Al Gomhuria, p.5, ( 19/6/2008)

I wish we were Indians

By: Mohammad Ali Ibrahim

I visited China three times and India five times. I liked the democratic system applied in this poor country India. However, I did not like communism in China in spite of the disciple of the country. China is also cleaner. India is a poor country that applies a democratic system and is emerging as a technological power. As for China you don’t know if it is a rich country or a poor country. It is a dictatorship but it represents a technological giant.  But as I said I prefer India to China for several reasons. First of all, India is like Egypt in several aspects: its people feel afraid of envy, believe in superstitions, and the majority of them are farmers, lots of them throw garbage in front of their houses, and breed Chicken inside bedrooms, and eat sitting on the floor. At lunch time, the Indian wife carries food to her husband working in the tea plantation or the rice or wheat fields. Due to the presence of lots of similarities between the two countries, you feel that they are identical except that Indians have different color of complexion and speak (Hindi).

At a moment in time, I observed that the rich among the peoples of the gulf region started to abandon going to London, Paris and Germany for treatment and they started to go to India. May be it is because India is nearer. But I don’t think that rich people will abandon going to London and Paris to go to Bombay for treatment unless he knows quite well that treatment there is of high quality. It came to my knowledge that the late Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi launched twenty years ago the national project for developing upgrading medicine and developing medical schools and institutions.

A sector of the gulf peoples used to come to Egypt for treatment but they started to head for India. What is the reason? Is the medical and nursing staff standard deteriorating in Egypt?

What is important is that Indians are good in medicine exactly as they are good in geometry. The US dollar was equal to 33 rupees but now it is equal 22 rupees. This means that India is predicted to have the strongest economy in Asia. And I wish to become an Indian.

I always wonder how India managed to turn from a country that is only famous for festivals and traditional cloths to an economic giant. Till sixties, India was only famous for its spices. Then it started to impress the world with gold articles then it became number one in the world in the field of software.

I had to ask myself: why did India progress and we declines? Why did they go forward while we stopped moving? They have a similar population problem as ours. They suffered for 30 years of famines. We have never gone through such a harsh experience. So, what makes them different from us?

The overpopulation problem is much more serious in India than in Egypt. In 1970, India had a population of 300 million people. Now, it has a population of one billion and 300 million. So, it registered a rise of one billion in population over 40 years. India has become a continent, just like China. The question that preoccupied me is: how have they turned from a famished people to a successful one?

I always say to myself: "Both the Indian population and our population have risen. Why, then, did India manage to make progress, while we did not?" India has never cared about birth control as diseases have killed many Indians and it was difficult to convince people to give up the dream of having children.

In fact, the problem in Egypt is not so much about overpopulation as it is about lack of production, low awareness, heedlessness and leaving all our burdens and concerns for the government to take care of. The difference between Egypt and India is that the Egyptian state is responsible for correcting the people, while the Indians made efforts to correct themselves. Also, decentralisation in India helped much in solving the problem. In fact, Egypt needs decentralisation in terms of decision-making. India succeeded in facing the problem through the state governments which managed to turn most of the young people into professionals and computer programmers. India is the world's largest exporter of hides, wood and metal tools. When it turned to production, India discovered that in order to achieve the desired economic growth rates, it should improve education and set a developed plan for production.

India has major businessmen who harnessed their factories and workers for two goals: production and export. Egypt has to work for these two goals too.

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