SuperEconomy India, Look Into China’s Eyes, Not Pakistan’s Navel

India must get over its obsession with Pakistan and instead try to compete with China, argues Raghav Bahl.

Raghav Bahl, founder of Quintillion Media. (Source: BloombergQuint)

Once upon a time, two rival countries shared a troubled boundary. It was a long border, traversing rivers, mountains, deserts, glaciers and dense jungles. Both countries had suffered under a brutal colonial power for over two centuries, but miraculously gained freedom almost at the same time in the late 1940s, a few years after the end of World War II. Alas, their independence was marked by a violent division, a virtual civil war in which millions died, led by two charismatic leaders who carved up the turf between them.

Both countries took off on diametrically opposed political ideologies. One became a liberal democracy, the other a totalitarian dictatorship. But for the first two decades of their existence, their per capita incomes did not diverge much, despite their vastly dissimilar economies. Then a policy convulsion shook one country in the 1980s. It liberalised, opened its economy to foreign trade and investment, and took a shine to free markets. Its economy soared. In less than two decades, it left its “traditional rival” gasping for breath. The world called the race “over and out”.

Guess Which Are These Two Countries?

Nine out of ten Indians, from janitors to judges, from school kids to sports heroes, from the village patwari to the prime minister, would say, “That’s easy! Of course, the two countries are India and Pakistan. They have a 2900-km border which is wracked by militant conflict, they became free a day apart in the middle of August 1947, led by the charismatic Pandit Nehru and Mohammad Ali Jinnah.”

“Their partition was dyed with the blood of millions of murdered refugees, perhaps the largest and most violent forced migration in history. But India blossomed into a liberal democracy, and Pakistan fell into the clutches of rapacious army generals. And once India shrugged off socialist shackles, its wealth and prosperity multiplied, leaving Pakistan a poor, struggling, trailing cousin”.

But hold on, you would be WRONG. By calling out India and Pakistan, you would have fallen a typical prey to India’s fixation with its relatively piffling neighbour, a Goliath’s self-diminishing obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) about a prickly David.

Frankly, as soon as we Indians learn to handle our congenital hallucinating over Pakistan, we would see that the two countries described above are China and India. Now go back and read the first two paras again.

Also Read: Raghav Bahl on India’s Democratic Advantage over China

(Photo Courtesy: BloombergQuint)

China and India share a tense 4000-km long border from the arctic desert of Aksai Chin to the turbulent Brahmaputra in the East. India got independence in 1947, China in 1949. China was ravaged by a civil war between Mao’s Communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT, which led to its division between the Mainland and Taiwan. China got embroiled in Chairman Mao’s bloody cultural revolution, while India evolved into a liberal democracy. Their GDPs were nearly equal until the 1980s, when a visionary Deng Xiaoping hurled the Chinese Dragon into capitalism’s creatively destructive gale.

China globalised at an unprecedented pace, investing over 50 percent of its GDP to create an escape velocity of explosive economic growth. In just three decades, China multiplied its GDP five times India’s, leaving us sputtering for breath.

C’mon SuperEconomy India, Raise Your Gaze Up North

So here’s my point. India needs to up its gaze from Pakistan’s navel, and lock its eyes squarely with China. Our leaders belittle India’s stature when they exhaust political capital trying to coerce BRICS into indicting Pakistan for terrorism.

Instead of straining to keep Pakistan out of NSG, we should push for its inclusion, with one stroke securing our place as a mature statesman at the head table.

I can go on and on, but you get my point, right?

In my book SuperEconomies: America, India, China and the Future of the World (Penguin Allen Lane, 2015), I have projected what the world’s geopolitical map would look like in a few decades. America shall continue to be the stalwart SuperEconomy, China will traverse from a scrappy challenger to the near-equal, while India should be able to convert its potential SuperEconomy status into the real thing, completing the triumvirate of SuperEconomies which shall dominate the world. I reckon nearly 50 percent of global GDP would be domiciled in the Big Three.

What is a SuperEconomy, and why would only America, India and China (and certainly not Pakistan!) make the cut? Here’s a key excerpt from the book:

So what is a SuperEconomy? Essentially, it is a large and prosperous or prospering country that uses economic leadership to affect change in the world. To have such impact, a SuperEconomy must be undergoing rapid or sustained growth –commanding 15 or 20 percent of the global GDP or growing at or near double digits – and rank as one of the world’s leading trade partners.

A SuperEconomy necessarily covers an extensive swath of land and boasts a vast, young population that includes a large or fast-rising middle class. It should have an industrious and innovative workforce facing low unemployment, a sound or quickly improving infrastructure, a strong currency, and an imposing military with nuclear capability.

At the same time, a SuperEconomy recognises the superior value of ‘soft power’ – what Joseph Nye defined as ‘the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments’ – and is adept at deploying its economic and cultural assets to win influence.

Also Read: China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Spells More Trouble for India

(Photo Courtesy: BloombergQuint)

As you can see for yourself, the only box that Pakistan checks on the SuperEconomy Matrix is the fact that it is a nuclear power, albeit one with a rogue’s track record of proliferation. On all other parameters, it’s simply not in the vicinity. Which is why it’s critical for India to abort its obsessive hyphenation and shrill jingoism against Pakistan. Which is why India must up its game to play in the SuperEconomy League, elbow to elbow with America and China. That, more than anything else, will ensure that Pakistan is kept tethered within safe precincts.

(Raghav Bahl is the co-founder and chairman of Quintillion Media, including BloombergQuint. He is the author of two books, viz ‘Superpower?: The Amazing Race Between China’s Hare and India’s Tortoise’, and ‘SuperEconomies: America, India, China & The Future Of The World’.)