Indo Chinese Cookbook

 

We Indians love Chinese Food. But what we prefer eating is the Indian version of Chinese Food. This cuisine is famous as Indo-Chinese. But apart from this one fusion, there is nothing that is an Indo-Chinese collaboration. We cannot think of China without another C Words: Conflict and Competition. Incidentally,   last year as the world was heading toward recession its two economies postponed the inevitable. But that was just a fact that India and China are now big stakeholders in the world economy.  Throughout 22, we have seen border conflict with China and geopolitical confrontation between India and China at the UN, Quad or South China Sea, SAARC. As the Chinese New Year of Rabbit rings in, India has surpassed China as the most populous country. Many alarmists predict a doomsday situation for India and the achievement of China to enforce population control. But there are issues with the facts and numbers  

China is going to be the first country in history to be old before its rich. Its population will peak just below 1.5 billion in the next decade and then slowly shrink to about 1.3 billion people by mid-century. By 2050, China’s “dependency ratio”—that is, “dependents” (children and the aged) relative to people of working age—will double from 35 percent to 70 percent (the lasting effect of China’s one-child policy). This will put massive strains on the country’s nascent welfare state and struggling health system. Demography isn’t destiny, but having a growing population with lots of working-age people is a great place to start.  By 2050, India will be the world’s largest country in terms of population by a wide margin over China, with a mind-boggling 1.7 billion people—400 million more than today. Over the next 35 years, its dependency ratio will actually decline from a bit over 50 percent today to a bit under 50 percent in 2050. Indians will live longer, so the aged population will grow considerably. With more affluence, India’s birth rate will come down too. But Indian fertility will remain high by all but African standards, and this will be a great foundational resource for the economy. While a massive working-age population gives India the chance to become the world’s next growth titan, the country will have to work hard to translate its demographic windfall into much higher standards of living for average Indians. Economic productivity is the key. Keeping other factors equal, India would have advantages in terms of the size of the labor force and growth of the labor force compared to the next two decades. India is unlikely to face a labor shortage for the next two decades, and such issues may be seen in China.   

India began its economic reform in the early 1990s, more than a decade after China. But in the last quarter century, China has accelerated its economy, while India’s has weakened comparatively. Why? Chinese growth has been driven by some of the world’s highest investment rates. This has in turn made possible both an infrastructure revolution of new cities, high-speed rail lines, airports and ports, and manufacturing muscle that has been the envy of the world. China has been the world’s factory for 20 years. Its ability to quickly and efficiently move what it produces domestically and around the world has been a critical component in its growth miracle. Today, India lags far behind China on all three fronts.  China has arguably the best physical infrastructure outside the Western world. India looks more like the poor country that it still is.  

But this is a real opportunity for India. Increase investment. Improve infrastructure. Grow economic output. This is a tried-and-true path to growth, and it is one India is poised to follow. Consider India’s vaunted tech sector. We all know about the incredible Indian talent running some of America’s tech icons. Pichai, Nadela so many other Indian-American tech sector executives are a testament to the power of the immigration-innovation nexus in the U.S. Don’t let these rock star CEOs fool anyone into thinking the only way for Indian technologists to succeed is to work in the U.S. for American firms. Homegrown, and still home-centered, companies like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, and Wipro are real-world leaders when it comes to information technology. And Indian entrepreneurs are killing it today in startups  The growth of Indian tech has been fueled by large-scale private-sector investment, from both India and abroad. These companies needed infrastructure to thrive, but the infrastructure was digital, not physical—allowing Indian IT firms to beam information and analysis from India to the world and back long before anyone was talking about “cloud.” They didn’t need to ship widgets because their products were all in bits. About a decade ago, some optimists thought India could leapfrog over the manufacturing and physical infrastructure stage of development (widgets) to build the whole economy around digital (bits). Today, it is clear that, while India’s tech sector is fantastic and growing, the whole, the massive country will have to develop the old-fashioned way with better infrastructure and more manufacturing. What will determine whether India can become a bit more Chinese when it comes to infrastructure and manufacturing? Unlike China, the answer will not be government investment because the Indian state is hamstrung by endemic budget deficits of big subsidies and limited taxation. The good news for India is that the private sector is ready to step in.    

There is nowhere India is more different from China in the world of politics as china has a massive undercurrent repressed by one-party politics.  We have seen that during anti-Covid restriction protests in China.  

By no means can we predict that India will go on a growth charge the way China has or China will fall due to the problems mentioned.  The raw material India has to work with is so rich. The challenge now is to catalyze it. Then only Indian Cuisine can surpass Chinese on a Global scale. And we cannot wait to live that day.

 

 

A Day in a Life

 

2023 has set in and already a couple of weeks have been knocked off on our new Calendars. As we all have planned to have a changed individual with the same person you were in 2022 doing certain things on each day of the Calendar. You want to have a perfect day in your life with a clear focus. But these are the days of social media, you cannot help but peek into others’ lives making you feel envious and craving things outside your own plans. It all starts around the same time in January.  

What motivates someone to post their lives in form of videos on social media? I tried to study and find a rationale. As a part of my search, I was directed to many   “day in my life” videos on TikTok. It’s a robust cottage industry of satirical “day in my life” videos. They are very different from the earliest days of the “vlog,” or video blog, in the early 2000s. YouTube may have made a few people very famous for taping their every waking minute and posting it online, but YouTube isn’t like TikTok: It takes a lot more time, effort, and skill (and money!) to pull off a good 15-minute video. A one-minute video on an endless scroll app that invents new famous people every day, meanwhile, can get seen by a lot more people. 

Thanks to TikTok, there are “day in the life” videos about being in med school or a day in the life of an IT programmer or a third-grade teacher. Then there are vlogs of travelers and those in addition recovery and wealthy bankers in gray apartments with huge closets just for their shoes. There’s so little self-awareness in what people are choosing to post about themselves,” say experts. Strangely they all have the tone of faux humility and earnestness with which creators narrate their videos which experts find intriguing  

For most, “day in my life” videos are opportunities for voyeurism, sure, but they are also satisfying on a more basic human level: By watching other people be productive, we get to feel productive ourselves. In the span of a few minutes or even less, we’ve seen a person get up, get dressed, clean their home, beautify themselves, prepare meals, send emails, take an exercise class, grab a glass of wine with a friend, and cuddle with their cat before lights out.  How does this guy manage this simultaneous filming? 

A researcher says: “Even the most realistic-seeming, mundane “day in my life” vlogs require a pretty big lift — in an attempt to test this theory, I decided that I would record a “day in my life” TikTok video on a random Tuesday, but immediately gave up after I got out of the shower. It was simply too much work without a real point: That day, like most Tuesdays, was going to be pretty ordinary and visually unstimulating”.  

He further says that theorizes that “It seems like a very Gen Z thing to do, to post your everyday life as retaliation to Millennials, who grew up posting their trips to Turks and Caicos, but what you get is essentially like the same product. In a lot of these videos, what’s funny is that in a lot of the clips, you can see their friends will have their phones out, too, taking videos at the same time. Nothing is actually happening because they’re all posting.” 

Perhaps that’s the reason why so many “day in the life” videos, no matter how aspirational or ostentatious, share a quiet melancholy. Here is a person who just wants to be seen when they are by themselves when nobody else is around. Maybe they’re looking for some kind of meaning, maybe their lives feel small, or maybe they feel so big that they can’t help but want to share it. It’s why the best “day in my life” videos are the ones that give voice to all the anxieties and self-consciousness that come with being a person who spends a lot of time thinking about how they present to the world.   

No “day in my life” video is ever going to be a perfect representation of someone’s existence, but they’re more fun to watch when they’re made by people who spend the time to ask the fun kinds of questions: What are we all doing? Is this what life is?  The more generic they are more they are appealing. 

That goes back to the same question as to why people would like to post and as well see these videos 

They want to curate their personal brand: For better or worse, we all care how we are being perceived by other people. They want to be heard: Humans are inherently tribal creatures, with an inherent desire to be accepted and ‘liked’ by our community. We want to feel our opinions are important and thus bloggers blog like what I have done. They want people to consume their content: There are plenty of social media users out there who spend a lot of time creating content, whether that’s a blog post like this, or vlog, or a TikTok video. They want to stay connected: Over time, social media has become the primary means for keeping in touch with loved ones. Millennials and Gen-Z are less likely than previous generations to phone their buddies. Many opt to keep in touch by ‘liking’, ‘commenting, or sliding in the DMs on social media instead. It’s all about self-esteem: When someone uploads a good photo of themselves or news of a great achievement online, they are usually doing that for the praise of others. They want the self-esteem boost of people liking their photo, or distant friends congratulating them on their achievements. Finally, As part of our tribal nature, we strive to ‘fit in’ with our community. As such, there are people who make social media posts, simply because everyone else is. We need to find a perfect life social media balance.