Excellent excellent, more more, longer longer.

I think the side-by-side disparities have much to do with social and resource competition in overcrowded environments, more so than moral issues. People around the world typically react to any kind of serious overload to or assault on their sense of personal safety with emotional distancing. That being said, to get a change to the environment going, one may have exert moral pressure on people who now have a greater percentage of resources.

There are remnants of old infrastructure, from the "raj" period and prior, which hamstring support for fairer modes of life. India did not go through a WWII, where half their urban and transportation infrastructure was bombed out and needed rebuilding, as happened in areas of Europe, for example. There are remnants of old social structure that limit social status changes and investment in self. Finding a way to distribute resources, cash flow and mutual esteem more efficiently and fairly will reduce the need for the poorest people to congregate in cities, where they are, right now, more sure of getting food and shelter, miserable though it may seem to many.

Nice interview on both sides! Spiffy video! Cooool presentation! Very interesting subject! More more more!

Dr. Chopra, you and your son seem to possess the grace of princes; keep up the good work!

Peace

Personally Mukesh Ambani billion dollar looks strange, but then again he pumped a billion into the local ecomony and employs thousands, so I think he has pleny of self awareness, perhaps he can be accused of having bad taste.

I think India followed the wrong "Soviet" model after it's independence, but I think the world looks at India as a glass half full and improving given where it was even 15 years ago.

Of course Bush had absolutely nothing to do with India's growing prosperity during his administration. I think the best that happened to India was that it's brain trust started to stay put.

Steve

Welcome India to your own version of 21st century corporate scandal as Satyam joins the ranks of Enron and Worldcom.

As the CEO says "It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7815031.stm

Well, my response to the above conversation is that this is not really an interview but more a personal conversation about an inner view :)

mutually shared.

Especially when you listen to the other parts on :

http://deepakchopra.com/

One may say: truly universal!

I remember I had this conversations many times in private with my children.

A well, hope our children are ready now :)

ha ha

"few more funerals and we will be all set ... "

Like the sarcasm and wit especially from Deepak :-D

Yeah they are highly articulate but they are highly 'Americanised' too at least some of them ...

~ R ~

As long as you still judge, even by way of a joke or sarcasm, your world will not change.

heartphone????

There is a lot of judgement in Deepak´s conversation!

I have become aware of this, the moment he started to write about politics here on IB.

His books are in total contradiction to this.

Well that is the paradox I suppose.

So my comment is more or less a struggle with that paradox :)

Dear Ruch, do not worry. Everything that is written here is in one way or another written from one´s own personal perception.

All the best to you!

Mieke

Hmmmm... I guess one could write about concepts, theories, models and systems without being judgemental in a book. But when it comes to situation, people, real incidents and especially politics perhaps it is nearly impossible to express a point of view and not be judgemental. You could still enjoy the sarcasm and with though. One should not take things too personally ... . sometimes its necessary to go with the tide and enjor the ride. All the very best to you as well meike.

Pretty good. A lot of discussion like this is going on in cafes, meeting rooms, and living rooms in both India and the US. What are the emerging dynamics of the 21st century, how is India going to play, how is China going to play?

The Chinese government is not going to collapse. Change, yes, collapse, no. Look at they way they merged capitalist enterprise and communist ideology, two things that my generation was heavily propagandized could not co-exist under one roof. They did it without a big collapse.

And if in India you think children are conditioned to respect their elders, you can double it for Chinese kids. You are simply not going to see the kids taking to the streets openly rebelling against their parents like we saw in the 1960s in the USA.

That being said, there will still be big changes in the works.

Since I am a musician who makes fusion music, I can draw a bit from the music as a mirror of cultural trends.

In China, Western style chord changes (borrowed from pop-rock) and rocknroll type instruments have become the norm. The typical Chinese pop band hand has guitars, keyboards, bass and drums and maybe a singer/dancer out front (in bands where the guitar players are not the lead singers). That's standard rocknroll instrumentation, and they are playing standard rock chord patterns and basslines in their songs. The content is teenage love-song fodder, the same that drives most teen pop music in all cultures. In the case of Chinese pop music, it is not rebellious lyrics as much as it is the adoption of western stylings that is powering the changes. And so it goes for politics and economics - it will not be an ideological revolution, but an adoption of western styles (and particularly the western model of capitalism) that drives the change in China.

Watch a bunch of Sony BMG Chinese pop band videos, and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.

In India the situation is a little more complex. There are more cultural factions with deep differences in lifestyle, religion, and ideologies than in China. In India (and even the states) it is easy to articulate the problem of a growing gap being rich and poor, but very hard to tackle. This is because of the sheer enormity of the problems, and the fact that there are entrenched interests profiting very heavily off the current situation, and therefore will finance, litigate, and even militarily oppose big social reforms.

In the music, the east/west fusion is driven primarily by the Bollywood-influenced disco scene. For example, here in the states, to check out new local bands you go to the bars where friends have recommended their favorite local artists are playiong. When I went to India, I said hey lets go to the clubs and check some new music. My hosts looked at me like I was from Mars, then it occurred to them what I was saying, so they said, clubs don't have bands here. Maybe a DJ, but the clubs are just social hangouts, that's it, where mostly young guys try to chase young ladies and drink a lot in the process.

Western clothing styles and the recent shopping mall movement can be seen, and India's new technology-and-trade driven middle class are emerging. But I don't see big change coming to India, just more of the same current trends. India, historically, has been influenced by many conquerors, colonizers, and trade partners, but India is not so much transformed by outside influences as it just simply absorbs them into the Indian culture. So you see influences from other cultures, yes, but not upheavals.

The music, other than the Bollywood influence, is far more diversified. In India, the southern film industtry plays a huge influence which has remained rather separate from western influences (at least compared to Bollywood), and of course, you still have a very large component of devotional religious music, which is a force in music far beyond anything comparable in the west. Then there is Indian classical music, which exists in a universe pretty much unto itself with very little mixing with either western or other asian styles.

And there are little splinter movements, like the Indian techno/classical fusions (think Talvin Singh, Karsh Kale, Anoushka Shankar), and a second generation of Indian/Jazz fusion musicians inspired primarily by John McLaughlin and Miles Davis from the 1970s (that's the style of fusion I make)..

So that's my take. We have seen the dynamics already. The same dynamics we are already seeing will become bigger, but I don't see huge 20th-century style upheavals in the works.

As for big wars and radical transformations, I think the Middle East will be where those dynamics play out.

And I think you are going to see African nations slowly startiong to come out of their post-colonial chaos and becoming stronger players on the world scene.

And African music - wow - there's another whole universe!

I have always enjoyed reading your posts yogi-one!

Do you have any you tube posts of you jamming?!?

peace brother

Re: Ambasteve said "I think India followed the wrong "Soviet" model after it's independence".

Thank god India followed Soviet Model after the independence. It is because
of soviet Style 5 year plan we had Public sector factories which employed
lot of people who gave up their studies to fight for freedom (my father
was one of the beneficiaries of this system). The 5-year plan also enabled
India to have strong Education system and lead to the establishment of IIT
IIM and Medical Colleges which supplied lot of highly talented people to west including
Dr.Chopra.

India does not have Social Security or Unemployment benefit scheme like how Western
Countries have. Just imagine what the condition would have been if we had
Started with Market economy with its main theme of dog eats dog.

In 1947 the population of India was 300 Million which is same for
USA in 2008.