The world seems to be such a different place than what i thought it to be sometimes

       On watching http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/ , another documentary about china on the rise from a western point of view. Takes a lot to discount for western bias ... but still has some points to ponder. Huge gap between urban and rural areas, which is growing.  Tiananmen square, whose memory the governmetn wants to forget, cheap labour which the world wants to use, government cleaning the slate of history in young people's minds. State is not able to support education & healthcare, which is hitting the rural areas. The last problem is common to india as is the availability of cheap labour.

"from ashwin, who sent the link: It sounds similar, but the scene in China is quite different. They were a Communist egalitarian society  which is now moving towards a pseudo-Communist capitalist one, whereas India is moving from a democratic socialist nation to a democratic capitalist one. Both these shifts are huge (due to the size and pace of change) and is sure to bring forth a lot of class struggles in the coming years. India's problems are of course compounded due to religious/caste/state divisions.

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         Yes, there will be class struggle in India and i'm sure there is already mass migration happening from village-> town and town to tier-two cities, tier-two to metro. I hope the genetic & cultural diversity, religion and democracy in india help in taking in this mass change more gracefully. I hope the evils within the caste system is done away with in a couple of generations in this process too, though that's a tough one. 

      I also wonder if there can ever be an egalitarian state, as humans will be humans, some more capable than others. Has there been one which could sustain gracefully and leave a good legacy ? The roman and greek city states come to my mind, but they were so small. 

     I also doubt if wiping away memories of bad things in a nations history is a good policy, when in germany too i was warned not to talk about Nazism and related events, I doubt if current germans know much about it. On the other hand we hold on and talk about our Noakhali, partition, punjab riots, bombay riots, emergency, godhra and debating and discussing about it. Many times its breast beating and useless, but better than denying i suppose. Government tries to censure in india too, but not effective as people know what happened most of the time. Won't the chinese people have a sense of confusion, guilt and betrayal when they know about the cost of the revolutions and the current surge. There is the great revolution, cultural revolution, economic revolution. All of them involved questioning and revolting against one thing or another including family system, religion, societal structures, education. 

the world seems to be such a different place than what i thought it to be sometimes,

harish