BOOK REVIEW
Title: SUPER ECONOMIES-America,
India, China & The Future Of The World
Author: RAGHAV BAHL
Publisher: ALLEN LANE, Penguin Books, 2015.
Price: Rs.
699/-
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The Triumvirate Of The Future?
There is a David Lean-like sweep to this book. You could be
looking at the vast beach in Ryan’s Daughter, that timeless metaphor,
and setting, for much of the tight human drama that film portrayed.
Super Economies presents
a breath-taking vista, and makes you wish for a role in government for its
author, one that can utilise his considerable ability for lateral thinking, his
articulation, and his most engaging sincerity.
This book, is in
large part, a Churchillian recounting of recent history, to act as backdrop for
Raghav Bahl’s vision for the future, particularly that of India’s place in it. This
is the media mogul’s second book, again on the broad socio-politico-economic
landscape. It positions India as an emerging super economy, not just because of
the potential financial numbers, but its global utility, particularly to
America.
And India is positioned affably alongside America and China,
to make up a new global triumvirate . One that postulates an interdependence
that may be ideal according to the author, but one that might not quite
fructify on future ground. There can be, in the structural conceit of
‘sovereign nations’, as Tim Rice wrote once for the musical Jesus Christ
Superstar, ‘No King but Caesar’.
Nevertheless, are we then, per Super Economies,
looking at three countries, in a preeminent class by themselves, standing in
for a new Julius Caesar, Pompey Magnus; great generals both, plus a rich as
Midas Crassus?
And if so, will not the ancient, time-worn jockeying for personal
advantage fray and eventually destroy the synergies once more? Bahl thinks not, though that first triumvirate
did collapse, despite its many theoretical gains.
If there is a soft spot in Bahl’s considerable erudition, it
is probably his idealism. Because the world has singularly failed to run on
idealism so far, but then again, nothing worthwhile has ever been accomplished
without the integrity of idealism either. Undoubtedly, a man with a vision like Bahl’s,
cannot help but leave his mark on global geopolitical strategy.
But there may be also, a fundamental miscalculation in
Bahl’s thesis, one that will strengthen, not weaken America’s top-dog status.
That fundament is the US hold on a fountain of original technology, that no
country on earth comes even close to mirroring.
America is the world’s number one inventor. Ergo, unless
this changes, it will always lead the known world, no matter how militarily
strong, ingenious, thrifty, industrious, or competitive, countries such as
China and India may become.
The eventual solving of the global pressure over petroleum,
extant since Sheikh Yamani’s first oil-pricing shock of the 70s, is just one dramatic
case in point. Today, a combination of enhanced domestic production and shale
oil has created US self-sufficiency, up from being 50% importer of the world’s production.
And let us remember that it is America’s invention and
proven efficacy of the nuclear bomb, a zero sum game today assuring mutual
destruction, that has put a harness on naked aggression beyond a point; and
globally.
Besides, did China
make its own economic miracle, or did America make it for it? Was it Deng or
was it Nixon? And was the purpose to outsource low- grade, labour intensive
manufacturing, or put paid to the USSR; or both?
‘Geopolitics’, it may well all be, as Bahl, and Kissinger
before him said, but one cannot overplay the hand of interdependence. There will be very few future changes in borders
allowed to further a hegemon’s ambitions.
Today, the little old Baltic States, and the Eastern
Provinces etc. once under the yoke of the USSR, have found their independent
feet again - for the first time since 1914.
This, if it comes to it, is what will strain the triumvirate
any day of the week. So China will not be allowed to annex Taiwan any time soon;
and certainly not before it becomes democratic, effectively dismantling the way
it is today. But though Bahl expects this democracy to come to China too, will
it survive intact when it does, any more than the USSR did?
And, ‘America, China and India will not unite to staunch
Islamic terrorism’ either. This might look logical to Bahl and many of his
readers, but history does not support such common sense.
Yes the jihad will end, but only after the
blood-letting of countless battles eventually purges the radicalism. The gush
of oil and drug money that fuels it will have to first reduce to a trickle, and
then stop.
Like the barbaric crusading, inquisitorial excesses of
previous centuries, Islamic terrorism
too will be rejected, by Muslims themselves. It will die a natural death of
neglect. No guerrilla war has ever been snuffed out by state intervention, and
neither will this one. More so, in this Age of the Internet and extreme
connectivity.
Also, diverse, pluralistic, India, geographically distant
from America, will never quite become its strategic partner and British-style
‘poodle’ from across the ‘pond’. At best, these two countries will be benign
allies going forward, but not at the expense of India’s strategic friendship
with China, the Far East, Australia, Canada, Europe, West Asia, Africa, Russia,
our neighbours in SAARC, including, willy-nilly, China’s stooge, Pakistan.
Bahl’s book is quite the grand-tourer, and segues into many
destinations with engaging readability, but the hard reality it glosses over,
even as it expects India to be a $ 5 trillion economy by 2025, is that India
will not catch up to China for decades to come. This, despite its 9% projected
growth per annum. It will therefore, at best, qualify as a junior partner or
senior associate in the scheme of things.
Both America and China, growing at a much slower rate, are in
a different economic league, expanding from a size that is many multiples of
India’s.
Besides, India’s much touted ‘demographic dividend’, has yet
to prove itself; not just in terms of discipline and productivity, but also
because of a primitive patriarchal culture that looks down on its female
population.
But yes, Bahl never asserts that it is going to be an equal
triumvirate. Fact is, India will become
the third largest economy in the world, and that, by itself, is nothing to
sniff at.
For: The Pioneer On Sunday
(1,024 words)
April 29th, 2015
Gautam Mukherjee
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