A HIMALAYAN LEAP BEYOND 3 Ts

INDUSTRIALIST Harsh Goenka posted on social media that, as a patriot, he was utterly confused.

- R GOPALAKRISHNAN

He first boycotted Chinese noodles, then Turkish baklava, then cancelled his Maldives holiday, and then stopped consuming McDonald’s and Coke. He admitted to be a confused deshbhakt. His voice is that of many citizens. The world has indeed become too complex.

Travel, trade, and tradition are three Ts that bring nations together. This piece is about India and China. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s Tianjin Summit last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had ‘positive’ meetings with the Chinese leader. Some observers are gleeful because bullying has been rebuffed. Memorialising the opening of Japan’s market by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1854, others feel that India should use a ‘Perry moment’ to reform. Yet, a third group cautions that India should tread carefully. Perhaps all three perspectives have some merit.

Any two nations connect like a dumbbell. On one side, there are easy-to-measure factors like trade and investment, travel and people exchange and ideas and cultural interchange. On the other side, there are difficult-to-measure factors like politics and ideologies, national self-interest and mutual benefit. The dumbbell must be stable for it to be effective.