(and the reduced influence of English as a native language)
The British Council has come up with an interesting report on the future of English. Here is the list of major languages used around the world today. No surprises for guessing with comes out on top. But if you look at the number of countries that speak each language the results could be quite different. Also perhaps based on each dollar of GDP around the world. Below is a list of areas where English is the predominant language.
China and India are the most talked about emerging economies of the world today. China is already the second largest economy in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and India is close to edging out Japan to be number three. And US, despite the continuing financial growth, is not seeing much change when it comes to the purchasing power of its common citizens. This is quite an interesting development.
Most western economies today as is China to an extent today is based heavily on cross border trade. US perhaps to a lesser extent than say Germany – which incidently happens to be the world’s biggest cross border trader, but viewing it using similar approach as PPP, they are quite dependent on International trade.
But the two emerging economies – India and China – what is amazing about them is that they have so much potential to grow domestically, that with just domestic growth they are in a position to become the top economies, very unlike the case today with US and other OECD countries. Indian economy perhaps more than the Chinese is already an interesting case in this regard. Most of India’s growth, including the amazing growth of the BSE Sensex – which grew from almost 7500 to over 10000 today in just as short as 12 months – is fuelled by Internal demand. As quite a few analysts groan over and over again, FDI flow into India has been limited compared to that to China. But nevertheless there seem to be no end in sight to the growth.
This leaves me wondering about two scenarios. One, where will this lead to? Most western economies got heavily into international trade after more or less saturating growth potential in their domestic market. Now that state will take a while to reach in case of both China and India. But by then the economies would have grown substantially to dwarf rest of the world. What does that mean? What will be the effect of such growth on global trade? Both India and China can be expected to act in pure self-interest for a much longer period of time than the rest of the world has ever experienced. Most of the developed world soon were forced to act in a more civilised manner due to their reliance on mutual trade, which perhaps will not be the case for China nor for India.
The recent case of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft with respect to censorship of Internet perhaps shows signs of what is to come. China is not going to give in anytime soon on these aspects. And why should they? The only thing that works in situations such as these are not laws, but rather international pressure. But I have not yet seen anything that would make them give in to pressure. That will not happen unless the world becomes relevant to them in quite a different way than it is today. And to come back to what I said earlier, this I think will be a while before it happens!
The second question, again leading from the first one is how will the Chinese and Indian foreign policy develop. China and India, both unlike Japan or Germany after World War II, are quite free in terms of strategic thinking. India after its long flirtation with the erstwhile USSR is now cosying up quite well to the US. But the internal debates on their handling of Iran does show that this is not necessarily written in stone.
I don’t think there are any precedences to the emergence of either India nor of China. They both are going to disrupt the global scene – both with their tremendous growth and their use of foreign policy to fuel this growth. Moreover, unlike the US or the ersthwile USSR, neither India nor China has any over powering mission to over throw regimes or impose either communism or democracy anywhere in the world – at least not yet!
My gut feeling is that we are only beginning to see what the promoters of pure Capitalism were hoping for. The behaviour of both these two countires will be based purely on their Market requirements – which is ultimately what the concept of Capitalism propsed.
And yes they are going to be superpowers – but lot more internalised than US today is. The next couple of decades will be quite interesting to watch as this game gets on its way!
Recently two students from ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) Zurich visited all the Asha Zurich projects in India and documented the work using photographs. Few exhibitions are being planned across Switzerland of these photographs. More details are here (in German.)
Great minds discuss ideas;
Average minds discuss events;
Small minds discuss people.- Eleanor Roosevelt
Steve Pavlina has written a very good article on getting up early.
He says:
……The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night……
The original is very clear straight forward. Steve also has an updated Part II where he details some more about the approach. All in all very good read.
Update: While still quite an interesting find, the whole thing was hyped up. It seems this place was found quite a long time back by some other scientists and now the team was just revisiting the same place. I wonder why even prominent players too take such incredibly stupid steps!
An international team of scientists says it has found a "lost world" in the Indonesian jungle that is home to dozens of new animal and plant species.
"It’s as close to the Garden of Eden as you’re going to find on Earth," said Bruce Beehler, co-leader of the group.
The team recorded new butterflies, frogs, and a series of remarkable plants that included five new palms and a giant rhododendron flower.
The survey also found a honeyeater bird that was previously unknown to science.
Update: Nach Baliye was quite a great evening. I enjoyed it every bit – and from the way crowd was swaying to DJ Chilli’s beats – I am quite sure they too did. And then I learned some new skills as well – making cocktails and tending the bar! It was a great evening for Asha too as we made some good profits from the event – all the proceeds will go to our basic education projects in India. Thanks to everyone who participated.
Asha Zurich is back with its hip swaying, foot tapping disco night…Nach Baliye.
The team welcomes you all for an evening filled with loads of music, masti and mazaa, with your favourite Bollywood and Punjabi songs.
When: 4 Feb 2006
Where: Stuz2 Keller, Universitaetstr. 6, Zurich, Switzerland
Time: 21.00 hrs onwards
Entry: CHF 10 / CHF 8 (legi)
So let your hair down and dance the night away with some rocking dance numbers.
Team Asha
together with Indian Association Zurich and VSETH.
I came across this website by a guy based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. I felt this is very well done.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.
— Henry David Thoreau
The latest State of the World’s Children report by UNICEF has been released. Below is the press release from last month. (You can find previous years’ reports at here.)
Abused and Neglected, Millions of Children Have Become Virtually Invisible
LONDON, 14 December 2005. Hundreds of millions of children are suffering from severe exploitation and discrimination and have become virtually invisible to the world, UNICEF said today in a major report that explores the causes of exclusion and the abuses children experience.
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