Just to go back to the notion of 'reverse-colonisation' a term which upset some people but absolutely wasn't meant pejoratively, in fact quite the reverse.
The economic power balance is shifting
That same merchant banker explained the trend in another way which I found interesting.
Before the industrial revolution, he said, Asia accounted for a serious chunk of global GDP exact figures are highly conjectural because the comparative data is pretty shaky. But whatever the figure, Asia was the centre of commerce.
However after the industrial revolution – when machines drastically multiplied the productivity of each individual worker Europe, and later America took the economic lead almost overnight.
Today, with the rise of the Japan, China, India as global economic powers of one degree or another, the relative distribution of wealth and productivity is gradually returning to those pre-industrial days.
The economically Eurocentric view of the world which, not surprising given Europe's history of colonization, has prevailed for the last 200 years, is being challenged by some new economic realities.
That's all I meant.
Â A quick factoid picked up from yesterday's paper which gave me the wobblies.
It has taken more than 50 years for India's civil aviation fleet to reach its current levels 275 aircraft.
However, in the next 2 year a further 200 aircraft are due to enter service in India. And still the government is talking about airport modernization taking a further 8-10 years.
At the current rate of expansion there's nowhere to park these jets, or the air-traffic controllers to guide them into land.
With my journalist hat on, I'm already composing that article to explain how India slept-walked to disaster that's the one they'll publish when there's a mid-air collision over Delhi or Bombay.
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