I first craved California when I read Vikram Seth’s Golden Gate. Written entirely in sonnets, it was about iguanas, a band called The Liquid Sheep, Silicon Valley, fine wine and love gone awry. “The Great California Novel” Gore Vidal called it. And it was written by an outsider.

Perhaps it needed an outsider to write the great California novel, to really recognize California for the marvel it was – beyond being the 8th largest GDP in the world.

Now another outsider, a British newspaper, has recognized California for what it has become. A failed state.

It’s no coincidence that outsiders made California and now outsiders write its epitaph. We came to California from all corners of the world. And we stayed to swim in its lapis lazuli pools.

The nation’s biggest minority majority state was a harbinger of the future. It is now being held up as a warning of the future. Implicit in this warning is that this is what happens when you let everyone in. There goes the neighborhood.

Basta California. Who do we blame for this? The governor? Proposition 13? Illegal immigrants? Or the sneaking feeling that in a minority majority state no one feels any responsibility for the state anymore. Everyone wants their own swimming pool. And nobody wants their property tax raised. We all cashed in and bankrupted the state.

Even as San Francisco lauded itself as a multicultural city, a survey at the beginning of this century found almost 30 percent hesitant to elect a foreign-born mayor. It was a more diverse city than it had ever been but also a more segregated city. The Latino areas were turning more Hispanic. The white enclaves growing paler. And the Asian neighborhoods were growing more Asian.

Was the California dream was curdling into islands of ethnicity?

But a failed state? Isn’t that a bit too much of a leap?

Foreign Policy Magazine has thought a lot about this matter. They put out a Failed State Index. Here they are describing a failed state.

A perfect storm of state failure is now brewing there: disappearing oil and water reserves; a mob of migrants, flooding in from the failed state next door; and a weak government increasingly unable to keep things running.

That’s Yemen. But it could be California. (Except for the failed state next door. In California’s case, Nevada is just clinking along)

California does not feature on that Failed State Index but it can take heart from it. A failed state ranking doesn’t mean much (just as the 8th largest economy ranking doesn’t mean much if the state government gives you an IOU).

Zimbabwe is Failed State Number 2 while Iraq is Failed State Number 6. But for geo-political reasons failure in Iraq would be far worse than failure in Zimbabwe. There are no American troops in Zimbabwe. Iraq could explode sending crash waves across the region. Zimbabwe could just implode, I guess.

So the question for California, if it must fail as a state is how should it fall? Should it go out with a bang taking down a few economies with it? Or could it implode quietly and slide into the Pacific with minimum fuss?

It can also choose how it would like to fail. Somalia is failing because its government is non-existent. Burma is failing because its government is choking it. California can decide. Even in failure there are options like everything else in America – white, rye, sourdough or wholewheat?

The Failed State Index offers some clues as to how to be a responsible failed state. And California being a newbie here could take some tips.

Failed state number 10 is Pakistan. I remember interviewing the young Pakistani writer Ali Sethi. He said his journalist father had once been hauled to prison for daring to say Pakistan might be heading towards being a failed state. We Californians need some help from Pakistan.

Here is one tip – location, location, location. The US doesn’t know what to do with it, but doesn’t dare to pull the plug on aid to it. It just keeps hoping the military aid will be directed at Al Qaeda and Taliban and not the Indian border. The Pakistanis know that if they really rooted out the Taliban and Al Qaeda it’s all over for them. They learned that when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and the US washed its hands off Pakistan.

As the Pakistani journalist Tariq Ali acerbically remarked then “Pakistan was the condom that the Americans needed to enter Afghanistan. We’ve served our purpose and they think we can be just flushed down the toilet.”

So lesson one in surviving as a failed state – don’t serve your purpose completely. Be weak, be dysfunctional, but don’t do everything they ask you to do. Then they’ll dump you completely. Otherwise you might just stay on life-support.

Lesson two – become too big to fail. Ask the banks. They managed to do quite well by clinging to that mantra. California could easily embrace that idea by enlisting Hollywood. Aid, you must know, is limited. Whom do you help when so many need it? asks Foreign Policy. The answer is clear. You help the big guys.

Lesson three – have something that no one wants (Al Qaeda or Kim Jong Il) and they will pay to keep it from getting out. You become the quarantine for the world’s ills. But California has to be careful to not fail too much. Somalia (Failed State Number 1) was apparently so failed that even Al Qaeda had a tough time operating there. So California needs to know when to stop its slide. When the undocumented immigrants really stop coming across the border, that’s the canary in our coal mine.

Lesson four – it also helps apparently if your leader is perceived to be irrational, crazy and prone to nuclear tricks. Nice guys come last. It’s time for Arnold to let out Conan the Barbarian.

Lesson five – You could also pursue something that scares the hell out of everyone (nuclear weapons, Iran is Failed State Number 6) and that means the US will come and talk to you in Geneva. I am not sure what California could have that would scare everyone into handling us with kid gloves.

But not all is lost. Even in failed states there is possibility. Prof. Vivek Wadhwa who studies immigration has pointed out that the great benefits of recession is it’s also a time when entrepreneurs can try out new ideas for cheap. The garage in Palo Alto becomes cheap enough to rent to launch a company. One day that might become Apple.

The human spirit is eminently resourceful, even in a failed state. Ask the pirates of Somalia.

California could have a way out. In 2002 when the US government wanted to register all Iranians and started detaining them without notice, terrified Iranians in Southern California didn’t know who to go to for help. Eventually they turned to the local Spanish language paper La Prensa. Hispanics, they reasoned had much more experience in dealing with law enforcement and immigration detention. La Prensa not only was willing to listen. It created a section in its paper called La Prensa Persa.

Many people think California’s weakness is its heterogeneity, its buffet of fruits and nuts, its mindboggling mix of Vietnamese and Indians and Mexicans and Irish and Hmong and Blacks and Afghans and more. But maybe therein lies its salvation as well.

These are people who have known war, famine, and yes, failed states. I bet we have Californians from almost all the top 60 failed states. They reinvented themselves in California. Maybe they could reinvent California as well.

The Failed State Index could be the Yellow Pages where we find the saviors of the Golden State.

We could just call them the Failed State Warriors.