India and China set to rule this century

India and China are set to dominate in a new post-western world but “that did not necessarily mean that the USA and Europe have had it,” the last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, has said.

Patten, now Chancellor of Oxford University, made the remarks in a speech he gave at a recent alumni weekend, held by the university.

Chris Patten speaking at Oxford

Lord Patten of Barnes, famed for handing back the sovereignty of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997 marking the end of British rule, told the audience of Oxford alumni that there had been a major shift in the global balance of economic power and that India and China would dominate this century, creating a new global hierarchy dominated by the East.

In his speech, ‘What next? Surviving the 21^st century’, based on his namesake book, he spoke of a “fin de siècle” mood pervading America and Europe. But he said he did not accept that the world today was more dangerous than before, pointing out that at the time of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which coincided with his first term as a student at Oxford University, “the world appeared to be teetering on the edge of nuclear Armageddon.” I don’t think that things are as dangerous today as that,” he added.

While the world knew what it needed to do in order to survive, at present it appeared to “lack the political leadership and international political capacity to rise to the challenge,” he claimed. “We know what needs to be done from the Middle East to climate change. We know the sorts of things the international community should be doing in order to find a sustainable solution,” he went on.

The former Conservative MP and European Commissioner warned that the world population, which increased fourfold in the 20th century, was set to increase from 6.9 billion by a further 2.1 billion by 2050 and the majority of that increase would be in very poor countries, most of which already faced political instability and considerable environmental stress. “The only rich country in the top 10 where population is increasing now is the USA,” he added.

Speaking at The Sheldonian Theatre, where Oxford’s matriculation and graduation ceremonies are held, Patten said we can expect to see an explosion of growth in the numbers of people living cities (which increased 13-fold in the past century), especially in China (where it’s reckoned a billion people will live in cities by 2050). He said we could also expect to see an increase in energy consumption which had already increased 13 fold in the past century because industrial output had increased 40 times and also increased water use (which had increased ninefold in the past century), including possible conflict over water resources between India and China in the future and increased carbon monoxide emissions (which had already increased 17 times in the past century.) All of this was “posing probably the biggest issue for diplomacy, arguably since [The Treaty of] Versailles,” he claimed.

He then spoke of the India growth story and visible power shift already taking place. India has several multinational companies with global brands against which other companies benchmark themselves like Tata, Reliance and Infosys, he said.

“India now invests more in the UK than the UK invests in India,” he added.  He said by 2040 India would probably have the largest population in the world and Chinese pensioners would be the second largest.

China is currently the second largest economy in the world but, by the 2020s, China would overtake the USA to become the largest economy in the world, Patten said.

“It’s a world you can very properly describe as post western. Asia no longer has to define modernity in western terms,” he said.

But he pointed out that it was not all doom and gloom for Europe. While Europe currently had only had seven to 10 per cent of the world’s population, it still produced 21-22 per cent of the world’s output, he said.

 “And there here are serious problems confronting both India and China,” Patten warned and then spoke of the “steady federalisation of the polity in India”.

He pointed out that Gujarat, where more than 1,000 people were killed in the 2002 communal riots, which accounts for just 5 per cent of India’s population, actually contributes 16 per cent of India’s output and 22 per cent of exports.

He also spoke of India suffering from “a criminalisation of politics”, “terrible levels of corruption” which “have raised questions right across the board about the nature of representative democracy in India and about the integrity of legislature, judiciary and bureaucracy."

 “There are three Chief Justices in India today who face criminal charges,” he said. He said the country had “terrible infrastructure problems” and yet the country had “pockets of extraordinary prosperity and sophistication” surrounded by “terrible poverty and awful corruption.”

He then moved on to China. “China also faces huge problems despite its extraordinary economic achievements, with a 1600 per cent increase in its exports to America over the last 15 years, China faces, as does India, huge environmental challenges,” he said.

He said China faced the problem of how to rebalance its economy moving from substantial dependence on manufactured exports to greater investment in domestic infrastructure and greater encouragement of consumption. Despite a huge boom in exports, wages in China remain low. Wages in China, as a proportion of the economy, have fallen from approximately 53 per cent of GDP to less than 40 per cent. Patten also questioned how far China could open up its economy and embrace social and technological change, while keeping an iron grip on its politics.

He hinted that India and China may have to take centre stage not just economically but in global politics and international bodies and affairs too.

“With the US political system gridlocked and with Europe obsessed with its own problems, where will we look to for leadership?” he asked. He said bodies created in the 1940s such as the United Nations were falling to pieces and lacked “moral and political authority” and “ structures were needed” to deal with international cross border problems such as climate change and organised crime.

When considering whether leadership should come from Europe, the 67-year-old former student of Balliol College, who is also chairman of the BBC Trust, pointed out the currency union was falling apart because of the difficulties of running monetary policy with one hand and fiscal policy with another.

When asked about immigration, Patten, a Catholic, who oversaw the oversaw the Pope’s visit to Britain in September 2010, said that populations were falling fast in Europe, especially in Italy, Spain and Poland and the number of people in work supporting those in retirement was falling extremely fast. The consequences of rapidly ageing populations and lower fertility rates meant greater immigration would be required to provide jobs and services in Europe. But he warned Europe would see “some of the tensions” that arise when there is no rapid economic growth alongside mass immigration. He said immigration into Europe was also likely to increase owing to natural disasters elsewhere.

Responding to a question on why British schools weren’t concentrating on teaching Hindi and Mandarin in the light of his forecast, he replied, “My daughter learnt Hindi to appear in a Bollywood film,” referring to Alice Patten, who starred as struggling British filmmaker Sue McKinley  in the hit Hindi movie Rang De Basanti. In an apparent attack on Britain’s youth, he added: “We need to teach them English first.”

The alumni weekend, named Meeting Minds – 21st century challenges, offered a packed three-day programme of more than 120 events for alumni.

Oxford academics from a range of departments delivered lectures showing how they were tackling a range of global challenges from population growth to increased energy consumption, climate change, lives spent on social networking sites, the science behind earthquakes and emerging infectious diseases.

A highlight was a ‘Mathematical Tour of Oxford’ by Professor Marcus du Sautoy, who had presented the BBC documentary ‘The Story of Maths’, which had revealed that Indians had made many of the key mathematical breakthroughs in the world before the West had and before Sir Isaac Newton was born, including inventing the zero, despite common misapprehensions that Maths was a Western invention. © Naomi Canton 2011

Who were the rioters, what motivated them and can India teach us a lesson?

I could be psychic.

I wrote about the breakdown of the social fabric of British society in February 2009. That was before the current riots in England that have sent the media and government into a frenzy analysing the causes. See http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/expat-on-the-edge/2009/02/18/what-i-like-about-india/ Back then whilst living in India, I compared Indian teenagers to those in the UK and quickly spotted that those in India had aspirations and values, were far better behaved than their counterparts in the UK and the anti-social behaviour and gangs that blighted Britain’s streets did not exist in India.  And bizarrely, in India there is barely a welfare state to speak of. Unlike in Britain.

I also wrote about the unhealthy dependency on the welfare state here in the UK. See http://naomicanton.blogspot.com/2010/10/huge-spending-cuts-right-way-forward.html. Within days of moving back to England from India I was immediately stunned at how how much Britons get from the state for free, compared to say, Indians in India: free homes, unemployment benefit, child benefit, free schools and much more. No one in India got any of this and yet India’s country’s economy was soaring, jobs were increasing, their family unit was intact and their teenagers well-behaved and ambitious, unlike ours. In India everyone had a job, even if menial. Meanwhile in Britain, foreigners (mainly from mainland Europe) worked in the cafes and hotels while the Brits took Jobseekers Allowance. And whinged.

Now  we have just witnessed the England riots 2011, which were not dissimilar to the Paris Riots in 2005, 2007 and 2009. The core complaints of the rioters in both cases seemed to be that they were feeling left out, jobless, alienated and deprived. An “us “and “them” culture had emerged and a feeling the state had let them down.

Yet, why do Britons feel deprived and alienated when they live in Britain, one of the richest countries in the world? A country that millions of asylum seekers are still queuing up to enter…A country with a welfare state invented in 1911 and enhanced in the 1940s that other nations can only dream of?

Many British politicians deny poverty plays a role and are putting the riots down to a lack of discipline in schools and poor parenting, which has created a generation that would rather steal a plasma TV than save up for one. Given that the teachers who teach in British schools are highly trained, why are the schools in inner city areas so very bad? Why are they failing to instil any discipline in children?Many blame the laws in the UK which give too many rights to pupils and don’t allow teachers to punish them if they misbehave.  Teachers daren’t discipline pupils for fear of getting abused by the parents. Has the British state school system failed? If it hasn’t, how come we have ended up with a generation of delinquents happy to riot and loot with no respect for their neighbourhoods? How come drug dealers are allowed to stand at the school gates?   There is clearly a level of law-breaking in terms of gangs and drug dealing in and around inner city schools that society, schools, parents and the police have, till now, overlooked.

The national curriculum in British schools does not have enough relevance to modern Britain either. Employers say that when school-leavers apply for jobs they have no skills of use. Why don’t schools teach useful subjects such as how to do tax returns, how to be self-employed, how to make money from stocks and shares, how to write CVs and dress for interviews and so on?

The proliferation of gangs in inner city areas is also very much to blame. Mark Duggan, the black man whose death sparked the riots, was a member of one such gang. How did the British police let these gangs get so out of hand? Police have said that 25 per cent of those held after the disturbances are linked to gangs.

It is no coincidence Duggan came from Broadwater Farm in Tottenham, a council estate that was also the scene of violent riots in 1985 after a Caribbean woman was murdered there. That time the riots led to the death of a policeman, a death linked to the same gang Duggan was in. This time was it the rioters’ offspring rioting? The police had reason to believe Duggan, a crack cocaine dealer, was out to avenge a fellow gang member's murder on the night they had him under surveillance and shot him. London has seen 92 similar gang related murders in the last two years but none have made it to headline news.

High unemployment among black Afro Caribbean male youth is also clearly a factor in the riots. In an interview with the BBC back in January 2010, way before the current riots happened (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8468308.stm ) Jeremy Crook, director of the Black Training and Enterprise Group (BTEG), said part of the problem was there were very few black role models in Britain.

"Amongst black men, unemployment is about 20% - if a quarter of adult males don't work for 10-20 years, it doesn't give communities much aspiration, it demoralises and dissuades young people.

"They look to alternatives and get involved in gangs,” he said.

Almost half of black people aged between 16 and 24 were unemployed, at that time, compared with 20% of white people of the same age, the Institute for Public Policy Research then claimed. 

When asked why the they did it, the rioters said “Because the Government has cut my EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance) or “I applied for a job at that electronics store and they didn’t reply to my email so now it’s payback time.” Hardly a justification.

Some politicians are blaming parents, not schools, but as one mother from a council estate told a TV channel last week:  “We have no control of our children. They don’t even do what we tell them. If we say they are grounded they barge past us and go out the door. If we try and smack them they say ‘You are not allowed to touch us; that is what we are told us at school.'"

Many parents handed their children into police when they saw their pictures released as suspects in the riots, so it does seem to me that most parents did not condone the rioting.

But it is true that many parents are so busy working to earn enough money to live in the UK, they have no time for family life. Their kids are being brought up by X boxes, not people. Or rap music. In India the cost of living is lower and pressures are less great on average household incomes, plus there is the option of maid.

Single mums have faced a lot of flak in recent weeks too, being blamed for the riots with claims that young men are being denied a male role model instead joining a gang and taking on a gang master as a father figure. I have friends who are single mums who have raised fabulous children. But then again they are a) educated and b) do not live on sink estates.  Those who tick both of the above boxes do appear to be producing badly-behaved children at an alarming rate, the girls of which are becoming teenage single mothers themselves. But is this to blame for the rioting?

I do not think we cannot blame women for being single as I’m sure many of them are single because their husband or boyfriend has got up and left them or died.

So in short, blame is being put on gang culture and rap music for glorifying violence, single mums for denying young men male role models, council estates, unemployed youth, poor discipline in schools, poor parenting, weak prison sentences that do not act as a deterrent, a lack of social mobility, the class system, public spending cuts, a lack of personal responsibility and lack of respect for the police, particularly following allegations of corruption in the phone hacking scandal.

Of all these youth unemployment, a lack of personal responsibility, gangs and the depressing life and culture of sink estates are to blame, in my view. These sink estates were originally built between the First and Second World Wars to rehouse people displaced in the slum clearance programmes. Many of these estates are now synonymous with violence, drunkenness, drug-dealing and gangs. The schools that serve them tend to have disruptive and underachieving pupils. There is a vicious spiral. No wonder this is the second riot at Broadwater Farm.

Prince Charles hit the nail on the head, when visiting riot-hit Hackney. He said national community service was the answer and pointed out extra-curricular activities were severely lacking at many secondary schools.  ''Half the problem is that people join gangs because it's a cry for help and they're looking for a sense of belonging. Schools don't have enough extra-curricular activities now. There are not enough organised games or other kinds of activities. Young people need self-confidence; we have to motivate and encourage them and give them responsibility. You need to be exhausted and have that energy channelled into useful activities," he said.

Interestingly the young people he spoke to said, what everyone has been thinking, that they were given far too much, had far too many rights and not enough discipline. They expected things to be given to them without working; they needed to be made to want to work. The issue was schools, families and the environment in which they lived, not race or class, they said.

So what is the solution? Well, firstly, we can look at India. The difference between India and the UK is that:-

1) In India people know they have to get a job and go out and earn a living to survive. There is no welfare system to depend on.

2) The family unit is still cherished and single mothers frowned upon meaning most children are brought up in two parent families.

3) The education system is authoritarian and pupils have to respect teachers. Authority, parents and older people are respected and people live in fear of the police and being sent to prison. (Not the case in the UK).

Apart from that I think encouraging  and allowing the police to use harsher tactics in dealing with riots (such as tear gas and plastic bullets) and making sentences for all crimes less lenient so that being put in the dock does act as a deterrent to youngsters, would help. Plus the prison experience should be made more uncomfortable and perhaps TVs and DVD players taken away. An Afro-Caribbean woman told a TV channel here: “In Africa the prisons are horrible and no one wants to go to prison. Here in Britain they are too nice and not a deterrent.”

 Police should be allowed to ban head and face coverings at any public gathering and force the wearer to remove it whenever there is suspicion of a crime being committed. It is ludicrous we have looters allowed to go out with scarves tied round their faces and commit crimes.

But the problems are clearly even more complex. David Cameron has made the right decision to bring in Bill Bratton to advise on the gang problem and yes, a compulsory youth national community service, as suggested by Prince Charles is a great idea. Free parenting classes should be on offer to anyone that wants them, more money needs to be spent on youth services, and stricter discipline and punishments in schools is required as well.

But there is still one massive problem remaining....

Youth unemployment.

How that will ever get solved in recession-hit Britain is anyone’s guess. Who is going to create the jobs?