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20 years over. What next 21st century?

While going through my blogs today morning, I came across this draft in which I had written the following points:
"The 21st century began with a lot of excitement. Y2K scares aside, I remember the hope and excitement we all had for a new century starting. 9/11 in a lot of ways changed everything. And dragged us back to the 20th century reminding us that one cannot just move forward without paying one's dues.

 As we enter 2020, I really wonder - are we any better off today?

 Here are the 5 things that I feel might still be troubling us as we reach 2030!
  1. Quantitative easing - My theory is that 9/11 also lead indirectly to the GFC and the collapse of Lehmann Brothers. And today we are stuck in a debt fuelled recovery. Will we be able to create economic growth that is not based on cheap and easy money?  
  2. Tech terror 
  3. Environment
  4. Religion
  5. China"

Now if I were a pretentious guy - I would have claimed that look I predicted that something would come from China. But to be honest - that was hardly what I was thinking. Clearly this sudden spread of Corona has blindsided us all. Past viruses that came out from China - never really bothered us too much. 

Now that we stand at this juncture - what should we all do? Is China at fault? A conspiracy by them to become the most dominant power of the world and end the USD supremacy?

Till the 40s - United Kingdom used to the most dominant power in the world. US was in fact going through their worst of times - it was a chaotic land - a new world where things were just not refined enough to match up to the sophistication of the British Raj. 

However, the two world wars changed everything. WW-II in particular brought forth a whole new world order and the Cold War began between a resurgent US and USSR. For much of the latter half of the 20th century - this Cold War became an under the surface war which impacted lives of millions if not billions. 

And today - it seems a new lines are being drawn with US and China pitted against each other. However, lets make no mistake - China is a much more established and powerful country today than USSR ever was. 

Plus the 90s - and the early 2000s - represented a period of greast hedonism. Capitalism became the unchallanged ideology and money and posessions became the new God. Today the reason CoVid virus is spreading so fast is precisely because in the 90s - globalisation went to the other extreme. Crossing all national boundaries, many MNCs became mroe powerful than most nations across Asia, Africa and even parts of Europe. These MNCs had only one goal - maximise profits for shareholders and their top executives. The world and humanity be damned. 

And so when Lehman Brothers - which epitomised this arrogance - collapsed in 2008 - the world order changed again. China and India emerged much stronger and movement of wealth from the West started.  Many people infact believe that the 21st century would be the century of Asia - when two ancient civilisations - China and India which once ruled the world in terms of wealth and trade - would once again become the leaders of the world - driving consumption and innovation. 


And amongst all developed nations - US would be the one which would still remain dominant. So China-US-India-Japan-Germany-Russia might end up becoming the 5 top nations dominating 21st century. 

Ok - so how does Covid affect this expectation?

Covid as a virus - has one feature. It loves the stupid, the weak and the ignorant. So clearly nations which are ruled by these characterisitcs will lose the most. 

From this list - if one were to rank these nations on this aspect -based on how people in these nations have been responding to lock downs etc and how the leaders have been behaving I would rank them as below (1 meaning the most stupid/weak/ignorant) : 

  1. US
  2. India
  3. Russia
  4. China 
  5. Germany
So there is my estimate. US and India would be the most impacted. Germany and China the least and Russia somewhere in middle. 

What can US and India do to change this?

US - get rid of Trump.
India - make the Modi govt more accountable and force them to collabarate cutting across all party lines to protect India. 

March 2021 - is when we will begin to see how things pan out. Any lesser period - we won't know where we are going. It's a grim reality and the next 6 months would not be easy. Be safe and take care. This is not the time to take risk or be foolhardy!

As my friend Udayan Lahiry keeps telling me - only the Paranoid survive!






































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