India & Energy
They said, I should learn to speak a little bit of English
Don’t be scared of a suit and tie
Learn to walk in the dreams of the foreigner
I am a third world child
In the US, awareness of India is always on the periphery, unless you're looking for cheap coders or selling enlightenment of some sort or other. It is said, India's population now rivals China, which means the two together combine to be 35% of the global population. So, you'd think it deserves some attention, maybe we need an Indian Kardashian show?
Until then, in regards to Indian entertainment, the Indian minister for energy accused the West of hypocrisy. Even better, the FT treated it as news. Can you imagine after centuries of the Raj, the Brits could in anyway consider hypocrisy towards India news? However, the minister was aiming more at US and Europe and Britain's not part of Europe anymore, or as any truly loyal subject of the Windsor monarchy could tell you, they never were. So, maybe there’s some sense of relief by the Brits or irony in the FT’s treatment of the minister’s castigation?
The minister stated it was “hypocrisy for advocating the phasing out of coal, India’s primary energy source, more aggressively than other fossil fuels, including oil and gas.” I'm not sure that's really hypocrisy, after all, you have to some awareness of your actions to truly be a hypocrite, and on energy, the West is completely clueless.
On a per capita basis, India's energy usage is 7% of the United States, which means daily life in India is pretty much unimaginable for any American — it ain’t the Kardashians or even Kanye without his Adidas deal. What really does the West, particularly the US, have to tell India about energy consumption? Not much.
At the same time, India now races to develop along the same two centuries old industrial model of Western “development.” I think it’s even official US National Security State policy for American mega-corporations to move production from China to India. Well, maybe, sort of, these days even the head of Raytheon is warning about Trump/Biden Sino war mongering.
The short and simple, just as China is finding out, India and the rest of the world can't develop along the same lines as the West, in fact it calls for a whole new meaning of “developed,” including for the West. Unfortunately, the whole world is in deep denial and that's not hypocrisy, as an American of long standing, I can tell you, denial’s much, much worse.