Yet the Indian government is even more bureaucratic, corruption more endemic, and the politics even more ephemeral and unstable. Moreover, India does not have the salve of prosperity that soothes certain aspects of the far reaching radical economic revolution in China. In fact, with the exception of Bombay's entry into the world information and service economy, most of India's economy is going backward on a per capita basis due to an unsustainable population increase which is spurring ecological, social and political crises that are far worse than even China's. Yet the destinies of the two subcontinents are linked.
How? India's internal fracturalization because of factors I mentioned previously will lead to an unstable, uncertain, minority government in New Delhi. (Chinese officials will take great glee in pointing to India and saying democracy does not work, but democracy rarely does without an underlying common education and prosperity.) At the same time independence forces in Kashmir will be making great gains on the ground and in the realm of international opinion. The weak minority government, the latest and most spineless of a rapid succession of them, will increasingly defer to the military on policy-the situation that has now occurred in Turkey. The 'silent' coup has left an ineffectual civilian Ciller appear to be in charge while leaving American aid intact.
The military, seeing Pakistan's hand in all matters of civil insurrection, will over-react to the situation. At the same time, some normally very competent strategic analysts with the military, quite rightly sensing a political collapse at the center (similar to the August collapse of the Soviet Union) will dust off an old Cold War strategy called the First Strike.
A significant fear of Pakistani political and geographic gains at the expense of weakened internally fractured India will fuel an intense bureaucratic paranoia. This emotional factor will cause a secret military initiative to be 'optioned' without debate by India's politicians.
Well, the secrecy will definitely have one desired effect from the military's point of view: it will catch the Pakistanis totally off guard. The human devastation and social/economic collapse of Karachi, Lahore, and other large cities will be overwhelming. Yet despite the destruction, the surviving Pakistani military will be able to assemble and launch at least one warhead upon the capital, New Delhi.
But this will be only icing on the cake of India's disintegration. In fact, after the significant world outcry, the Indian military will conduct an 'open' coup, disposing their civilian puppet and declaring martial law. Yet even before the obliteration of the capital occurs, whole regions of India will secede in order to distance themselves from retribution. Bombay, closely followed by the rest of the Deccan peninsula and various mountain provinces in the North, will lead the way. Calcutta and others will follow.
One of these city-states will be wise enough to prevent ethnic cleaning between Hindus and Muslims, knowing that it will need the talents of its citizen to survive the Old World Disorder. However, the North of India will plunge into the hell of hard radiation as dust from shattered targets in the Indus Valley rides the jet stream eastward.
This is the causative factor that links the destinies of India and China. Much of the radiation will rain out over the Himalayas and mountains of Southeast Asia. However, there will be pockets of medium-high fallout concentration, depending on the vagaries of local cloudbursts throughout Southeastern and coastal China. This is where all the worst aspects of speculative Chinese capitalism will crystallize out of the chaos.
After the initial panic at the outbreak of the Indian-Pakistani nuclear war, the government officials of Beijing will clamp down all market trading. This will in fact further fuel the panic. Illegal black market exchanges will coalesce as if out of thin air, filled will fearful investors and opportunistic speculators. Certain officials will hide from the public which areas have taken a significant dose of radioactivity in order to prevent panic mass migrations. This action will be like blood in the water to criminal sharks, who will then bribe unscrupulous officials and reporters to state certain areas as contaminated in order to pick up a fortune in real estate lease speculation.
Others will purchase agricultural goods deemed unsafe for later resale. Hundreds of thousands of 'guest' workers from the provinces will riot at various urban transportation centers clamoring to get home to their families. In regions where the fallout strikes the hardest, millions will move as one vast ungovernable hoard, hijacking trucks and appropriating food and durables along the way for the "good of the proletariat."
Those who eat lots of domestic meat and particularly fish will develop various cancers a year to eighteen months hence. These and other events relating to the Chinese Big Bang (described in the February 14850) will all be triggered by intra-Indian Subcontinental rivalry. If only Gandhi's dream of One Grand India had been realized.