nationalist BJP. India’s prime minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee has presided over an economic boom in
2003 and 2004 that has benefited 300 million
urban middle-class Indians. But India has two
faces. Rural India lacks electric power, adequate
roads, medical and social services and the majority
living in the countryside have secured little bene-
fit from the boom that is raising living standards
for others. In a result that surprised the pundits,
Sonya Ghandi, wife of the assassinated Congress
prime minister Rajiv Ghandi, won the elections
then unexpectedly withdrew leaving the premier-
ship to Manmohan Singh. Congress won through
support of the rural power who did not benefit
from the growing prosperity of the urban middle
class. India’s population growth still outstrips the
creation of new employment and foreign invest-
ment; though this has increased strongly compar-
ed with the earlier years of stifling planning, it is
only a fraction of investments flowing into China.
Still there is in the twenty-first century hope where
there was little before the last ten years.
The same cannot be said of India’s neighbour
Myanmar where the ruling military have no inten-
tion of relinquishing power to Aung Sun Kyi the
popular dissident leader of the repressed National
League for Democracy. It will not be given the
opportunity to repeat its overwhelming success in
the 1990 elections and has suffered various forms
of restraint and arrest ever since. Even so, in Asia
the rulers are beginning to win more acceptance.
Afghanistan on Pakistan’s border has remained
divided into warlord fiefs. The ravages of twenty-
three years of conflict cannot be quickly repaired.
The leader Hamid Karzai has persuaded Afghan
representatives to approve a new constitution for
an Islamic republic. It looked fine on paper but
expressed aspirations rather than reality. The
national army is too weak to control the country,
the US forces are essential to bolster some security
and, for the poverty-stricken Afghans, opium pop-
pies are the most reliable cash crop. But the first
democratic elections in October 2004, though
flawed, showed that the Afghan people were
keen to go to the polls, including, for the first
time, women. Karzai, the interim leader, was
elected president. Progress has been achieved.
Afghanistan requires massive foreign aid, not
enough will be provided as the Western focus has
shifted to the Middle East. Since the end of the
Cold War Latin America too is no longer, in
Western eyes, a crucial region and battleground.The principal Western interest in Latin America is
financial and trade based. The long-term aim of
the US is to create an inter-American free trade
area. But fears and suspicion of US dominance
remain an obstacle. Instead, larger trading blocs
have been created among Latin American states,
such as Mercosur and the Central American Free
Trade Area, which may eventually act as stepping
stones to a continental-wide free trade area. In
South America, Chile is the only country to have
a free trade agreement with the US. In the north,
Mexico and Canada remain closely linked in the
North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). More
than four-fifths of Canadian exports go to the US.
Radical change in Canadian politics after the
retirement in December 2003 of Jean Chrétien is
not on the cards. Jean Chrétien’s government
brought Canada a decade of growth and prosper-
ity. His long-time finance minister Paul Martin,
leading the Liberal Party, became his successor.
He has proved disappointingly lacklustre. The
Quebec issue is dead for the foreseeable future.
Mexico has not undergone the radical change
expected after ending PRI’s monopoly of power
in the 2000 elections. The PRI was able to win
back seats which enabled it to block the reforms
President Vicente Fox would like to legislate. By
2005, with his term of office drawing to an end,
domestically he is unlikely to achieve much.
Meanwhile, the president is anxious to maintain
good relations with the Bush administration
which received a setback when, despite heavy
arm-twisting, Mexico was not willing to back
Washington and London’s efforts at the UN to
secure a second Iraq resolution unequivocally jus-
tifying the invasion. The increasing importance of
the Hispanic vote in US elections helps to smooth
relations between the US and Latin America.
Bush’s efforts to legalise the Mexican immigrants
appeals to the Hispanic voters and improves rela-
tions with Mexico. There is plenty to ruffle them
still as Latin American politics in Brazil and
Venezuela capitalise on anti-American feelings.948 GLOBAL CHANGE: FROM THE 20th TO THE 21st CENTURY