On Saturday 25 Aug 2007 3:25 pm, Indrajit Gupta wrote: > Would it be unfair to postulate China, and would that indicate that > vis-a-vis China, we ourselves have a similar nation-wide inferiority > complex? > I'm obviously not suggesting that either there is a good foundation for > such a complex, or that we should continue with these comparisons, just > pointing to similarities which should make us think very hard.
You know IG I have tended to believe that comparisons with a single entity invariably end up either as a "Keeping up with the Joneses" race or an Indian effort to modify or tweak something because of what others may think (The "Log kya kahenge" factor) I think that one must set up some standards for any parameter being compared , and then compare across a wide swathe of countries to see who is doing well and who is not. We first need to define what is "good" and then hold many nations to that standard to see who is achieving that level of good, and try and emulate what the best are doing. Classic parameters that are considered "good" seem to be low infant and maternal mortality, high literacy, high per capita income, low GINI coefficient, low unemployment rates and a whole lot of similar parameters that can be dug up in any study of development. It is insufficient to compare Pakistan with India or China with India because these tend to give only snapshots that cause heartburn or joy. Comparing with absolute standards is better and aiming for an absolute standard is never constrained by irrelevant factors like shame, heartburn, and loss of face which I believe affect China and Pakistan as much as they affect India, and lends itself to corrective means that are not always copied from any single nation. So we don't have to say "China does this, so we must do it that way too" Bangladesh is one nation that found itself at the bottom and did not have to play the comparison game. They ended up doing some good and eminently emulable things - like their microcredit for women. And Bangladesh, unlike Pakistan, was honest with itself about itself. shiv
