The countries of the future

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When we hear about the countries that could be world leaders, alongside Brazil and others, comes India. I never quite understood how this country could be on that list. Living in England, I always saw the Indian community as a hard-work people. Those who wake up at four in the morning and just go to sleep at midnight, working tirelessly.

However the country where they come from is going to the opposite direction. India still carries the image of a country of cheap labor – slave, I would say, where the quality of life (apart from the rich-Bollywood minority class) is not at least taken into account. How can? How can we compare countries like that? The very act of comparing places is already itself, a human mistake. What makes a country better or worse than another? GDP? Domestic income? no no no…

Anyway, getting to know a little of India (and Nepal, I might add) personally, I could understand this predictions around these countries. I do not know if that was the idea, but I understood perfectly the meaning of it all.

Yes, they certainly will be leaders. But not because of their economic power, but by teaching the world how we should treat ourselves, as human beings. Of course, both countries have problems, like any others, but these problems are hidden by the unique and beautiful way that they relate to each other.

Amyr Klink, the Brazilian guy that travelled around the world in a small boat by himself, was right when he said:

“A man must travel. On his own, not through stories, pictures, books or TV. By his own, with his eyes and feet, to understand what is yours. To some day plant his own trees and give them value. Meet the cold to enjoy the heat. And the opposite. Feel the distance and homelessness to be well under his own roof. A man must travel to places that do not know to break this arrogance that makes us see the world as we imagine, and not simply as is or can be. That makes us teachers and doctors of what we saw when we should be students, just go and see.”