Dispatches on global economics and culture, innovation and enterprise, and the daunting challenges facing a lonely blue planet | Douglas "Las" Wengell, kriyom.com
These two countries account for one-third of humanity. Both of their economies are on fire. Both have a rising middle class. Both are witnessing massive foreign investment, as Western firms look outside of their home countries for profits (something Coke and tobacco companies have been doing for decades.) Millions of Indians and Chinese have been lifted out of poverty.
It’s amazing that a decade ago they were placed in the same sentence. China is racing ahead of India economical and militarily. “China is a brutal place to live if you are on the bottom rung but there is an exit,” said a man in Beijing. Not so in India. India has 10 million manufacturing jobs compared with 150 million in China. India has a sophisticated service sector, but that’s only useful if you are an educated, English speaking, urban Indian. What jobs are there for Indians?
The Chinese government has delivered on basic services and provisions—social mobility, jobs, education and health care. This is what you care about from the bottom rung. India’s chaotic democracy is chaotic and deadlocked, whereas China’s top down, autocracy works at lightning speed, which explains why China’s infrastructure is decades ahead of China and why India is painfully behind in its preparation for the 2010 Asian Games in New Delhi.
Per capita income is double in China, and its life expectancy is lower. Indians are twice as likely to lose a child before the age five. Ninety-three percent literacy in China, compared to sixty percent of Indians who can read (worse for women).
The U.S. is standing behind India and its messy democracy. It hopes it will balance China’s rise.
In the short-term, China is in the lead. Its autocratic system works well at this point in its economic development, when things need to get done. But it faces massive pressure from its people, to keep the machine going, to hold it all together. What if things fall apart, what about China’s long term prospects, can it be both prosperous and free? India’s people may be stifled materially right now, but they are not intellectually sheltered like the Chinese. There is a robust free press in India and deep bridges to the outside world and the support of Washington.Media after all acts as a watchdog; there are no checks and balances on Beijing. One wrong step and there could be one hundred million peasants on Tiananmen Square.
India and China are comparable in their economic model and
development but not so in the political sphere. Beijing is autocratic, New
Delhi a large and messy democracy.
Both are rapidly developing the big things required of a
first world nation – infrastructure, rules and laws governing commerce. In this
regard, at this stage of development, top down China is winning against bottom
up India.
“I just feel disgusted and ashamed that we are incapable of
doing even small things.” So said one voice among many in India who are
frustrated by Delhi’s inability to roll-out infrastructure projects, which
routinely get bogged down in massive bureaucracy. In October 2010, India is
hosting the Commonwealth Games in the hope of demonstrating the country’s
emergence as an economic powerhouse, much as Beijing used the Olympics as a
coming-out party for China. At a spiraling cost of $2B, officials admit that it
will be down to the wire to finish in time. Whether it was taxi drivers in
Delhi or residents I spoke with, there’s a frustration that “the world’s
largest” democracy can’t get anything done.
China, with its sprawling networks of new highways, airports
and high-speed rail connections, makes for a daunting comparison. India has
weaker government finances and unruly
democratic government that lacks China’s authoritarian discipline, for worse at
the moment. Clearing land for roads or power plants in China is no problem, as
the verdict comes from atop; not so in India, where land rights are
contentious. India’s government relies on private sector companies whereas
China’s infrastructure build-out is aided by government-backed companies.
“It is more challenging for democratic systems because every
day they come under public pressure and every short period they have to go back
to the polls,” said Victor Chu, chairman of First Eastern Investment Group in
Hong Kong, the largest direct investment firm in China. “China is lucky to have
the ability to make long-term strategic decisions and then execute them
clinically.”
How bad is India’s roads, so key to its future? By one
account, 70,000 km of India highways “aren’t worth driving on” (and this
according to a top politician), and 40 percent of fruits and vegetables rot
before reaching market because of delays from poor roads and rail lines.
Despite India’s robust Bombay Stock Exchange – in which infrastructure companies have raised
$6B+ in capital since the beginning of 2008 – things move at the speed of a
cow.
The natural world knows no boundaries. Twenty-first century
wars will be fought over natural resources. One example I encountered was the
Mekong River, flowing through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam – and how
China’s dams upstream are having an adverse effect to everyone else. Another
example is the feud over water between India and Pakistan (who have gone to war
three times since 1947), which threatens to derail peace between historically
distrustful neighbors.
The two countries have harmoniously shared the waters of the
Indus River for decades. But now, the Pakistanis complain that India, like
China, is hogging water upstream, which is hurting Pakistani farmers
downstream. The latest dispute revolves around India’s plans to build a huge
hydroelectric power project on the Kishenganga River, a tributary of the Indus.
Islamist groups in Pakistan are watching. “If our government doesn’t act to
resolve this issue then the people will take it in to their own hands. If water
doesn’t flow in to these rivers, then blood will.” What more can one say?
It’s likely to get worse before it gets better, which could
just as well be a refrain for so much of our shrinking world. Pakistan’s water
availability has fallen 70 percent since the 1950s. The disputed dam is in
Indian-occupied Kashmire, so the issue is not just environmental its political
and ideological. Capture Kashmir back, and retake our water. We may be human.
We may live on the same planet. But ethnic divisions are ancient, and they may
be the root of our undoing.
Moving
on the tourist circuit, it’s inevitable you encounter fellow travelers. I have
more conversations than I can recount. Here's a few of recent.
A young Finish woman studying biology and ecology, pondering whether to
become a nun.
Or a German woman
traveling solo for six months, complaining that “people back home are cold and
it’s hard to meet people like when you’re on the road.”
Or a young Polish couple, who cannot find suitable
employment in Poland, despite his graduate degree in engineering and her
specialization in tourist. They worked in a UK factory to save money to make
this trip possible. They are resigned. “We love our country but there’s nothing
there for us. Maybe, one day, our kids but not us.”
Or two Hong Kong Chinese biking there way through Indochina. “China has
made life harder in Hong Kong. Too many emigrants. You can’t afford to live
there. There are no good jobs for people like us.”
Then
you come across the truly amazing. Like New
Zealander Kylie, who I met in Laos and is biking, solo, a woman, across
Europe and Asia, from London to Auckland, taking boats where necessary. Her
stories biking through Pakistan and Iran defy belief. Go girl!www.bugbitten.com/kyles
Flight
for China leaves tonight. In the meantime, I have the opportunity to see a
business partner and head to the capital’s Red Fort, where the Prime Minister
gives his speeches and services as the symbol of the nation’s independence. The
city is, as Thomas Friedman would say, hot, flat and crowded.
Julie
Roberts is New Delhi today, a few miles away in Mirzapur, shooting her new film
Eat, Pray, Love, based on Elizabeth
Gilbert’s book about rediscovering passion in life through travel. The India
media has been covering Ms. Roberts’s every move since arriving with her
children a few weeks ago. You can’t miss the headlines. America is cool.
As
for democracy in India, it’s messy – so much bureaucracy, corruption, factions
at a stalemate. India is loosing the race with China and they are against the
wall with Pakistan. The security guards at the surprisingly small international
airport, for a capital, look tired and defeated.
5 pm,
need to make overnight train to New Delhi (AC sleeper car, $25), to catch a
plane to Beijing via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific, in the hope of catching the
People Republic of China’s Communist Party 60th Anniversary, making headlines
around the one world. The frenetic pace – Varanasi, rickshaw, train, Delhi
capital, taxi, Hong Kong airport, onward China, metro, Beijing downtown– stirs both imagination and adrenaline. I am
grateful to be able to globetrot from one capital to the next. The question is,
can you pull off the scheduling, not to mention the exogenous events you have
no control over. Zen may be just a concept in the West; on the road, in Asia,
you live it, or suffer.
On
heading from the hotel with backback in toe to find a three-wheel motorbike to
take me to the train station, I serendipitously encounter the end of Naviratri
on the main streets, where all the many makeshift idols –Durga and Rama and Hunnamum– are placed on
carts and paraded about Varanasi, before the Durgas are submerged in the Ganges
in symbolic end. Music and dancing kids fill the streets. It’s packed with
joyful Indians. Despite the heavy pack, I become so immersed in the emotional
spectacle, the blessing on this place, in this moment, I forget about the
train.
When
I do find a bicycle rickshaw, the people traffic is gnarly. Mini parades
crisscross the streets. The dark Indian, poor and humble, exerts muscle and
dizzying acumen to circumnavigate the faithful. Never a dull moment. At the
bustling station, five minutes to spare. I limp to the station, darkness
descending, but which entrance, which platform, which carriage (there are a
staggering twenty-three from front to end)? Welcome to the blissful mania of
India on the fly.
I
settle into my birth as the train lurches into syncopation, and glides out of
the station. You can’t help but feel victory at these little moments. I am next
to a Japanese student heading back to his studies in New Delhi. We begin
talking about Japan’s new prime minister, and his hope that he will be able to
jump-start its twenty-year economic malaise. I haven’t seen an American in what
feels like weeks. Resting my head on the overnight birth, I revel in the
pleasure of being a global citizen.
As I near the end of my time in India, through observation,
reading and mostly talking to natives, I begin to comprehend India’s greatest
challenges. Here’s the hit parade penciled in my worn notebook. Maybe this is
why Aldous Huxley wrote back in the 1960s: “India is almost infinitely
depressing, for there seems to be no solution to its problems in any way that
any of us in the West regard as acceptable.”
Government Deadlock – India is not a nation; it’s an idea. The
country’s borders and states were set-up by the British. The reality is more
messy. India is made up of what could be hundreds of ethnic groups—Hindus,
Muslims, Sikh, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Zoroastrians, Jews—political
factions, religions and twenty two languages, poor and rich. Regional
separatism pulls at the federal cohesion. Church and state are separate only in
theory. Consensus is next to impossible.As one Indian said simply: “New Delhi can’t get anything done.”
Caste Injustice–This one really stands out. You’re born in
your station. Its next to impossible to change it. Without a meritocracy,
India’s best and brightest are unable to rise and benefit the nation. It’s
outdated and an affront its democracy. However you can’t under Planet India
without understanding its long religious traditions. When I was in Varanasi,
one of the young men showing me around pointed out how the Indians washing the
bodies in the Ganges and preparing them for cremation are from one of the
lowest castes in India. So low that they are not permitted to touch Indians of
high status. Yet at the time of death it’s they who care for Indians of all
castes.
Secular vs. Religious – On one hand is a place like Bangalore,
modern, high-tech, research and science oriented. On the other is India as the
spiritual heartland of the world, with an age old belief that if things don’t
work out this life time it will the next. The traditions are so ingrained and
the pride around it so deep, religion I have come to believe is an obstacle to
India’s ambitions. China, on the other hand, possesses Confucianism. But that’s
not a religion, it’s a moral code of behavior, and it prizes hard work and
ambition. China’s religion, at one level, is making money, and in a global
capital world, it’s paying off at the material level. India’s riches are
intangibles.
Corruption – Nothing new about corruption in an emerging economy.
What’s disconcerting is how, despite a British legal system, the largest
democracy in the world, the support of the United States, it is believed that
as much as 80 percent of a transaction
goes to paying off officials, compared to 40 percent in India.
Treatment of women – The Western women I met had plenty of unkind
things to say about Indian men. The patriarchy is arcane and runs deep. Only 45
percent of Indian women can read, compared to 87 percent in China. As you
travel about the country, it always seems like the women are working, or home,
caring for kids, while lots of men mill about. Like the caste systems, these
relics inhibit India’s ability to prosper.
Abject Poverty – About 60 percent of Indians, or 800 million folks,
less on less than two dollars a day. The Indian economy is benefiting those who
are educated, speak English and can work in an office. That’s not even close to
the majority.
Baby India – In country with over a billion people, Fifty percent
of Indians are under the age of twenty-five. By 2015, there will be 550
millions teenagers. The challenges to find work for them will be more pressing
than in China.
Environment – Clean air, clean water, and basic electricity. During
my visit, there is a drought in the plains. Tens of millions of substance
Indians are affected. Wars of the this century will be over natural resource
and energy. India needs both badly.
Rural to Urban – Today, about one third of GDP is created by
agriculture, yet 70 percent of Indians (850 million, twice the size of the USA)
live in rural areas. Not only is there a lack of employment but the land is
strained.
Infrastructure – Ailing or non-existent outside the major urban
centers. A prerequisite for manufacturing and global trade.
My last night in Varanasi coincides with the largest event
of the festival, with make-shift temples places around the city, music, lights
and packed crowds of Indians. It’s about celebration and shopping, much like
Christmas. (The poorer Nepalese, in contrast, slaughter a goat and celebrate
with a rare feast.)
The city is pulsating, as I work may way to the
Cathedral-like Vishwanath Temple on the nearby campus of Banaras Hindu
University. The temple is alive with activity, Brahman’s performing cleansing
pujas, bells being rung by visitors (to let the Gods know you're there, of
course).
Quotes from sacred texts are etched along the Temple walls. No
wonder, the temple was designed by the founder of the university, himself a
scholar. I wrote down a few:
“Take refuge in God
with a pure heart”
“He is one in the many
Released from all fetters
Selfless devotion”
”Oh lord from untruth
lead me to light and knowledge, from death lead me
to immortality -- Brihadarayaka Upanishad 1-3-28” "To seers whose sins have been
washed away, whose doubts have been dispelled by knowledge, whose mind is
firmly established in God, and who are actively engaged in promoting the
welfare of all beings, attain Brahma, who is all peace. Gita 6/25."
”Smaller than
the smallest, greater than the greatest, the atman soul
in the heart of the living being. He who is free from grief,
behold by the grace of the creator that glory of the Atman”
China and India. They have roughly the same number of 1 billion
people. Their middle class is exploding. They both are in need of massive
infrastructure that the Western world built a century ago.
Beijing dictates what is built, by whom, and how long it is
going to take. China has plenty of inefficiencies and corruption.But the system does not require consensus.
When Beijing says its going to prepare for the 2008 Olympics or the Shanghai
World Expo,it gets moving.
Delhi, a fumbling by internal power struggles, attempts to be
more modern democracy and as in America everything moves slowly, or doesn’t get
done. Corruption and bureaucracy stifles oven modest projects. Just consider
its attempt to prepare for the 2010 Commonwealth Games – the rail line link I
am passing on the way to the train station is far behind where it needs to be. The Chinese complete projects ahead of
schedule.
There is an obvious down-side to not having checks and
balances, to excluding multiple voices, or so I have been led to believe.
Surely this fact will catch up with China.
I am fortunate enough to arrive during Dasara, the same
holiday going on in Nepal, except it’s called Navratri and no animals will be
sacrificed. The Hindu autumn harvest celebration (think Thanksgiving), the
largest festival in Nepal and one of the largest in India, which says
something.
On the last day, statues of the Goddess Durga will be submerged in
the river. Durga is the consort of Shiva and represents the two forms of female
energy – one protective and the other destructive. Durga has ten hands, rides a
lion, and defeats the evil Mahishasur. The holiday is a celebration of good
over evil. It is woven into the fabric of the culture. It makes headlines. And
it’s not put on for tourists.
What’s most striking about Varanasi in general and Navratri in particular is that its aspects
are living myths, full of color, character and unmistakable passion. A boring
Sunday service it is not.
India is producing cheap mobile phones and designing cars
under $5,000 dollars. It is making low-cost computers and setting up
small-scale power plants. Most people in the world cannot afford Westerners
goods, much less million dollar CAT scan. GE seems to know something. CEO Jeff
Immelt calls it a 50% solution for 15% price. Scale down and keep it simple.
India has the potential to make (or knock off) GE products at prices the rest
of the world can afford. So fortune companies like Motorola and GE are racing
to set try something new: Country specific innovation centers who can get there
before the locals.
Varanasi is India’s spiritual heartland, where Hindu of all
stripes converge along the sacred Ganges River. I’ll hang out here before I
head to Beijing for its October 1st National Day celebration.
The city exists
on the edge of the river. The old town is a winding maze of pedestrian
walkways. Along the two main bridges are a series of gat, access points to
boats and the river, where locals bath, wash clothes and hawk visitors. It’s a
chaotic medley of spirituality, custom and commerce.
Varanasi is one of the oldest cities in the world. By
legend, it was founded by Lord Shiva around 5,000 years ago, making it one of
the most important pilgrimage destinations in India. It was a commercial and
industrial center famous for its silk fabrics, perfumes, ivory works, and
sculpture.
Over the next few days I befriend a few locals, who are gracious enough to show
me around during the day as I explore during the night. One of them is trying
to attain an American visit to visit his grandfather – but the U.S. government
doesn’t belief he will return to India.
This kind of local fraternity pleases
me immensely. I am become a bit jaded by tourist-trade people who want your
money (which I can understand) and fellow travelers who are content with a few
tour book photographs before a beer, romanticize place and people, and are
surprisingly ignorant of the harsh facts and contradictions all around them. One
example of many is the horrific treatment of women in India, where an ancient
patriarchy reigns.
But on the surface of things you’d never know. We hang out among the cows and Sadhus, on narrow streets, as
I learn about their lives, and frequent a local restaurant nightly.
There is a stench in the air, so many things burning,
including loved ones who are put down the river in prayer. The Ganges is a
repository of ash and sewage and anything else you can think; unlike Rishikesh,
I wouldn’t dream of bathing in it. It’s brown, alright, and very polluted. Yet
Indians worship it and outside failed government initiates to clean it up,
don’t seem to mind. That or they are too busy trying to survive.
The view from the $10/night hotel is on the water and looks
over the main gait.
On way from New Delhi airport to the train station for rail to Varanasi. The traffic winds slowly through the street. A street girl comes to the window, in a hand to mouth gesture, so sullen. What to do?
Construction of the airport to downtown subway is behind schedule for the 2010 World Games, reports the day’s newspaper. The construction is visible.
Arrive Varanasi train station to a huge cow lying inside the lobby; machismo men relieve themselves on public streets; and piles of refuge burn in the gutters. Back in India. Leave luggage at a friendly restaurant in search for a gat (river)-facing accommodation.
After a restful sleep, head to the Leh airport to catch a flight to Katmandu, Nepal via New Delhi. An arduous bus ride would take days and I didn’t want to miss the views and the world-famous, mountain top take-off.
In India, things move slow. There is little to no central organization or command. Things happen when they happen. There’s no one to complain to and everyone points a finger at everyone else. The crossing could easily be closed another day. Tomorrow the flight departs for Katmandu. I am determined not to miss it.
If I was to make it across, and climb from 15,000 to 18,000 feet,I needed to leave without delay. “See you in Katmandu” I say to Nathen, who is resigned to stay another night, passing time with more eggs and noodles. I pack up my 40 lbs of gear from the jeep and head out to the gaze of curious onlookers. The first 3k was steep but I began to find a rhythm, and feel energized. The NubraValley base camp begins to fade in the distance as I turn the corner into the high valley. It was quiet but for the tall snow-capped mountains, the emptiness and silence and space. With the oxygen thin, walk 10 minutes, rest two. Just me and a mountain, and all the gear I would need to make it the night, unpleasant but survivable. I count steps to stay focused. After three days, there is a quiet exhilaration in my pants just to be moving. What happens when you take control of your destiny.
“For two more hours I trudge and pant and climb and slip and climb and gasp, dull as any brute, while high above, the prayer flags fly on the western sun, which turns the cold rocks igneous and the hard sky to white light. Flag shadows dance upon the white walls of the drifts as I enter the shadow of the peak, in an ice tunnel, toiling and heaving, eyes fixed stupidly upon the snow. Then I am in the sun once more, on the last of the high passes, removing my woolen cap to let the wind clear my head: I sink to my knees, exhilarated, spent, on a narrow spine between two worlds.”– The Snow Leapard.
It was then, that a small white car approached from the valley side. It was an off duty policeman being driven to a point where the road becomes impassable, from where he was going to hike to the pass and find a ride down. I flag it down. Mercy me. I squeeze in the compact car – not exactly fit for the ice and snow, typical India – and we rumble forward, stopping at the point where the road becomes impassable. I put the pack back on and head up the mountain road beside my new friend.
It’s gorgeous: crisp, clear and clean. The parking lot of onlookers is far behind. Before long, we were sharing stories about India and America. He offered tobacco and peppers to suck on. I pass on the herb but the chilly invigorates. He waited as I huffed during frequent breaks.
Reaching the top is the kind of moment you live for. The realization of your being in the world, a goal met, will power and destiny manifest. Setting out to do something despite fear – or because of it – working for something, building something, tangible or abstract, is one of life’s great joys.It’s not rocket science or fancy living or material success, but it’s a moment worth basking in. There is a sole vendor serving tea and bread. The hot herbal brew goes down like silk. The simplest, greatest pleasure for 25 cents.
Next stop is to find a ride back down the other side, to Leh. But first some unfinished business. I climb up a bit further, to the official apex at 18,500 feet, where prayer flags blow along with the sky gods.
It was here, at this time, in this place, on this day, that I could leave behind a wedding band and all the other failures of an unequivocally miserable year.Up the snow covered path is a Tibet-flag covered Gompas, perched on the cusp of the pass, looking out at both valleys from one of the highest places on Earth. It was on top this place of prayer and hope, I reach on my toes and stretch my arm and place that silver ring among other artifacts that might be an axis point in heaven.
In that moment, with an exasperated prayer, I offer back to the Gods what wasn’t mine in the first place. There is freedom in the emptiness. The heart still, the mind calm, a cavernous space for something new, as open as the Himalayas are deep.
Having got here at last, I do not wish to leave…I am in pain about it, truly, so much so that I have to smile, or I might weep. There is a rising of forgotten knowledge, like a spring from hidden aquifers under the earth. To glimpse one’s own true nature is a kind of homegoing, to a place East of the Sun, West of the Moon” – The Snow Leapard.
The Buddhist notion of life’s fickle, temporal nature is no abstraction here. The things we buy are on lease, their pleasure fleeting. Our most intimate partners can become a name in an address book. Old friends pass, new ones emerge. long-lasting dependable friends can be counted on one hand. With age come disappointments in the outer world. To all these things I said goodbye, or rather thank you, for having had the honor to ‘possess’ something at all. One of the greatest ironies occur to me: nothing is something, and that something has more substance than all the weight in the world. But this is the way of Tao. It just is.
I scurry back to the tea house and before me are two bubbly Indians from Delhi – software programs, textbook India – who offer me a ride back to Leh. The views are unreal. Leh draws closer.
Having crossed the pass and made it back to creature comfort Leh, a hot shower never felt so good. Dress pants and cleaned black boats, and a dinner with a bunch of Germans heading out on a trek the following the day. One of them is a teenager on his first trip outside Europe. His eyes twinkle with the curiosity of a five-year-old.
We can wax talk all day, and most do. On this day, more than most, it was to be lived.
It was meant to be an overnight but it’s turning into an adventure. Last night we attempted to return to Leh. Got through police stop before beginning ascent to 18,500 feet summit. But it was only 5 km before we hit a log jam of stuck trucks and taxis on an already treacherous one way dirt pass, save the ice, sleet and cold winds. I consider grabbing my stuff and hiking the four miles to the top and hitch a ride down the mountain to Leh. I think again.
The taxis and jeeps, despite the high attitude region they serve, carry neither snow tires or chains. No snow plows. No central communication, such as radio connect from each side of the pass and the top. India can feel like a free-for-all, a race between individual aspiration and collective realization. Once you realize you’re running on board a slow nation-filled freighter, you can stop rushing and expand time by a factor of four. There’s no where to go. These mountains have their own agenda.
We turn around, heading back to a mere 15,000 feet and situate ourselves with about ten others at a crude series of make-shift home stays accused to desperate guests. It’s cold. The mattress is musty and old, the sheet feeble and thin. No electricity means candle light. No sink or hot water, and the latrine is in back of the house, as is the “stream” where dishes are washed.It was a cold, long night.
The next day we make it to the entrance to the pass along with at least twenty-five vehicles. There’s conflicting opinion about when the caravan might be able to cross. I piece together something about an abandoned vehicle stuck on the pass. It will need to be removed – but how? Settle in for a two, four, six hour wait, and who knows whether the crossing will take place. There’s always tomorrow.
The Valley is on the other side of the Khardung La pass, the highest motor pass in the world.. The valley is parched but the Indians say it’s prime farming land by Ladakhi standards— apples, apricots and barley, berries. Dotted around the valley are ancient gompas and ruined palaces. There’s an oasis of sand, and camels.
Americans are rightly fearful that India and China are taking jobs from Americans. I read the other day that a staggering 14 million jobs are at risk of being offshored, with India being the top destination. Finance, medical analysis, administration, life sciences, and of course the proverbial call center. A young Indian alerts me to a national best seller, One Night @ the Call Center, and we have a laugh.
The land dispute Tibet/China and India is as hot as with Pakistan, because the Tibetan territory is a proxy of the Dali Lama’s influence, taking refuge here, and because a brief war was fought between the two countries in 1962. The military presence up here is palpable and those I speak to are nervous about the “aggressive Chinese.” At the time the Prime Minister pleaded for U.S. military assistance and a prescient Ambassador wrote to President Kennedy: "The only Asian country which really stands in China's way is India and the only Western country that is assuming responsibility is the United States.” With the Americans standing behind Japan, South Korea, the Philippians and India, is it any wonder Beijing is skeptical of U.S. intensions?
The new conflict arena is of course energy and the new area is the IndiaOcean, home to 60 percent of the world’s gas reserves. China is building ports and posts around the Indian Ocean, not to mention land grabbing Africa and making friends with Washington enemies like Iran. India is strained to respond. Their limited resources was in the north and the west, with Pakistan. Can the American even afford to intervene?
The quote from Time Asia Edition says as much about the state of America realpolitik as it does India’s woes: “The idea of American involvement on the issue has been received icily in Asia, with many governments seeing the U.S. as a nation in decline, marooned in costly adventures abroad and led by an Obama Administration less willing to confront the aggressive posturing of a budding superpower like China.” In other words, no.
The two countries realize common interests. In advance of Copenhagen, as I navigate India they just signed a broad agreement to join forces in representing their budding nation—and one suspects to not let the Americans bully them. Trade between the two countries is increasing. Beijing is more practical than ideological, which should comfort Washington and fuel foreign investment.
The journey from Kashmir to Ladakhwas extraordinary and beautiful and absurdly inexpensive. The end points, Srinagar and Leh, are equally pleasant. Highly recommended.
“I grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched. The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of earth and heaven in the silence, the requiem birds, the mythic beasts, the flags, great horns, and old carved stones, the rough-hewn Tartars in their braids and homespun boots, the silver ice in the black river, the Kang, the Crystal Mountain.” – The Snow Leapard.
We climb higher. It’s dryer. There are soldiers in defense of the disputed border with China. Herds of sheep block the road. We encounter a Future Buddha and a small TibetanTemple, where we stop for the evening.
We’ve left Kashmir for Ladakh. Kargil is the last Muslim town. Shia Muslims go to the local Mosque, in the center of this bustling and pleasant town. There are three hours electricity a day. There’s not a Western in site.
You come to a place like India and you realize the daunting environmental challenges we face. If the combustible engine is put to use, it is often as crude as a lawnmower. There is no catalytic converter, no filter, no regulation. How can there be. Even if the Indian and Chinese government eventually agree to limit carbon emission, the reality they face is as stark as the typical engine, belching burnt petroleum.
Most Americans don’t realize that the multinational darlings of Wall Street make a good deal of their revenue outside the United States; hence the stock market is often not in alignment with unemployment. Ford is making India a key element in its strategy. Its debut mini car hits the market in 2010. Seventy percent of cars sold in India are small, the opposite of the SUV addiction. Meanwhile, GM is experiencing record sales in China of its small and medium size autos, and the American press is all over it. Ads for Ford are everywhere. It’s a cool brand here.
PHOTOS. AT breakfast, the newspaper reads “Glacier Melt Threat to Kashmir Area.” One World.
This morning we launch from Srinagar, through the mountains and desert, to Leh, India, in the high and dry North-West Himalayas. It will take days. But that’s ok. The journey is desirable.
The movement through time and space is a destination in and of itself.
The first stop is the SonamargMeadow of Gold. Lush and majestic, it’s beautiful.
