Some questions from Asia's history of 50 years that need urgent answers

India needs to figure out whether it pays to be rule-takers or seek to be rule-setters. Or, do we have an answer to China's strategic challenge? If not, what are our options, wonders T N Ninan

When Gunnar Myrdal was writing his three-volume Asian Drama in the late 1960s, no one would have dreamt that a Bangladesh, which was shortly to suffer from the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded, and then a liberation war, would emerge as a star economic performer 50 years later. The country that was dismissed by Henry Kissinger as an international basket case has now beaten its South Asian neighbours on both human development indicators and economic growth rates. Its per capita income of $1,905 compares with Pakistan’s $1,388, and is not far behind India’s $2,171.

Myrdal’s book is often referred to as