One of the salient issues facing humanity is whether democracy can survive the monumental changes that will engulf it, or will we humans find no other way to continue our existence than to rely on high levels of authoritarianism. As an example, China has slowed its population growth by fiat of authority requiring most families to have only one child. India, a democracy, has made not such demands. As a result India's population will surpass that of China in 2013.
India, in my judgment, should be a focus of interest to those concerned with the future of democracy. It is an emerging economic powerhouse, a global player. On the one hand it is fractured by an addiction to the new, fostered by a robust economy of technology and on the other hand deep attachment to the old as a country with long standing traditions that go far toward being definitive in a country not long out from under the heel of colonialism.
One policy that demonstrates the difference between China's authoritarianism and India's democracy is population control. China mandated a one child per family policy in the 1970s. Exceptions were made for farm families and some others. As a result, according to Chinese authorities, 400 million births have been prevented from 1979 to 2011. A Chinese spokesperson has said that currently about 35.9% of China's population is encompassed by the program. If a woman becomes pregnant and the family already has a child the woman is forced to have an abortion.
India tried a policy of sterilization instead of abortion in the 1970's, but abandoned it in the face of backlash it occasioned. Recently, the Indian state of Rajasthan has begun a policy of voluntary sterilization for men and women. Sterilization is rewarded with various appliances such as food processors or television sets and includes eligibility to win a new Indian-made Tata Nano automobile. In short, and with an adherence to the objectivity that the threats of overpopulation present to the future of our species, we must ask ourselves which of these two approaches is most likely to accomplish the population reduction required.
Another prominent current display of Indian democracy in action is the furor over the government's permitting foreign big box stores such as Wal-Mart and the British Tesco to open stores throughout India. Due to India's particular form of parliamentary government, a decision of this sort can be made by the government without parliamentary discussion or approval. From its independence to 2006 kirana, small mom and pop neighborhood stores, seldom larger than 500 square feet, and including even cart and sidewalk vendors, were by law the primary form of retail operation permitted in India. There are millions of these shops throughout India and, combined, they represent about 15% of India's gross domestic product (GDP). In 2006 large foreign retailers were permitted to operate, but only as suppliers to small Indian-owned stores. By fiat of government order in November 2011, these large foreign retailers were permitted to establish and operate their own supermarkets if they had no more than 51% foreign ownership. The government's action caused an uproar in the Indian Parliament with one parliamentarian declaring that he would personally set fire to the first Wal-Mart store to appear. Within days the ruckus in parliament became so great that the government had to rescind its order; with what degree of permanence is yet to be seen. I find it significant that this revolt in behalf of the little people took place immediately in Parliament without the need for massive demonstrations by those affected kirana owners. Can one imagine this response to government dictate taking place in China?
Part of the argument for permitting this form of foreign investment had been that both China and Thailand had permitted this kind of foreign investment and their economies have boomed. Regardless, the Indians chose tradition rather than modernization. In India's case the people spoke, in China's case a wealth- dominated government decreed that foreign investment would be permitted albeit under government oversight. (We have seen what happened when Google incurred the government's wrath over Google's resistance to China's demand that it censor its content.) One interesting question is which of these two major influences on the world's future, both developing at break neck speed, will, in the long run, be successful? No matter what we may think humanity ought to do, this is the real world in which democracy and authoritarianism will be tested.
I have tried to think out some of the pros and cons of this issue because I believe it reflects a fundament source of conflict in the future of our species. For example, it is said that the big box stores will eliminate many of the middle men in the kirana supply chain and thereby make goods, especially food, cheaper at a time of ever rising prices. But, I ask myself, at what energy and pollution costs as people have to travel further to a big box store rather than their corner kirana. Could, for example, the big box stores, being regional, create an additional impetus to automobile purchase? In brief, does it do less environmental damage and perhaps societal stress, to move people or products? Lest this seem trivial, it is important to keep in mind that we are talking of a society of nearly one billion people, over three times the population of the United States.
Some kirana vendors rely on local food sources more than the big box stores can be expected to. One kirana butcher said he did not fear Wal-Mart because his customers, like most Indians, preferred fresh meat to frozen meat and he slaughtered his own animals, assuring that his meat was fresh. If you have ever noticed, poor people, lacking refrigeration, buy their meat alive, hence the popularity of chicken, and slaughter it immediately prior to cooking. Ecologically, this considerably reduces the energy consumption of refrigeration and the accompanying CO2 pollution. Of additional concern, will the increased advertising and sophistication of that advertising by the big box stores accelerate overconsumption as it has in our country?
There is a significant movement in India to preserve Indian ecology, even to the point of returning to the land. Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Little Things, a prize winning novel, and activist for global social reform, comes close to taking this view in an interview in the Guardian UK newspaper, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/05/arundhati-roy-keep-destabilised-danger. People like she and Bill McKibben are driven to much smaller units of human organization in their search for a viable sustainable economy.
As a final note, I would ask if one can imagine a people-centered economist like India's Nobel Laureate Armartya Sen arising and prospering in China? Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in rigorously demonstrating that economics can be most productively viewed as a device for improving human life.
China is rigorously, and sometimes callously, planning its future. Humanity is viewed in its depersonalized mass. To get a feel for the enormity of Chinese planning I suggest reading relevant passages from Mike Davis' Planet of the Slums in which he describes Chinese plans for a megalopolis extending from the delta of the Pearl River (Hong King) to the delta of the Yangtze River (Shanghai) with a population equivalent to that of the entire United States. As I say, the Chinese are planning on an enormous scale. India, in contrast, exhibits much of the people-centered decision making. I have asked myself, and continue to ask, which is the most likely scenario for humanity's future? As the watersheds on both sides of the Himalayas continue to shrivel, as their populations continue to increase, as they each pursue a rate of development not seen before, their differing ways of dealing with much the same problems will be highly instructive for those concerned about the future of mankind.
Bob Newhard
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