CHANDRAN NAIR: My parents were both migrants from Kerala. My father came as a young man in his twenties and my mother as a nine-year-old with her older brother. During my early years, the only things I knew of India were through the customs and practices at home in Malaysia; we had a strong Indian community there and we heard stories from the first generation who had migrated before the Second World War. However, a large chunk of the stories were of how poor India was, how everything was very tough there. It wasn’t that we were wealthy in Malaysia. In fact, in retrospect, it seems that we were not wealthy at all. But we saw ourselves vis-a-vis the people in India (of course the images we were presented were through newspapers and magazines. In those days we didn’t have television at all.) But all images were of the dire poverty, which clearly didn’t reflect India’s reality. And today that perception has changed considerably. When I try to explain my diverse and colourful upbringing, especially while addressing overseas audiences, I always tell a story. I was brought up in a Hindu household. At six in the morning, the lamps were lit and we prayed to gods in all forms—one with a head of an elephant. This was tradition. Then I went to a missionary school where priests, or brothers as we called them, were Caucasian men in cassocks who would tell us that God was blond and blueeyed and we learnt the Lord’s prayer. When school ended, the bus would drop us to a nearby mosque as the area had a majority of Malay Muslims, and we would go to the mosque. I lived in a neighbourhood where there were quite a few Muslim families and waking up to the azaan is a sweet childhood memory. In the evening, as a family, we would often have Chinese food for dinner. I learnt to use chopsticks at the age of three.

SO IN A single day, I was exposed to a variety of people and their cultures, which is a reality for the diaspora living in the colonies of the former empire. It didn’t create a conflict then. It doesn’t create a conflict now though there are a few who seek to divide us. Our multiculturalism, I hope, stood us in good faith. The Indian expats of Malaysia are thus usually not fearful people, wary of different cultures, habits and the way people look. We who have these experiences have an important task of teaching tolerance, which doesn’t come from studying abroad alone, despite what many of the elite happen to think.

WHAT LED TO the present book is partly the childhood I had and my later years working in Africa and consulting across Asia. I was chairperson and CEO of Asia’s largest environmental consultant firm for 15 years. At an intellectual level, I was drawn to the conclusion that much of the narrative of environmental protection comes from a western way of thinking about the need to control the impacts while maintaining a lifestyle almost based on entitlement. In the past 10 years, as China and India rapidly started to join the world, I realised that managing the impact was only one element in the rather futile attempt to manage and protect while striving to grow relentlessly. The real cause of the problem lay elsewhere. Population is one of the determining factors but it was not the only factor: the global population would perhaps peak to 15 billion people at the end of the century. Having said that, despite our best efforts, we will not be able to reduce human population any time soon.

I REALISED THAT the fundamental flaw was the economic model that seeks to promote a relentless consumption pattern: buy one and get one free. It’s a model that deliberately seeks to under-price resources and also promotes consumption through cheap credit. This model, therefore, has a huge consequence in terms of human equity and development and deprives people at the so-called bottom of the pile and limits their access to resources; it thereby undermines their right to the most basic of needs. This economic model, I believe, seeks to fight all manners of regulation and to some degree usurp the state. That is the logical conclusion that I could draw as I thought about the problem more and more. I discovered that this was a taboo subject that many people, and dare I say many Asians, including Indians, who are somewhat subservient to the western narrative because of the colonial heritage, are not willing to look at the problem in a new light. AS I HAVE suggested in my book, Consumptionomics: Asia’s Role in Reshaping Capitalism and Saving the Planet, we need to reject our present pattern of consumption growth. Continuing in the same manner as the West would prove to be catastrophic. The science is clear about that much. We need to question the fundamentals of capitalism as defined by the West, especially the US, that the holy grail of free markets and capitalism are intertwined with democracy. We in this part of the world will need to ask some very hard questions: fundamentally it all boils down to access to resources. In the Indian contest, if you look at the biggest socio-political dilemma in the country it is the Naxalite Movement. Some people say that the movement occupies some 25 to 30 per cent of the country in terms of the landmass at present. Who are the Naxalites? They are basically tribal citizens who are disenfranchised and angry, fighting for their right to their land. What is the land? It is a resource. Then why is the land under threat? Apparently because it is being seized (shared if you are kind) in an economic model which seeks to relentlessly extract from it without proper compensation. And it is not just about compensation. It is also about understanding the full implication of how the resource has a direct link to how millions will live. This sort of narrative is not being discussed.

WE TALK OF the environmental issues divorcing it from the mainstream political debate about the future of human societies. It is not about some green movement but what I have called ‘Constrained Capitalism’. I am saying that essentially the basis of constrained capitalism should be the understanding that resources are limited. There are some people, who I would call ‘fundamentalists’, who are unwilling to accept this reality. I must make it clear here that I am not calling capitalism evil or talking of the destruction of this system. But I am calling for it to be restrained—especially here. Restraining it is essentially a political objective about how resources should be shared. Capitalism thrives on relentless promotion of consumption and the under-pricing of resources. The truth then is that the ‘trickle down economics’ will not work as the gravy is way too thick at the top to trickle down. If you are trying to create a more stable society—which is essential in India—then we need to decide how that economic model of capitalism with its mindless consumption, under-pricing resources and externalising of true cost, can be shaped. To do that, India needs a strong state. And for that to be the case, there has to be complete rejection of the western narrative that promotes the idea that capitalism thrives when the state moves out of the way and allows private enterprise to deliver goods and services. That simple argument, which has sadly taken hold even in Asia, is a complete fallacy and a lie, which business schools are busy promoting. These sorts of forced assumptions are the luxury of nations built on vast resources and few people. We could argue that empires were built around colonisation—a good business model. Those ideologies were shaped during a period when a small minority of people dominated the world through a range of technologies— and dare I say guns. I don’t wish to start a rant about the colonial past, but the economic model that we are living today has its roots in a western historical perspective of the world through colonialism and thus privilege. Why on earth are we following this model? There is no better wake up call to the limits of extreme capitalism than what is happening in the US and Europe today: I call it an end to the 300 years of extractive, exploitative growth and over leverage. That’s over and now the world has to adjust. In my book I argue that in a way the West is now irrelevant, not because of anything other than the fact that their numbers are too small. Asia must now lead, not because of any superior values, but sheer numbers. Talk of Asia as the new economic power is ringing out loud, however, we should be cautious and resist the temptation to be triumphant because Asia will face significant problems and the answers to those will lie in how China and India respond, and ultimately via its political systems. Rules need to be set and for rules we need to have a strong state.