The Dalai Lama indicated Monday in an interview that he had set a budding democratic process in motion in Tibet that was effectively doomed by China's invasion in the early 1950s.

"Even when I was in Tibet around 1952, I started some changes that were the beginning of democratization," he said.

Now he sees rampant development and consumerism taking place in China and India, and worries about future global shortages if the two nations' combined populations continue their unrealistic and unbridled pursuit of material wealth.