China

Keep a cool head and maintain a low profile. Never take the lead - but aim to do something big. These were the golden guiding words of Chinese president and architect of modern day china Mr. Deng Xioping. In the context of chaotic power-driven world politics, the Chinese achievement of moving from 3rd world nation to first world nation seems miraculous. Ten plus percent growth for more than twenty-five years is more than the audacity of any one's imagination.

Sometimes when I study India vis-a-vis China, It leaves me wondering over the question whether China faced similar situations or not and if they did then how did they overcome these. How could China get away so easily with all those issues? And even today How does it justify its dual standard and dangerous non-cooperative policies in the sphere of international politics.

For example, China has literally monopolized all the water which flows from Tibet or Soth china to South and South East Asia and yet it has not entered into a single bilateral water treaty. The collective power of all these countries is not enough to budge China from its unilateralist and monopolistic stand. Even UN has not initiated any action on this issue which has the full potential of turning into full-blown water war in future.

Similarly, Europe returns Indian goods on the excuse of violation of human rights or child labour or women oppression. What about China? It is an open truth and the whole world knows it that China has most violative labor rights. Yet their products are sold so easily in the whole world.

It makes me feel sad that China justifies her on banning of terrorist Masood Azhar and we are not even properly able to confront her. China keeps promising to open their market to Indian good and does not open it. On the other hand, we stand fully naked in front of them to exploit us. How can Indian manufacturing flourish when we have Chinese made product flooding our markets so heavily? I remember fifteen years back, we had nearly 30 labourers in our factory, manufacturing all the steel and wooden furniture but today there are hardly 15 of them. Reason being, we find selling Chinese furniture cheaper to buy and easy to sell in comparison to authentic Indian furniture which turns out to be bit costly.

India's diffidence in world politics in standing up to China on these issue gives an impression of lack of assertiveness in our foreign policy. Probably we are too much concerned about our "good boy image" in anarchical and hierarchical world order.

But wait, I see an olive leaf in this. Read the first line. Maybe we are keeping the cool head, maintaining a low profile and consequently avoiding any lead in the pursuit of doing something big. A basic prerequisite of our assertion vis-a-vis China is sufficiently positive economic growth. As long as India does not grow economically, it is futile to trade blows with China. It is only lead to deja vu of 1962.