The Dragon & the Democracy

I won’t be wrong if I say, it’s an obsession among Indian Intelligentsia to write, read and opine about how China’s fabric of development and governance is not sustainable. And how much the Indian elephant is poised to take over the dragon in the time to come. Notwithstanding the ever shifting (like the ‘Forward policy’ of Nehru :) ) time frame within which the overtake is predicted.
While the Americans are busy flooding youtube with videos about the real state and credit bubble of shanghai and Beijing, I’m still reluctant to join the league or simply I am just not learned enough to say something new.
I was watching some episode of Hard talk on BBC where a panel was discussing the problem of population growth where some erstwhile-Chinese –now-American scholar was expressing his views on One child policy which was introduced in 1978 and initially applied to first-born children in the year of 1979.
After giving out the relevant details like …It was created by the Chinese government to alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems in China, and authorities claim that the policy has prevented between 250 and 300 million births from its implementation until 2000, and 400 million births from 1979 to 2011..etc , he mentioned one flip side that how much he longed for a little sister to hold her hand on his way to school. And later he underscored his sorrow by saying that’s the sort of sacrifice they had to make to achieve the trough in the population curve.
The chinki scholar didn’t add more to the story of missing sibling but it kindled good amount of imagination in me.
See how big this problem is.
1978 , the year when this policy was implemented, is close to the year of marriage of our parents. Most of the readers of this blog, I assume were born in late 70s or early 80s. Fast forward to 20 years from now and let’s evaluate the curious case of poor solo supporter of the family. He has, under normal circumstances, at least 4 senior members to support. (his parents & his wife’s parents). Assuming the worst case where the grandparents are also alive, he has 4 plus 4 = 8 senior family members with age 60-85(with various medical problems) plus his wife and one child. Meaning one earning member out of eleven !!!
I would rather buy an expensive insurance policy and give my supari to some contract killer from Azamgarh :)
The problem is not just that. The first generation born after the implementation of policy, since they never had any sibling (being the only permissible child), Their children will never understand what does an uncle mean. There are no Mama/Mami , no Phupha / bua, no Jija/ Didi , no sala/sali , no tau/tai too. Of course the distant ones like the permutations chachere mama or mamere chacha , door- ke-mausa are out of equation. They are the people who, in Indian circumstances, welcome us in their homes while we are on vacation in their town.
Do you still endorse the one child policy? Katrina Kaif is the 9th daughter of her parents. It’s cruel to even imagine the 70 mm motion picture sans the 21st century avatar of Punjabi girl from sarso-ke-khet! quite sluggish...isnt it so ?