India and China: Apples and Oranges

Many of you probably�read B Raman’s open letter to Aamir Khan in rediff recently.

In the article Shri Raman made several points about why (and how) India and China are fundamentally different and how India’s record on human rights – while not stellar – cannot be compared to that of China.

It is worth reminding ourselves of that as “lumping” India and China in one bracket�is becoming something of a fashion these days.

The tendency�to do this is hardly limited to politics or to human-rights issues.

For example,�when it comes to business or economic development issues, even otherwise astute observers of international affairs succumb to the temptation�(or intellectual laziness)�of�painting them with the same brush – or worse, lumping them under the naive (and ill-considered) label “ChIndia”.

I�came across a�brilliant critique of this intellectual laziness is an�article I had read some time ago – and of which I was reminded of once again after reading B Raman’s piece.

Here are some excerpts from “EYE ON THE TIGERS“�by Ashutosh Sheshabalaya

“�They are omnipresent, even if they lie shrouded backstage in discussions about climate change. At last count, there were almost two-and-a-half billion of them – Chinese and Indians.

Indeed, one of the most sterile facets of the global warming debate is to refer to China and India, rather than to Chinese and Indians. China and India may be among the world�s biggest CO2 emitters. But your everyday Wang or Rajiv hardly qualifies for such an honour.�

The reasons are clear: out of the world�s 235-plus countries, China and India�s populations outnumber the bottom 220 put together.� And their per-head/per-body contribution to global warming is vastly lower than that of the West.

In the typical Indian�s case� – commercial energy use is, crucially, also far below the global average.� In 2005, world electricity consumption was 2,400 kilowatt hours (kWh) per person. India�s was just 432 kWh, four times less than China�s 1,662 kWh.� Oil use, too, exemplifies such trends.

An Indian�s consumption of crude, at 0.8 barrels per year, pales against the world�s 4.5 barrels, and is less than half China�s 1.8. There is little point throwing more dazzling, vulgar beams of light by juxtaposing such figures against the Western world, lit up end-to-end for the Christmas and New Year festivities.

Still, what is clear is that the difference between India and China is at least as significant as that between China and the world. And here is a suggestion to move the climate change debate beyond noisy palavers (a word originally referring to the patronising monologues of European colonial adventurers in Africa).

Firstly, differentiate between India and China. Both may be rising industrial powers, but China�s economic growth-at-any-cost is rather different from that of India, and this difference goes far beyond the numbers referred to above.

Although similarly determined to remove poverty, democratic India also boasts deeply ingrained soft systems which have begun priming its voters for the trade-offs between economic growth and their longer-term costs.�

It was India – not China, or the West � which established the first Ministry for Renewable Energy. That was in the early 1990s. Since then, India�s Supreme Court – widely considered among the world�s most activist judiciaries – has set the country�s green agenda, from forcing metalworking and chemical plant closures to driving one of the world�s most ambitious environmental projects to date, namely the conversion of the New Delhi public transportation system to compressed natural gas. There are hundreds of other such examples.

The rest of the Indian system, too, has responded, at least as far as possible in what remains one of the world�s poorest countries.� Rural India now hosts 30 million high-efficiency �smokeless� stoves, with a conversion efficiency four times higher than their predecessors. Indian biomass gasifiers � a key renewable energy technology – are exported across the world, even to squeaky-clean Switzerland. More broadly, even modern, industrialising India has chipped in. The country�s energy intensity has fallen from 0.3 kgs of oil equivalent per dollar GDP in 1972 to 0.19 kgs in 2003 � equal to Germany.

Against this, the near-comprehensive lack of awareness about such efforts outside India remains striking. So too does the innate assumption that clean air and climate change are concerns of enlightened shock troops from the West battling recalcitrant polluters in ChIndia�s wastelands. On November 23, without a by-your-leave, the New York Times announced that the US was �the world�s third largest wind (producing) country, after Germany and Spain.�

It also cited the Chief Executive of the European Wind Energy Association about a �second wave� of �new countries with significant wind capacity� � among them, �Britain, Canada, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands. � No numbers anywhere, nor a single mention of India. As it happens, figures from the Global Wind Energy Council show India in fourth position, with 7,093 MW of installed windpower capacity in July 2007, three times that of Britain, Canada, Italy or Japan, and double� that of China.

This is not to say that continuing industrialisation in India will not add to the world�s environmental woes. But pretending that India, and the 800 million Indians below the Davos line are doing nothing about it robs the debate of seriousness, and provides little incentive for meaningful cooperation with the West.�

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And�below are some excerpts from Shri Raman’s open letter to Aamir Khan:

“…You have rightly said in your justification that no country is free from instances of human rights violations. Not even India. In this connection, you have referred to Kashmir.

You and others, who have written on this subject, are correct in their references to Kashmir, our northeast, the grievances and anger of Khalistanis and Muslims etc…No country in the world is free of such problems.

The question to be asked is not whether we have the same problems as China, but what has been our approach to these problems.

…Has any group in India accused our government and policy-makers of indulging in cultural genocide of the minorities as the Dalai Lama and the leaders of the Uighur Muslim community in China have accused the Chinese government?

In India, since we became independent in 1947, no government — whether of the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party or any other party — has ever even thought of settling members of the majority community in areas where the minorities are in a majority. Pakistan has systematically settled Punjabi ex-servicemen in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and in the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan) in order to reduce the ethnic Kashmiris to a minority in their traditional homeland. It has systematically settled Wahabised Sunnis in the Northern Areas in order to reduce the Shias to a minority. China has systematically settled Hans from mainland China and the Hui Muslims from central China in Tibet in order to reduce ethnic Tibetans to a minority and dilute the majority status of Buddhism. It has similarly settled Hans in Xinjiang in order to reduce the Uighurs to a minority and dilute the impact of Islam.

…In Jammu and Kashmir, no non-Kashmiri has ever been chief minister. Same is the case in Nagaland and Mizoram. Can you cite an instance since the occupation of Tibet by the Chinese in 1951 when an ethnic Tibetan has headed the local party and government set-up?

We have been fairly regularly holding elections in the northeast and Kashmir…In Kashmir, there were allegations of rigging of the elections. Because of this, in recent elections, we allowed foreign diplomats and journalists to visit Kashmir before and during the elections to satisfy for themselves that the polls were free and fair.

Has China ever held a single democratic election in Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia since the Communists captured power in 1949?

We have many insurgent and terrorist organisations purporting to speak for the religious and ethnic minorities, which have taken to arms against the government. Have you ever seen our political leaders and policy-makers indulge in a campaign of demonisation and personal vilification similar to the Chinese campaign against the Dalai Lama? Beijing calls him ‘a liar, a conspirator, a cheat, a terrorist’ and so on.

…The leaders of separatist organisations freely interact with our media. They are interviewed by our print and electronic media and invited to participate in our television talk shows…Can you mention a single instance since 1949 when Beijing has allowed a single dissident leader to similarly interact with the media and foreign diplomats? Have you ever seen a single interview of the Dalai Lama in the Chinese media?

…The Government of India recently allowed Asma Jehangir, the well-known Pakistani human rights activist, who has been appointed as the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, to visit Gujarat and J&K to look at the human rights situation. She has come out with a very critical report. Will China allow the UN to appoint a similar Special Rapporteur for Tibet to inquire into allegations of cultural genocide in Tibet?

The way we handle our problems in the minority areas is totally different from the way the Chinese handle them. We handle them like civilised, democratic people. The Chinese handle them like Hitler and Stalin used to do. It is, therefore, totally unfair and incorrect to project as you have sought to do and as many leftist-minded intellectuals in India have sought to do, as if China is more sinned against than sinning and that its negative human rights record is no different from that of many other countries, including India.

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P.S. Nitin has commented on this episode over at Acorn (On Aamir Khan�s decision to carry the torch) which has this memorable line:

“…it takes a particular form of moral deficiency to equate China and India and the way they deal with disaffected citizens. “

Well said.