Question: 
Francis talked about China; I would like to ask: India has gone through a very strong democracy route in the last 60 years. China, we don’t know what it is, is communist capitalism but as you rightly said that when the people are growing, incomes are growing, what will happen to China? Because when wealth comes to a person, he wants freedom, and he wants freedom of speech and after the freedom of speech freedom of the press comes in.  Will China in this respect go through what India has gone through over the last 60 years of democratic institutionalization and will they affect Asia? What are your views on that? 

Question:
I will ask a very quick question of Mr. Francis.  Do you think we are using this word Islamic fundamentalism and ‘Jehad’ very loosely without really understanding what it means and by doing that are we actually helping the guys who have the evil design to come together in the world?”   

Question: 
I am an officer from the administrative service. My question is: “You just mentioned that good governance can come only within the context of liberal democracy but in the Indian context the widely held view is that the root cause of misrule and many other evils of government stems from Mediterranean democratic politics and, secondly, most often we hear from the captains of industry that China is a greater player and a more efficient player in the global economic scenario because it has a communist kind of government. So what is your view? You think it’s a temporary phase? And do you think the new international economic order experiment of Willy Brandt’s time is still relevant today? 
 
Answer: Mr. Fukuyama
Thank you for those questions; on the question about China, I obviously don’t know what is going to happen in China’s future. I do know that there will be pressure, I think, for greater participation and recognition of citizens and accountability in that country.  But the specific form that accountability takes, I think will be up to the Chinese to determine themselves and it will be probably a set of institution that will be very uniquely tailored to the particular traditions that China has experienced. 

If you look at democracies that have developed in other Asian countries - in Japan, in Taiwan and South Korea, they don’t look like American democracy, they don’t look like European democracy, they really I think are fundamentally democratic in the end product.  But the specific institutional form, I think, is tailored to everyone’s own historical experience and I think that’s necessarily a good thing. 

On the question of terminology about Islamic, Islamist extremism, I hope Mr. Nair does not think I was bashing Muslims. In fact, during lunch yesterday Mr. Khatami said that he actually read the article from which a little I said today. He said that he agreed with as to the origins of the extremism that we see before us. The terminology, I think, is extremely important because you really are talking about certain very minority positions within the larger world of Islam and one of the big dangers is towering the entire civilization, the entire religion with what is clearly a minority position and so we can discuss what the right word is to use for that, but I at least want to make it clear that on the question of governance, it is a very good point that we don’t have to have democracy to have good governance. I think one of the characteristic of a lot of East Asian fast developers was that they had authoritarian governments that were developmentally oriented, and had a high degree of technocratic capability that could keep corruption within certain limits and therefore promote long term rapid development. But I also think, it is the case that past a certain point you cannot get good governance unless you have basic accountability because every authoritarian system eventually screws up and unless you have a mechanism to correct those mistakes you are not going to have a good government in the long run.  And so, therefore, I think that there is in the end a certain connection not permanent and it does not apply all the times, but I do think that democracy does have an important role in eventually producing good governance.  

Chandran Nair

Gentlemen, just briefly and just very quickly about China. I have been going to China for ten years. I go there almost every other week and I have to tell you that something very unique is happening there. I know Chinese from all walks of life. I worked in some of the villages too and there is accountability of a different nature and very few of my Chinese friends talk about democracy. 

Second point: I think the language is very important. The moment you start using those loaded terms, the more people would get angry and I think we need to be very careful. That’s why I didn’t use the ‘T’ word, the ‘J’ word, the ‘W’ word etc. Language is very important. I provoke emotional response and too many of us use language so cheaply without understanding the implications of the consequences of how they have used it.
On good governance, I challenge my Indian friends and I have written a piece about this. You know, when it comes to institutions of delivering what people need, perhaps India has failed. People can’t have toilets in India, however, china has solved that problem. Which institutions do you want?  And I would say that institutions in china perhaps are working better. I think that point has been made. They are working a bit better than they are in India. 
 
Mr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta
One of the points worth taking from this very, very rich session is the fact that in part what the future looks like will be determined by the stories we tell about it and who gets to tell those stories and I think one of the interesting things about the juncture where we are is that the intellectual, the political and the global space for bringing in different kinds of stories has opened up in an unprecedented kind of way. And in that sense, conclaves like this and what India Today has organized, we hope, will be a catalyst for just that kind of conversation.