FRONT PAGE: "Megacities Threaten to Choke India," by Patrick Barta and Krishna Pokharel, Wall Street Journal, 13 May 2009.

China seems very serious about getting its cities right, because it's actively encouraging the flow from rural to urban--very Hamiltonian. Screw that whole Maoist BS on the joys of being a peasant.

India, because it reifies the village and farmers (so Gandhian), doesn't seem to do cities that well, and yet it's accumulating mega-cities at a scary rate.

And believe me, plenty of slumdogs and plenty of millionaires (by number, India has the most in the world), but rarely do the two worlds meet, much less mesh well.

My one time in India (Mumbai) was eye-opening: so long as I stayed with the political elite, I could look everybody in the eye (I'm just 6'2" in shoes) and their skin tone was not much darker than mine. But head out among the masses and everyone is eight inches shorter and much darker in skin tone. It was stunningly clear that I was living in a highly segregated world.

What I like about China is the strange egalitarianism that still persists. Yes, China has its elite like everybody, but when you move about, everybody talks to everybody else with few apparent airs. It actually reminds me of the U.S. in that way.