by R.J. Thomas

Created on: December 24, 2008

India has the capability to drastically shape the future of Asia as a whole.

The following conditions indicate that India is pulling Asia in its entirety closer to catastrophic destabilization:

1. India's population renders them a global presence and a regional powerhouse. Their economy fluctuates tremendously, their standard of living in areas is atrocious and pollution is horrid, all due to population.

Mercury, arsenic and dioxins are all present in large quantities in much of India's groundwater, soil and wildlife.

2. India's military is both competent and itself unpredictable. The current situation between India and Pakistan runs an ongoing risk of devolving into an Israel versus Palestine-esque regional stand-off, if not outright war.

3. Terrorism in India is apparently on the upswing. This is predicted to continue due to the overwhelming population density and propensity for development of Islamic radicalism.

4. India's economy is very volatile. Unlike China, their theatres of economic operation are not as diverse; unlike North Korea they actually have an economy to crash in the first place.

5. As food resources become more and more scarce, imports will rise out of necessity, urban inner-city development will accelerate as more farmland is developed, forcing people into ever-tighter living conditions. This has the net effect of increasing crime in the inner cities, nurturing gang activity and creating a more dramatically divvied caste system. The poor will continue to get poorer, the rich will continue to get richer. Life, and lifestyle, is determined by birth in what family.

6. As India is no longer able to sustain itself with home-grown food, luxury crops like soy are replaced with filler crops like corn... more bang for your buck, geographically speaking. You can feed one person well on a bushel of soy, you can feed a family of 6 poorly on a bushel of corn. This has the net effect of feeding more people, while generating less cash-dense crops for exports.

As it appears, the primary problem facing the nation of India is over-population, pollution, terrorism and international conflict. India and Pakistan could very well become the next major power-play, the next World War should it break out in its entirety. The stabilization and reinforcement of the Indian economy, as well as some method of population control such as China has been forced to implement, would do well for the nation and the theatre in which it resides.

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