Although I stay in one place, I have windows which look out on the world. The most disturbing view, the one most filled with horrific portents for the future, is what I see when looking through the window that faces India. Anyone who has access to the Internet and Wikipedia can discover that India is the most populous democracy in the world, home in 2010 to 1.2 billion people, and soon to be the most densely populated country on Planet Earth.
Glaring signs of India's wealth in 2010 were armed forces, active and reserve, totalling almost 2.5 million men, with a further paramilitary force of over 2.225 million. According to Wikipedia, India accounts for 9 per cent of the world's arms' imports and is also a significant manufacturer and exporter of the weapons of war.
India also has a nuclear arsenal. So does Pakistan, the Islamic nation with which India shares the subcontinent. The conflict with Pakistan illustrates the colossal lunacy of human beings who live with the same economic and environmental problems being bitterly divided over life philosophies, which is what religions are, no matter how exalted their utterances.
My view of India has been brought into sharper resolution by the experiences of family members who returned from an extended stay there. They came back to Canada with vast feelings of relief. The most immediate problems they encountered in India were air pollution, the unreliability of electrical and sewer and water facilities, children grubbing in garbage dumps and the uncertainty of obtaining foodstuffs which were safe to eat. They learned more about India when they saw the magnificent architectural treasures of an older India decaying, people still oppressed by the caste system and congregations of widows begging outside the temples.
They learned that there were three main political parties and scores of smaller ones. They learned that small local jurisdictions could frustrate central and state governments by denying approval for new highways and other essential public works. They learned that positions in the machinery of government and in the military are coveted because they offer security for the future.
When boarding a commercial airliner in India, 15 individuals were required to handle the security checks. This is the kind of make-work program necessary in a country which has no effective social safety net.
There are prosperous people in India's new industries, in new technologies and in the glitzy glamour of Bollywood. There are obscenely wealthy people among global investors and the owners of land and factories. Together, they account for only a slim fraction of the total population. Mostly, there is grinding poverty and, as a result, corruption everywhere and at every level.
In Saskatchewan, with a couple of seasonal employees, one man can farm 4,000 acres of land. In India, the same area of land provides precarious support for 1,000 farmers.
If agriculture in India were mechanized and automated, 1,000 farmers would have nothing to do except search for other gainful labours which they would have little hope of finding. What India needs and cannot have is thousands of leaders as wise and charismatic as Mohandas Gandhi, the founder of a free India.
The problem is people pollution, a population already too large which continues to grow. In China, wisdom comes with a mailed fist. There, no regional interests would be able to halt projects deemed necessary by the central government. And there, BY LAW, there is to be only one child for each family. It seems probable similar laws will soon appear in other populous countries - but never in India.
Last week, I bought a jar of sweet pickles. At home, I saw that it was a product of India. In happier times, our pickle jars were filled with cucumbers grown in Ontario. How, in this crazy global economy, will I be able to find a jar of genuine Leamington pickles.?
