Spotlight on---INDIA---Is that Thugee Thing Still Going On?

India is about a third the size of the United States. It has almost as many people as China. Over a billion. It may soon have more. While China has done much to control population growth, India has not. India's economy has been growing at an impressive 5-6% a year but this is deceiving. The GDP is still only around a trillion dollars a year, a little more than Mexico or South Korea. They have a healthy trade surplus but this is only because most people there are too poor to buy much of anything, much less anything imported.

While they have a wide range of developing industry, it's production does not do much more than keep up with the demands of a growing population. India has the largest motion picture industry in the World. Have you ever seen an Indian movie? They boast one of the larger steel and automotive industrial productions in the World. The steel is of poor quality, oxidizing quickly, even in a dry climate, which India does not have and the automotive output consists largely of small displacement motor scooters of a quality and technology similar to that seen in Southern Europe, immediately after the devastation wrought by World War II. Licensure of industrial production is strictly controlled by government and only a select class can participate. Imported goods that compete with those of domestic provenance are not allowed. This does not foster the development of a beneficial system of competition. Indian manufactured goods do not sell competitively in World markets. I was recently the owner of a late model, state of the art Indian motor scooter. If someone offered me another for free and $2000 a year with which to maintain it, I would turn them down flat and I love motor scooters of exactly the type they produce. Recently the Japanese have been making reciprocal agreements with Indian manufacturers, providing capital and technological assistance. This may help the situation but maybe not. Indian industrialists do not have a good record of profit sharing with foreign partners. The Japanese may soon be gone, as others before them are.

Agriculture depends largely on small, non mechanized family holdings that function at not much greater than subsistence level. Irrigation is primitive and locally sourced. Aquifers in India are rapidly depleting due to over exploitation. Potable water is a major problem in all areas of India, urban and rural. India claims to be agriculturally self sufficient. It is doubtful that this is true. There have been food riots in recent years. The government has been forced to buy large quantities of cereal grains on the international market, in stiff competition with other populous, non food self sufficient nations. This situation is not likely to get better soon. A billion people eat a lot. They are largely vegetarian. It is a wise choice on their part.

India claims a modern educational system and English as the language of education, due to a history of English colonialism and several competing languages of their own, divided into hundreds of distinct local dialects. They claim a literacy rate approaching 70%. This is generous but even if true, leaves 350 million or so with no literacy skills what so ever. Another 350 million Indians have only the most basic skills. That would leave about 400 million with the kind of literacy that would be considered barely adequate in the Western World, perhaps reading at a forth grade level and able to fill out simple repetitive forms reliably. Only a small percentage of those would be suitable for simple clerical work and an even smaller number have real technical training. Those lucky enough to receive technical educations leave India in very large numbers, who can blame them. Those who actually are chosen to receive educations in the West, never return, ever. Many telecom companies have utilized Indian workers, because of the extreme low cost and the prevalence of English language skills. It has not worked out well for them. Most of them are wrapping things up and leaving.

India is a country that business and economic experts tell us is poised to weather the World economic downturn and continue it's economic expansion. I wouldn't hold my breath. It is a hellhole of poverty, disease and starvation in the grip of a religion ridiculously superstitious, even by the standards of six toed, cross eyed, American Pentecostal, snake handling, tongue talkers. Its current population levels are unsustainable and they are in the midst of an uncontrollable population explosion. If by some fluke they did become marginally more affluent as a society, they would choose to expend those resources immediately, on a nuclear conflagration with Pakistan.

It may not be the economic engine to help pull the World into the twenty first century.