The sweet and sour Indian story from Viswanathan Anand

(The author is world chess champion, Viswanathan Anand)

In 2007, as we complete 60 years of Independence as Indians, we seem to have got a new sense of identity. Not just the kind of identity that comes from having Aloo Tikki burgers or Bollywood pop but a true sense of being a country. As we add to an impressive list of billionaires and top class corporate, Indians are extremely proud of seeing the Indian Tricolor fly high.

For me personally, becoming World No. 1 meant that it was not a first for me but a first for my country. Recently I was with the mayor of a picturesque German town. She mentioned that they were now keen to have Indian tourists rather than Japanese. This was an eye-opener. She said Indians came, stayed at the best hotels and spent on fine food and wine. They were not keen on mass tourism in crowded buses. This is a paradigm shift. India is now seen not as a country with a future but a country where the purse strings are beginning to open and the purse itself is bulging. As the Sensex zooms to new levels, Indians silently feel that the country is prospering. Images of patriotism are now new symbols of prosperity.

All this makes me feel very proud to be part of a country that is rich in its past and more likely in the future.

Recently a Spanish magazine ran an article on the state of Indian women. To say the least it was highly derogatory and general in its assumption. My wife called the editor to complain about the lack of sensitivity and the general assumptions made to call all Indian women subservient and modern-day slaves. It was most saddening to see that some countries perceive us as an impoverished society. The fact that we have elected women as President and Prime Minister, CEOs, traveled to space didn't cut. The answer was coldly that "but most of your women don't have a chance".

Although I hate to admit it, female infanticide still exists in certain states. It is altering the gender ratio in some states that are among our more prosperous states. This is what is disturbing -- economic wealth alone is not an indicator of social progress. We have women at two ends at the spectrum fighting against odds to achieve. For some, the odds are just life and death.

As we power ourselves to be the knowledge powerhouse of the world, we are proud to bring computers to the farmer. I have myself seen such touching examples of women using the stone they use to roll chapattis as mouse pads. Micro credit has been a boon to many farmers and big corporate have come up with novel ideas of giving the farmer a better deal. But being a highly fragmented country you see some farmers self-immolating themselves for the lack of the very same privileges some of their fortunate brothers now seem to use as normal business practices.

I have travelled to many countries and met Indians in countries like Iceland and Estonia. The one striking feature is we blend in very easily. We are able to assimilate other cultures and never impose our beliefs on others. Somehow we are able to leave that baggage at home. When I hear of untouchability being an issue or caste issues being raised it rattles this equilibrium.

It takes just one tale like that to mar 100 perfect images of the Indian story. It then becomes the story we get identified with. When someone asks me which caste I belong to or does my caste mean I go to heaven, I, honestly, have to say I don't think of it. My main aim in life is that I play chess. They always find that answer irritating or rather un-mystic. But somewhere they have been given to believe that that is what India is.

There are two perceptions of India. One, of the people who have interacted with India from the economic side, have worked with Indians or travelled on business and they generally have a fairly positive one. The others get their perceptions from reading general articles. Most articles are fairly complimentary when they talk about culture, colors or customs. But sometimes dowry, female infanticide or caste violence will raise its ugly head. There are foreigners who have been to India and have been mesmerized by the experience. There are some who have gone and the only thing they seemed to have noticed are the cows and poverty. In some western countries you do notice similar things but somehow I find it difficult to tell a person that "in your country you know, I hate the way the trains are".

We now seem to shop the same way as our American cousins and truffles and foie gras are something you buy in your local delicatessen. But you look closer. These brightly lit stores need generators to battle the unstable electricity grid that is reeling under the weight of our consumption. The water has to be specially brought and the roads feel like one roller coaster journey until you arrive at the cool Indian mall. We need to go beyond the shop window and actually look at how to improve basic utilities. Not just in cities but also in rural areas. That is how progress is measured .Many of our people still having no access to drinking water. Roads need to exist and electricity at times becomes a luxury. I am not against consumerism. Brightly lit malls are also providing employment. I think each one of the Indians has a right to be a consumer not only for goods but also for utilities and we need at least a basic level of service. Aspiration and the need to live better will make Indians more competitive and drive the need to study more. Aspiration, albeit not for just luxuries, but also equality, education and emancipation.

I recently travelled on the Delhi metro. This was one of the best public transport services I have ever been on. I am one of those people who take my carbon emissions seriously. So I love using public transport if and when possible. The Delhi Metro is much cleaner and safer than its European avatars. We handle more crowds but still the people seemed to be almost proud of it and that dirtying it would be a crime. It is the same India with its same bureaucracy that made this possible.

Similarly certain roads in India are just world class. If we could do it in a few sectors why can't we be able to take it to the whole country?

It takes time, resources and initiative. We have the talent to make it happen.

All of us feel extremely proud when we watch the Incredible India campaign. But sometimes we need to look beyond the glossy picture and look at the real story. The real story in India is not always sweet or always sour. Taking both together may make it the best taste yet.

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In London, more chronicled and more vibrant India at 60 forced little blood-brother into shadow!!

Pakistan was forced into the forlorn shadows even as it marked its 60th birthday, as British and European news coverage focused on Indian Independence day and "the arrival of a golden (Indian) age".

In an unusually thoughtful, if nuanced, nod to India's rise to prominence on the world stage, the former Raj marked the eve of Indian Independence Day with a paean to India, almost ignoring the fact that it was the 60th year of Pakistan's existence.

Mainstream British newspapers have been running 'India at 60' series, while The Times , London produced a special India supplement and The Guardian devoted its entire features pull-out to "The New India". The Guardian's India special's theme was expressed by its cover headline: "This is the best place in the world to be born right now".

Tuesday's India specials are the culmination of a fortnight-long focus on India by the British press.

They include The Independent 's attempt to answer the question, "60 years after Partition, why is India doing so much better than Pakistan?"

The paper said, "Now, at the age of 60, India's image is that of a resurgent, confident regional power racing to compete with China and the West. Meanwhile, Pakistan's image - at least in the West - is as a broken, backward country that provides a safe haven for extremists."

But in an acid corrective, it said these perceptions may not be entirely accurate. It pointed out that while India's "economy is currently growing at about nine per cent a year. Pakistan's is also growing.

One government minister said recently it was the third fastest-growing economy is Asia. Over the next four years it is expected to grow at about six per cent. The UN Human Development Index - which measures a series of economic and lifestyle indicators - ranks Pakistan 134th out of 177 and India 126th. In India and Pakistan, life expectancy is 63.6 and 63.4 years respectively, the adult literacy rates are 61 per cent and 49 per cent and the GDP figures are $3,139 and $2,225."

The Daily Telegraph , meanwhile, headlined the third part of its 'India at 60' series, "Independence has failed to reduce poverty". The piece quotes 60-ear-old Nanu Singh, "an almost toothless villager" on "what six decades of freedom and 20 years of economic growth had brought him... kuch-nahi ...I was a poor boy then, and I am still a poor man now."

The paper points out that "Without education or good health - 49 per cent of Indian children under six are malnourished, as can be seen from their stick-thin limbs and vacant stares - it is impossible to break the poverty trap."

The sobering assessment of India's astounding failures and equally eye-catching successes is seen to be typical of Britain and much of Europe's cautious optimism about 21st century India.

South Asia-watchers here point out that every Western article about India's remarkable rise is balanced by eye-watering accounts of its poverty, casteism, corruption, poor governance and the growing divide between rich and poor. But this, they say, is not necessarily a negative thing.

"There is no such thing as bad publicity," said one British academic, pointing to Pakistan's unmissable half-life as the country less chronicled than its bigger, more vibrant blood brother.

Source: TOI

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Time celebrates India's awakening as a young giant

There is hardly a board-meeting finishes in the world without discussing India, and there is yet a lot to be done, Time comes up with an special article on the awakening of India ...the most prosperous economy of tomorrow!! Here is the gist sourced from economic times...

Sixty years after independence, India is beginning to deliver on its promise, "unleashing a torrent of growth and wealth creation that is transforming the lives of millions", says Time magazine in a special cover issue.

"India's economic clout is beginning to make itself felt on the international stage, as the nation retakes the place it held as a global-trade giant long before colonial powers ever arrived there," says the US magazine's Aug 13 issue.

The special issue on "A Young Giant Awakes" has articles looking at the country's middle class, religion, politics and the transformation of its economy, besides a write-up profiling the conflicts, trends and turning points that shaped modern India.

"Twenty years ago the rest of the world saw India as a pauper. Now it is just as famous for its software engineers, Bollywood movie stars, literary giants and steel magnates," notes Time.

"It is worth remembering this as India aspires to superpower status, economic futurologists all agree that China and India during the 21st century will come to dominate the global economy," says William Dalrymple, author of "The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857".

"Various intelligence agencies estimate that China will overtake the US between 2030 and 2040 and India will overtake the US by roughly 2050, as measured in dollar terms. Measured by purchasing-power parity, India is already on the verge of overtaking Japan to become the third largest economy in the world," he says.

"Today, things are slowly returning to historical norms. Last year the richest man in the UK was for the first time an ethnic Indian, Lakshmi Mittal, and Britain's largest steel manufacturer, Corus, has been bought by an Indian company, Tata.

"Extraordinary as it is, the rise of India and China is nothing more than a return to the ancient equilibrium of world trade, with Europeans no longer appearing as gun-toting, gunboat-riding colonial masters but instead reverting to their traditional role - that of eager consumers of the much celebrated manufactures, luxuries and services of the East," says Dalrymple.

Another article notes how real estate prices have skyrocketed in India. A 2006 study by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and professional-services firm Ernst & Young found that total revenue from sales of commercial and residential property throughout India had grown 30 percent a year for the previous three years.

Land prices in some areas have tripled in value since 2004, while office rents in Mumbai and New Delhi are now more expensive than those in Paris, Hong Kong or midtown Manhattan, Time says citing a 2007 survey by real estate consultant CB Richard Ellis.

"Yet the boom may still have room to run. Merrill Lynch forecasts India's property industry will grow to $90 billion by 2015, up from $12 billion in 2005," it says, noting that "as its economy grows, India will need millions more square feet of offices as well".

"Industry analysts estimate India has less modern urban office space than a single large American city. India's infrastructure demands too should keep plenty of companies in business. The government estimates the country needs $320 billion of investments in roads, ports and bridges by 2012.

"It's not a bubble," says Arjun Divecha, the California-based manager of investment firm GMO's $15 billion emerging-markets fund. "In India the reason why prices have risen so rapidly is because there has been so little increase in supply. If you look at the experience of other emerging markets, the real wealth escalator has been real estate and I expect the same in India."

Another article on "India's Democratic Advantage" says "sixty years of freedom have bound all Indians, rich and poor, to a single commitment: democracy".

"With a sixth of humanity living within its borders, India is more linguistically diverse than Europe. But apart from a few hiccups along the way, it remains one of the most stable and unified societies in all of Asia," Time notes.

Source: Economic Times

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India calling

If America makes it too difficult for immigrants to start their companies in the US, these entrepreneurs will be welcomed in India

The United States Congress recently considered reforms to the US immigration policy. While no reforms were enacted, the debate in Congress — and across America — revealed that many Americans still think of immigration as an issue about low-skilled people, mostly from Latin America, who drive down wages for native-born Americans. Very little attention was paid to the high-skilled, highly educated immigrants from countries such as India, China, the United Kingdom and Russia who seek to enter America legally but are often dissuaded by the lengthy wait required to receive a small number of green cards.

The US ignores the needs of these immigrants at its own peril. A recent study completed at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University showed that these entrepreneurial immigrants are using their skills, as well as the opportunities for business development present in the United States, to boost economic output and create more jobs for American workers. The effect of Indian entrepreneurs on US economic growth is particularly noteworthy.

The study, of engineering and technology companies created between 1995 and 2005, found that in 25% of these companies either the chief executive or lead technologist was foreign born. In 2005, these immigrant-founded companies alone produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers — enough jobs to hire all the skilled engineers the US has admitted over the last decade, and then some.

The study also found that most immigrant entrepreneurs in America did not enter the country with the intention of starting a new business. In fact, less than 2% did. The vast majority came to pursue work or educational opportunities. On average, immigrant founders launched their firms 13 years after they arrived in the US.

This makes sense. Immigrants may not be fully aware of the opportunities for business development in the United States. Furthermore, coming from countries that have less developed and often more bureaucratic economies, they may not realise how relatively easy it is to start a business in America. The US economic environment is one that's supportive of entrepreneurship — reasonable taxes and regulation, enforceable contracts, and a highly motivated, well-educated workforce.
Most of the companies started with the help of immigrants are small and growing technology and science firms. But some have already reached global prominence. Yahoo's Jerry Yang is originally from Taiwan, Google's Sergey Brin is from Russia, and Vinod Khosla, a founder of Sun Microsystems, hails from India.

The study also found that in science and technology fields, innovative entrepreneurship is correlated with high levels of education. We infer that people with advanced degrees possess the qualifications, and the confidence, to bring novel and useful contributions to the market. Among the immigrant founders surveyed, 96% held advanced degrees, mostly from US institutions. Most of these advanced degrees were in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Indian immigrants, in particular, tend to be better educated than both native US citizens and other immigrant groups. While less than a quarter of US citizens hold a bachelor's degree, more than two-thirds of Indian immigrants have a college education. And nearly 40% of Indian immigrants in the US hold a graduate or professional degree — the highest rate of any immigrant group studied.

While one might have expected that most Indian entrepreneurs in America were trained at the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (which graduated Vinod Khosla), the reality is that just 15% of Indian entrepreneurs in America earned degrees from an IIT. We were surprised that Delhi University graduated as many such entrepreneurs as did IIT-Bombay, and Madras University graduated more than IIT-Madras. Indian entrepreneurs we surveyed attended more than 40 different universities in India before arriving in the US.

India's education system appears to offer a growing range of opportunities for students to pursue the kind of science and technical education they once could only find at elite schools or abroad. Perhaps because of the advanced educational achievements of Indian immigrants, they alone have generated a substantial portion of the jobs and economic output created by foreign-born entrepreneurs in the US. In fact, Indians founded more engineering and technology companies in the US in the decade leading up to 2005 than the next four immigrant groups combined — those from the UK, China, Taiwan, and Japan. Indian entrepreneurs accounted for 26% of all immigrant-founded start-ups, about 117,000 jobs, and $14 billion in revenue in 2005. In a very real sense, Indian immigrants have helped drive US high-tech leadership.

But the US faces a problem. While Indians who emigrated to America for education and work traditionally remained in the country in great numbers, more and more are now returning home, choosing to put their skills to use in India's growing domestic tech sector rather than waiting up to ten years for a green card in the US. According to NASSCOM, some 20,000 Indians living in the United States have moved back to India in just the last two years. We believe there are over 100,000 more who may be forced to leave because of visa processing delays.

Until now, the United States has been seen as the premier centre of both education and job opportunities in innovation industries. But with globalisation and communications technology driving the growth of high-tech centres outside the United States, today's scientists and engineers have many more options for launching a successful career.

Given the growing prominence of India's high-tech sector, the United States could also face a situation in which Indian students who once would have gone to study in America — and then stayed to help launch new, job-creating ventures — decide instead to remain at home. Sure, this would make some immigration-sceptical Americans happy, but it would do no favours for those who want to keep the US at the top of the global high-tech industry.

America's loss could be India's gain. While once the Indian government lobbied US lawmakers to provide more green cards for Indians seeking training and education in America, we expect it will not do so in the future. In building its own high-tech industry, India has used the United States as a training ground for its own scientists and engineers. And while Indian emigrants remained in America, the Indian government benefited from revenues they sent home.

But now India is booming — clearly one of the world's most promising emerging economies. It wants its own citizens to come home, or to stay home. It needs all the skilled workers it can get in order to continue the progress already made in attracting world-class talent and businesses to its shores. Indians who have the skills, the connections, and the business savvy to launch entrepreneurial ventures will be encouraged to do so at home. The message is clear: if the United States makes it too difficult for immigrants to start their companies in Silicon Valley, New York, or Boston, these entrepreneurs will be welcomed in Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Delhi.

(Co-authored by Robert Litan, Vice President for research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation. Wadhwa is executive in residence at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University and a founder of two software companies.)

Source: Economic Times

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