When I visited Beijing in December 2006, it was but natural to visit Tiananmen Square.
When I visited Beijing in December 2006, it was but natural to visit Tiananmen Square. The air was chill, but there is a thrill to visiting this place not only is it said to be the largest open-urban square in the world, it is also symbolic of democracy in a country that is not exactly known for freedom.
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CHILLINGu00a0 FACT: There are 900 Haagen-Dazs ice cream shops in 50 countries across the globe, but there are none in India! file pic |
The group I was travelling with was cautioned not to mention anything about the incidents pertaining to June 4 1989 and instead spend more time looking at the Forbidden City, which lies next to Tiananmen Square. This is but understandable because discussing the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident is forbidden in China.
As an Indian who has grown up with freedom and more importantly, as a journalist who can, within reasonable limits, say what he wants I naturally found China to be mildly stifling. But my ire disappeared when I tasted my favourite food group ice cream at Haagen-Dazs. Why don't we have something like this in India, I wondered.
My fellow traveller from the company which was sponsoring my junket told me that this was primarily because India could not afford such an outlet. I just visited
https://shops.haagen-dazs.com/ and found that, while there are 900 Haagen-Dazs shops in 50 countries around the world, there are none in India. Even Aruba, which is merely a 33-kilometre-long island, has Haagen-Dazs, but not India.
Haagen-Dazs, which entered China over ten years ago and has revenues of $50 million there, is coming to India this year. Why did they take so long to come here? In August 2008, Haagen-Dazs' director Arindam Haldar was quoted by the media as saying that the company plots the income generation versus country's GDP to determine when to enter a market.
Apart from Haagen-Dazs, I also heard from my fellow traveller that there are several other brands that are present in China that were not available in India in 2006. When taken in the context of Tiananmen Square, this points unerringly to one thing China gives you the freedom to buy Louis Vuitton, but not political freedom.
According to some people I spoke to in China and in India, one of the reasons why there have been no more protests like Tiananmen Square in China is because of the economic freedom that people have there. This raises the question is economic progress worth more than freedom? Do you want to eat Haagen-Dazs and shut up, or eat Amul and criticise the government?
Me, I'll take option two anytime, because my definition of freedom is similar to what Orwell said in 1984 freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
