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Indonesia is hardly immune to catastrophic breakdowns, as the anti-Communist pogrom showed. But, like India, it has been relatively fortunate in evolving a mode of politics that can include many discontinuities - of class, region, ethnicity, and religion.

Countries that managed to rebuild commanding state structures after popular nationalist revolutions - such as China, Vietnam, and Iran - look stable and cohesive when compared with a traditional monarchy such as Thailand or wholly artificial nation-states like Iraq and Syria.

China is the big economic engine in Asia, so what happens is, as China growth expands, these countries in the periphery of China, whether it be Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, they end up growing with China because they become big exporters.

Many people in the world believe that in the 21st century, the Asia-Pacific - Asia in particular - will play a more important role in global economy and politics and that Asia will become an important engine for the world economy.

Indonesia is rich in natural resources. Indonesia is rich in manpower with its 103 million inhabitants - not like Malaysia with its 10 million.

India has to be transformed into a developed nation, a prosperous nation and a healthy nation, with a value system.

The Indian economy grew at 5.5 percent, but if you look at the last 30 years - for example, 1960 to 1985 - the progress made by East Asian countries was phenomenal. In a single generation they had been able to transform the character of their economy. They were able to get rid of chronic poverty.

Indonesia is a very huge country, geographically and in number of people, and there is still a lot of growth in the income level; It is very easy to assume there is a lot of demand for travel.

Indonesia was colonized for 350 years. We lost our mind-set for entrepreneurship. We only become workers.