is a further barometer of the utter failure of India relative to what could have been. 

Unlike Democrats Carter and Clinton, who would simply praise India as the home of Gandhi and Mother Teresa and give low self-esteem Indian politicians the validation of having an important white person pat them on the head, Bush's visit could be the watershed event for a new era of joint cooperation.  During Bush's visit, the agenda will focus on genuine economic and military synergies between the world's two largest democracies, with many new trade and military treaties almost certain to emerge.  India's new generation of citizens is better educated, less self-loathing, and more practical than their embarassing predecessors, and this bodes well for a new era of rapid economic and political cooperation with the US.

Interestingly, India is one of the only countries where the 2004 reelection of George W. Bush was received as overwhelmingly positive.  The accumulated frustration of younger Indians from having to suffer through decades of leftist-socialist policies and the condescending multiculturalism of Western pseudointellectuals has whet a great appetite for advancement.  India's brand image is already rapidly improving through the efforts of fed-up younger Indians.

India and the US will be great and mighty allies against Islamic terrorism, Chinese Communism, and leftist multiculturalism.  The beginning of this new era starts now.

Comments

[jeffolie]

I totally agree that:

India and the US will be great and mighty allies against Islamic terrorism, Chinese Communism, and leftist multiculturalism. The beginning of this new era starts now.

Two difficulties still remain.

LITERACY AND INFRASTRUCTURE

India's problems are large. It's a country of a billion people, more than a third of whom are illiterate. Some 700 million live on rural land. Technology has infused the economy with capital, but India's top universities produce just 50 computer science Ph.D's a year. Ravi Venkatesan, chairman of Microsoft India, takes the stage. He calls India "an IT superpower that has 300 million illiterate people." India innovates for export, he says. But to assert itself on the world stage for the first time in three centuries, his countrymen must do more. "It's high time we started innovating in India and for India."

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

[jeffolie]

News Story by Patrick Thibodeau

NOVEMBER 15, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Taking work offshore may cut costs, but it still comes with a not-so-hidden price. Asian countries, including the No. 1 outsourcing destination, India, have weak or untested intellectual property laws, inefficient courts, and financial and public records mechanisms that make it difficult to conduct employee background checks.

[GK]

jeffolie,

True. But even if just 30% of the people get educated, that is still as big as either the US or Europe.

It will take a long time for 1.1 billion to get lifted out of poverty, but a lot can happen once even 300 million are..

[Fewlesh]

Good article in the economist about India this month.

Are you just lifting interesting information from good sources, ie Kurtzweil, the economist and throwing it on the front page?

Please reference sources!
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5548089

One of my favorite observations from the article in the mag:

Indians use candelight to illuminate the shovel dug trenches to lay miles of fiberoptic cables.

That's sums up India nicely. Tons of super high tech riding on the backs of hundreds of millions of poor agrarian farmers.

[GK]

Fewlesh,

Note that the super high-tech can absorb a lot of people in a short time.

While 40% on India is illiterate, most of those are older people.

90% of school-age children do go to school now. In 15 years, they will be entering the workforce. The country then becomes a different country.

[jeffolie]

Could India replace China's manufacturing and trade position with the US? Will India provide competition in the same or at overlapping areas as our trade with China?

We may benefit from a trade war with China and India trying to be the low cost seller to us.

[GK]

In manufacturing, no. China is too far ahead.

But 83% of the US economy is service (vs. just 15% being mnfctg). India's lead here will be nearly impossible for any other country to replace.

A trade war in software and BPO between India, China, and E. Europe would be very beneficial for the US economy, squeezing costs out all over the place.

[Fewlesh]

GK,

Squeezing cost yes, but as always, lots of creative destruction in the process.

Fewlesh chants, "Biotech, Biotech ..." :)

We better pull the next great thing out of our butts soon, and stop wasting it on our bloated assets and federal spending.

I cover the auto industry part time for some web sites I publish. This year at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, the big news was China because a privately owned Chinese firm, Geely, was showing a car and announced plans to export cars to the US. But there are tremendous downsides to doing business in China. If Intellectual Property is "untested" in India, it's a complete farce in China, where GM, Honda and Toyota all face Chinese manufacturers making virtual copies of complete cars.

The basic need for any business is the rule of law. Contracts must be enforceable. India may have inefficient courts, but they are honest. When doing business in China, your partners and your competitors may be owned by an assortment of national and provincial governments or agencies, including the Army. Try to get a fair court hearing in that warren of conflicting interests.

The drawbacks to China are illustrated in the case of Apex Electronics, a distributor of inexpensive consumer electronics in the US. Their Chinese vendor claimed they hadn't been paid $480 million. The CEO of the company was arrested while in China, but the lawsuit was filed in a California court.

I was so optimistic about India, that a short while ago, I started Auto Report India, to cover the Indian auto industry which is quickly becoming a world player. In the short time since then, everything I've read convinces me that India's promise is even greater than I thought.

[Ravinder]

Do Indians really see not aligning with either block as a blunder? Does having friendly ties with USSR is seen as foolishness. I do not think so. Not even now.

Whether prosperity of Korea or Taiwan is due to American influence or due to other reasons can always be questioned. Since 1947 Pakistan had good ties with America. It has received everything possible under this earth from America. How great a country is it? Compare its size, ethnicity and diversity with India and you can assess the workload. Remember that two countries consist of same people.

It is very easy to make simplistic assumptions. But unfortunately articles about India are written without knowing it. It's like me commenting on China.