“I am going back,” she said.
“Wait, have dinner,” I blurted.
“No, I am going home for good. To India, silly,” she said.
I could not believe it. My sister wanted to go back to India. She wanted to leave New York.
My sister, Neera Dugar, 24, is a Carnegie Mellon graduate. For the past two years, she worked at Goldman Sachs, and as the financial markets collapsed in the wake of the credit crisis of 2008, was one of the few that chose to leave, rather than asked to leave.
It was a crisp April evening. Winter was finally on the retreat. Like the weather, the economy was on a rebound too. President Barack Obama had committed $787 billion to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. New York, bruised and battered from its exalted position as the epicenter of American finance, was finally finding its feet. Though unemployment numbers would get worse, the worst was over.
“It isn’t just the economy,” she maintained. “It’s not like I have lost my job.”
“And I am not alone in this,” she said.
I stared blankly at her for a while. Then it struck me. She was right. She wasn’t alone in this. Why would anyone ever want to trudge back? Wasn’t the miracle, the American dream, in America?
This after the United States had served some of it’s finest to her, whether it was her education or the corporation she worked for or the city she lived in. She had the better part of the American dream. And that wasn’t enough.
Or was it just that a bigger dream was unfolding back home in India?
In the coming months, I seek to understand history as history itself changes course. Anand Giridharadas wrote in the New York Times, “it is a milestone in any nation’s life when leaving becomes a choice, not a necessity.”
But is the moment enough? “Not living in New York after having lived there is living with a vague feeling that you are missing out on a great party somewhere,” Craig Ferguson, host of the “Late Late Show” on CBS wrote in his memoir “American on Purpose.”
The stories will be personal, of people having to choose. Migration often gets enveloped in statistics, but it is the human story that needs to be told
And New York City is the theatre of this ebb and flow. The city is home to about 600, 000 Indians, the largest such community of any metropolitan area in the United States.
While at it, I might just understand how my sister manages to get by back home without the sample Tory Burch sale.
(Please send your feedback and possible ledes that might develop the story. A similar story on diaspora did for Holding Willey is here)
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Beating Terror in Modern India
"Come home ASAP." Ken never kept it that concise.
Little did I know I would come home and switch on the TV to a city with blood on its asphalt, holed up and taken hostage. For sixty odd hours in the shock and awe of the unchaste, Bombay would writhe and squat, billowing in smoke as black as the godless sky, and I would watch.
Tom Friedman, columnist for the New York Times, when asked about India said, "Take a champagne bottle, shake it for an hour and then take the cork off. You don't want to get in the way of that cork. It is an explosion of fifty years of pent-up aspirations. That is how India feels like."
Why bother to come in the way? Just burn it, like those few men of God would do.
And the images were relayed across America this thanksgiving weekend. One terrorist repeatedly insisted on American and British passports, and apparently, let an Italian go. The headlines blurted “Americans targeted.”
Incredible India, go fish! Convince an American kid now to spend his summer to intern with Morgan Stanley in Bombay, or wait, try holding on to the $ 13.6 billion American businesses poured into India as direct investment in 2007. And why fly the top executive to Bombay from San Francisco when one can videoconference.
Couple this with the economic crisis of 2008, which many reckon to be the worst since the Great Depression, and you have a country brought down to ground after years of exuberance, rational and sometimes, irrational.
Since the highs of early 2008, the Indian stock indices have collapsed by 60%, as portfolio investors have pulled out $ 12 billion from the capital markets. The Indian Rupee has lost 15% of its value against the United States dollar, and foreign exchange reserves are down to around $ 250 Billion from a record $ 340 billion. Even though the economy grew at a blistering 7.6% this quarter, it is seen flagging considerably compared to the 9% growth of the past three years.
According to Sonal Verma, an economist with Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities "There are increasing signs of non-linear economic effects: vicious negative spirals from falling asset prices, sagging confidence, rising job losses, tightening lending standards and weakening demand, as well as increasing multiplier effects on domestic demand from the slump in exports"
Nomura cut its estimate for growth in 2008/09 to 6.8 percent from 7.2 percent, and expects 2009/10 GDP growth to slow to 5.3 percent from its earlier estimate of 6.9 percent.
Is the Indian story over?
On the eve of India's independence that warm August night in 1947, the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, told the nation "long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now at the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."
But the world would have to wait till 2001 to make its tryst with independent India. Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank, made India the I in the BRIC and altered our perception of the word “emerging". Danielle Pergament wrote in the New York Times, "You may not have heard of BRIC -- the acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China -- but you've heard its buzz. These emerging powers are where investors are sending capital, architects are rejiggering skylines and cognoscenti are mining for cultural talent."
Cognoscenti in India? The terrorists would have known. Andreas Liveras, the British yachting tycoon, was shot point-blank at the Taj Poolside.
--
The Taj in South Bombay is an iconic 105- year old flagship property of Indian Hotels, the hospitality subsidiary of the Tata Group and the proprietors of the Taj group of hotels. Jamsedji Tata, the founder, commissioned it himself after he was allegedly denied entry to one of the city's grand hotels, Watson's Hotel. It was restricted for "whites only."
Years later in 2006, in what Alison Gregor of the New York Times called "A Manhattan hotel deal, with foreign accents," Indian Hotels took management of the Pierre Hotel in New York City from Four Seasons Hotels.
The terrorists probably wouldn’t have known that the Taj in South Bombay was built as a tribute to the 16th century Islamic architecture in India.
Suhel Seth, managing partner of Counselage India, called India the "proverbial bus in today's world." A bus that "no one knows where it is going, no one knows whether there is space on it for them – but no one wants to miss that bus."
Keener than most on this bus ride was George W. Bush, who in the most strategic initiative of his second term, signed the India- US nuclear deal onto law on October 4th. This allowed India access to nuclear fuel and technology for its civilian nuclear program, without giving up its nuclear weapons. Throughout the passage of the Hyde Act within Washington and international diplomatic circles, the United States argued for India's status as an ally and a forthcoming economic superpower. Ambivalent countries like New Zealand and Norway reportedly got the call personally from Condoleezza Rice.
New York Times in an editorial on September 9th lambasted the administration for the nuclear agreement that was a "bad idea from the start. They extracted no promise from India to stop producing bomb-making material. No promise not to expand its arsenal. And no promise not to resume nuclear testing."
But according to Fareed Zakaria, it is going to "alter the strategic landscape, bringing India firmly and irrevocably onto the world stage as a major player, normalizing its furtive nuclear status and anchoring its partnership with the United States. With China rising and Europe and Japan declining, India is seen as a natural partner."
Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister did not mince words at India's exultation. "Mr. President, people of India deeply, deeply love you," he gushed. It was a coup of sorts for India’s foreign policy, but more importantly an affirmation to itself that it had finally gotten up from a slumber party that had lasted way too long.
An affirmation that yes, India could build tall buildings, write the next generation of software, have its own breed of privatized financial institutions and global chic, raise money in Bombay like they do in New York and London, show long lingering kisses in movies, have jobs so that kids can graduate out of college and not want to take the first flight out.
--
But not everybody got on this "proverbial bus". Some reconciled with their fate. Some promised to try harder. But some did not want to be on it. Heck, a few could not see anybody else on it. Such was their fervent antagonism that a hospital for women and children wasn't spared. In the Indian edition of 9/11, 188 were killed, and more than 293 injured.
--
Amitav Ghosh, author of the Sea of Poppies and a visiting professor of literature at Harvard University wrote in his op-ed in the New York Times, "For if there is any one lesson to be learned from the wave of terrorist attacks that has convulsed the globe over the last decade it is this: Defeat or victory is not determined by the success of the strike itself; it is determined by the response."
Hence, whether the Indian story remains intact, is going to come down to how the Indian government reacts. An institutional investor from Greenwich, Ct. needs to read the right news coming out of the country to be confident of putting his money that India's burgeoning economy cannot do without. He needs to get up in the morning to his Wall Street Journal telling him that India is undertaking major police reforms, making its borders safer or working towards a more inclusive society. Terrorism invokes sympathy, but an apathetic and disconcerted response to it disgusts.
India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) is a partnership of the Ministry of Commerce in India and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the top industrial lobby is New Delhi. It seeks to build positive economic perceptions of India globally. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2006, it splurged $ 5 million to promote itself as the next economic superstar in an extraordinary charm offensive. Mark Landler in the New York Times wrote "there were few places one could go, on this first day of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting here, without seeing, hearing, drinking, or tasting something Indian."
Even they could not have dreamt to garner a fraction of the eyeballs the events of 26/11 have. India will do well to recall that the same press that told the world of its prowess now has its eyes firmly on it. "If India can react with dispassionate but determined resolve, then 2008 may yet be remembered as a moment when the tide turned. A crisis is also an opportunity," continued Ghosh. Sounds perverse, but here’s a shot at showcasing India’s character. While the eyes remain glued to the TV Sets.
In her November 29th column, Dean Singleton, the chairman of the Associated Press tells Maureen Dowd, “If you need to offshore it, offshore it. In today’s world, whether your desk is down the hall or around the world, from a computer standpoint, it doesn’t matter.” Apparently, the promoters of Pasadena Now, a Pasadena community newspaper, outsource local news to “Indians, who are writing about everything, a 1000 words for $ 7.50, from the Pasadena Christmas tree-lighting ceremony to kitchen remodeling to city debates about eliminating plastic shopping bags.”
Macpherson, the promoter of Pasadena Now, is the scourge of American journalism, and Dowd calls this the “General Motors” moment for the newspaper industry. The story is itself a trifle trite. Macpherson has been on it for more than a year now, and with the elections over, outsourcing is an exhortation a month too late. This is her first column since the attacks in India, and it has nothing to do with them. Though it has everything to do with India.
As the world looked elsewhere, India did the dirty work of the developed world, and sneaked in literally through the back-office. At one-tenth the cost. In fledging suburbs of its cities, young men and women learnt to tell between Kansas and Kentucky, and some learnt the hard way that in the world of the Yankees, there is a quiet Mets fan somewhere too. Better stick to the Knicks when selling a credit card to someone in New York. But they didn’t just sell them in New York, nor was a credit card the only thing they would sell. India became indispensable to the West, as the world underwent the greatest economic boom in recent history. Someone just had to be on the other line.
Indians soon learnt the possibility of the human life, and means to it in the new flat world. What took years in the West was transplanted to this exciting new playground. While some ran away from it, some denied it, and some just did not see it coming, India crashed headlong in this level-playing field. The terrorists don’t like this. But let them know that India remains open to Pasadena Christmas tree-lighting. These bastards won’t win.
Or as Suketu Mehta, Professor of Journalism at the New York University, in his op-ed in the New York Times puts, "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Bombay more than ever. Make a killing not in God's name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder."
On the morning of November 27th, The Taj website read, "We will rebuild every inch that has been damaged in this attack, and bring back to its full glory." Hostages spoke of unstinting courtesy, courage and calm of the Taj staff, sometimes to the very peril of their own lives. These are standards Indians across the board should strive for, whether in public or private enterprise. The Taj, standing for 105 long years as a testament to the indomitable character of the city of Bombay, must have rankled them awfully hard. Let it stand for another 105.
Little did I know I would come home and switch on the TV to a city with blood on its asphalt, holed up and taken hostage. For sixty odd hours in the shock and awe of the unchaste, Bombay would writhe and squat, billowing in smoke as black as the godless sky, and I would watch.
Tom Friedman, columnist for the New York Times, when asked about India said, "Take a champagne bottle, shake it for an hour and then take the cork off. You don't want to get in the way of that cork. It is an explosion of fifty years of pent-up aspirations. That is how India feels like."
Why bother to come in the way? Just burn it, like those few men of God would do.
And the images were relayed across America this thanksgiving weekend. One terrorist repeatedly insisted on American and British passports, and apparently, let an Italian go. The headlines blurted “Americans targeted.”
Incredible India, go fish! Convince an American kid now to spend his summer to intern with Morgan Stanley in Bombay, or wait, try holding on to the $ 13.6 billion American businesses poured into India as direct investment in 2007. And why fly the top executive to Bombay from San Francisco when one can videoconference.
Couple this with the economic crisis of 2008, which many reckon to be the worst since the Great Depression, and you have a country brought down to ground after years of exuberance, rational and sometimes, irrational.
Since the highs of early 2008, the Indian stock indices have collapsed by 60%, as portfolio investors have pulled out $ 12 billion from the capital markets. The Indian Rupee has lost 15% of its value against the United States dollar, and foreign exchange reserves are down to around $ 250 Billion from a record $ 340 billion. Even though the economy grew at a blistering 7.6% this quarter, it is seen flagging considerably compared to the 9% growth of the past three years.
According to Sonal Verma, an economist with Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities "There are increasing signs of non-linear economic effects: vicious negative spirals from falling asset prices, sagging confidence, rising job losses, tightening lending standards and weakening demand, as well as increasing multiplier effects on domestic demand from the slump in exports"
Nomura cut its estimate for growth in 2008/09 to 6.8 percent from 7.2 percent, and expects 2009/10 GDP growth to slow to 5.3 percent from its earlier estimate of 6.9 percent.
Is the Indian story over?
On the eve of India's independence that warm August night in 1947, the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, told the nation "long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now at the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."
But the world would have to wait till 2001 to make its tryst with independent India. Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank, made India the I in the BRIC and altered our perception of the word “emerging". Danielle Pergament wrote in the New York Times, "You may not have heard of BRIC -- the acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China -- but you've heard its buzz. These emerging powers are where investors are sending capital, architects are rejiggering skylines and cognoscenti are mining for cultural talent."
Cognoscenti in India? The terrorists would have known. Andreas Liveras, the British yachting tycoon, was shot point-blank at the Taj Poolside.
--
The Taj in South Bombay is an iconic 105- year old flagship property of Indian Hotels, the hospitality subsidiary of the Tata Group and the proprietors of the Taj group of hotels. Jamsedji Tata, the founder, commissioned it himself after he was allegedly denied entry to one of the city's grand hotels, Watson's Hotel. It was restricted for "whites only."
Years later in 2006, in what Alison Gregor of the New York Times called "A Manhattan hotel deal, with foreign accents," Indian Hotels took management of the Pierre Hotel in New York City from Four Seasons Hotels.
The terrorists probably wouldn’t have known that the Taj in South Bombay was built as a tribute to the 16th century Islamic architecture in India.
Suhel Seth, managing partner of Counselage India, called India the "proverbial bus in today's world." A bus that "no one knows where it is going, no one knows whether there is space on it for them – but no one wants to miss that bus."
Keener than most on this bus ride was George W. Bush, who in the most strategic initiative of his second term, signed the India- US nuclear deal onto law on October 4th. This allowed India access to nuclear fuel and technology for its civilian nuclear program, without giving up its nuclear weapons. Throughout the passage of the Hyde Act within Washington and international diplomatic circles, the United States argued for India's status as an ally and a forthcoming economic superpower. Ambivalent countries like New Zealand and Norway reportedly got the call personally from Condoleezza Rice.
New York Times in an editorial on September 9th lambasted the administration for the nuclear agreement that was a "bad idea from the start. They extracted no promise from India to stop producing bomb-making material. No promise not to expand its arsenal. And no promise not to resume nuclear testing."
But according to Fareed Zakaria, it is going to "alter the strategic landscape, bringing India firmly and irrevocably onto the world stage as a major player, normalizing its furtive nuclear status and anchoring its partnership with the United States. With China rising and Europe and Japan declining, India is seen as a natural partner."
Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister did not mince words at India's exultation. "Mr. President, people of India deeply, deeply love you," he gushed. It was a coup of sorts for India’s foreign policy, but more importantly an affirmation to itself that it had finally gotten up from a slumber party that had lasted way too long.
An affirmation that yes, India could build tall buildings, write the next generation of software, have its own breed of privatized financial institutions and global chic, raise money in Bombay like they do in New York and London, show long lingering kisses in movies, have jobs so that kids can graduate out of college and not want to take the first flight out.
--
But not everybody got on this "proverbial bus". Some reconciled with their fate. Some promised to try harder. But some did not want to be on it. Heck, a few could not see anybody else on it. Such was their fervent antagonism that a hospital for women and children wasn't spared. In the Indian edition of 9/11, 188 were killed, and more than 293 injured.
--
Amitav Ghosh, author of the Sea of Poppies and a visiting professor of literature at Harvard University wrote in his op-ed in the New York Times, "For if there is any one lesson to be learned from the wave of terrorist attacks that has convulsed the globe over the last decade it is this: Defeat or victory is not determined by the success of the strike itself; it is determined by the response."
Hence, whether the Indian story remains intact, is going to come down to how the Indian government reacts. An institutional investor from Greenwich, Ct. needs to read the right news coming out of the country to be confident of putting his money that India's burgeoning economy cannot do without. He needs to get up in the morning to his Wall Street Journal telling him that India is undertaking major police reforms, making its borders safer or working towards a more inclusive society. Terrorism invokes sympathy, but an apathetic and disconcerted response to it disgusts.
India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) is a partnership of the Ministry of Commerce in India and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the top industrial lobby is New Delhi. It seeks to build positive economic perceptions of India globally. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2006, it splurged $ 5 million to promote itself as the next economic superstar in an extraordinary charm offensive. Mark Landler in the New York Times wrote "there were few places one could go, on this first day of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting here, without seeing, hearing, drinking, or tasting something Indian."
Even they could not have dreamt to garner a fraction of the eyeballs the events of 26/11 have. India will do well to recall that the same press that told the world of its prowess now has its eyes firmly on it. "If India can react with dispassionate but determined resolve, then 2008 may yet be remembered as a moment when the tide turned. A crisis is also an opportunity," continued Ghosh. Sounds perverse, but here’s a shot at showcasing India’s character. While the eyes remain glued to the TV Sets.
In her November 29th column, Dean Singleton, the chairman of the Associated Press tells Maureen Dowd, “If you need to offshore it, offshore it. In today’s world, whether your desk is down the hall or around the world, from a computer standpoint, it doesn’t matter.” Apparently, the promoters of Pasadena Now, a Pasadena community newspaper, outsource local news to “Indians, who are writing about everything, a 1000 words for $ 7.50, from the Pasadena Christmas tree-lighting ceremony to kitchen remodeling to city debates about eliminating plastic shopping bags.”
Macpherson, the promoter of Pasadena Now, is the scourge of American journalism, and Dowd calls this the “General Motors” moment for the newspaper industry. The story is itself a trifle trite. Macpherson has been on it for more than a year now, and with the elections over, outsourcing is an exhortation a month too late. This is her first column since the attacks in India, and it has nothing to do with them. Though it has everything to do with India.
As the world looked elsewhere, India did the dirty work of the developed world, and sneaked in literally through the back-office. At one-tenth the cost. In fledging suburbs of its cities, young men and women learnt to tell between Kansas and Kentucky, and some learnt the hard way that in the world of the Yankees, there is a quiet Mets fan somewhere too. Better stick to the Knicks when selling a credit card to someone in New York. But they didn’t just sell them in New York, nor was a credit card the only thing they would sell. India became indispensable to the West, as the world underwent the greatest economic boom in recent history. Someone just had to be on the other line.
Indians soon learnt the possibility of the human life, and means to it in the new flat world. What took years in the West was transplanted to this exciting new playground. While some ran away from it, some denied it, and some just did not see it coming, India crashed headlong in this level-playing field. The terrorists don’t like this. But let them know that India remains open to Pasadena Christmas tree-lighting. These bastards won’t win.
Or as Suketu Mehta, Professor of Journalism at the New York University, in his op-ed in the New York Times puts, "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Bombay more than ever. Make a killing not in God's name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder."
On the morning of November 27th, The Taj website read, "We will rebuild every inch that has been damaged in this attack, and bring back to its full glory." Hostages spoke of unstinting courtesy, courage and calm of the Taj staff, sometimes to the very peril of their own lives. These are standards Indians across the board should strive for, whether in public or private enterprise. The Taj, standing for 105 long years as a testament to the indomitable character of the city of Bombay, must have rankled them awfully hard. Let it stand for another 105.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Is it our tryst with destiny?
The financial crisis bothers me. Why should it?
I have been asking myself that over the past few days. Is it the paucity of jobs once I graduate? Or is it hurting me financially? Or is it a very intelligent concern that I have for the world around me? Not really.
I think I figured it out.
Amidst rising oil prices during the Gulf War in 1991, India found itself in a balance-of-payments crisis and the prospect of defaulting on its loans. The IMF mandated a liberalization of the Indian economy; a coming out of sorts for what was a closed and to a certain extent, an unproductive economy.
I was two then.
Today, a liberalized India with fewer and fairer taxes, less regulation, a relatively smaller government is the second fastest growing economy in the world.
A liberalized India is all I ever knew.
After a couple of hundred years of British Imperialism, India in 1947, in its first Prime Minister’s words, “had made a tryst with destiny” and had won independence.
Instead it saw a post-war Europe and Japan reemerge from the debris. United States was well, the United States. They were calling it the boomer years. Even a lot of Asia followed.
India wasn’t communist. Nor was it comfortable enough with itself to embrace the free market. But give the Government a li’l leeway, it will kick open the door. Government grew bigger, corruption got endemic in its system and epidemic in proportions. As the world took the next leap forward, we found ourselves tucked in an ugly li’l corner that we had carved out for ourselves stagnating.
It was still waiting for its tryst with destiny.
In 1989, the wall finally fell. Literally.
Post-liberalization, it was India itself that India needed to conquer. Three hundred years stuck in an abyss, India was in the waiting room for so long that it had almost forgotten what it was waiting for.
Yes, India could build tall buildings, write the next generation of software, have its own breed privatized financial institutions and multinationals, raise money in Bombay like they did in New York and London, show long lingering kisses in movies, have jobs so that we could graduate out of college and not take the first flight out. And of course, beat Australia in cricket.
Never was private wealth and enterprise celebrated with such ferocity. It mattered that an Indian ran the biggest steel conglomerate in the world, and an Indian publicly- held company would one day drive home Jaguar from Ford.
They say we are in global financial meltdown.
The Bombay Sensitive Index, India’s equivalent to the Dow Industrial Average, has plummeted to 9,975 from a 52Wk High of 21,206.77. The Foreign Institutional Investors (FII’s), who happened to be more often than not the big banks that find themselves in a spot, have liquidated $ 9 billion worth holdings in India.
It is apparent that India will get hurt too.
World over, there is a growing call for more regulated markets and bigger government intervention.
Wasn’t Regulation what got India there in 1991? Wasn’t it the all-encompassing evil that kept India back as the world moved forward? Now they tell us to learn otherwise.
It is like getting up one morning and realizing that your neighbor is your actual father.
But a funny thing has happened. The years post-liberalization, even if kicked off by creative investors who couldn’t make returns big enough and the excessive liquidity that characterized all these years, India has somewhere realized that if a billion people get up every morning, brush their teeth and go to work, the economy would prevail.
But this financial crisis, unlike 1991, the IMF and the ‘ostensible’ free markets needn’t dictate anything. India has $300 Billion worth of foreign exchange lying around, and an economy that even by the most conservative estimate, will continue to grow at 6.5 %.
Things will get ugly. But wasn’t this where India wanted to be all along? The era of easy foreign liquidity might be over, but it is an India that finally could do without it. This is our tryst with destiny. And now that we have almost made it, let us not let it slip away.
The credit crisis hits India, but it may profit [The Economist- 10/14/2008]
I have been asking myself that over the past few days. Is it the paucity of jobs once I graduate? Or is it hurting me financially? Or is it a very intelligent concern that I have for the world around me? Not really.
I think I figured it out.
Amidst rising oil prices during the Gulf War in 1991, India found itself in a balance-of-payments crisis and the prospect of defaulting on its loans. The IMF mandated a liberalization of the Indian economy; a coming out of sorts for what was a closed and to a certain extent, an unproductive economy.
I was two then.
Today, a liberalized India with fewer and fairer taxes, less regulation, a relatively smaller government is the second fastest growing economy in the world.
A liberalized India is all I ever knew.
After a couple of hundred years of British Imperialism, India in 1947, in its first Prime Minister’s words, “had made a tryst with destiny” and had won independence.
Instead it saw a post-war Europe and Japan reemerge from the debris. United States was well, the United States. They were calling it the boomer years. Even a lot of Asia followed.
India wasn’t communist. Nor was it comfortable enough with itself to embrace the free market. But give the Government a li’l leeway, it will kick open the door. Government grew bigger, corruption got endemic in its system and epidemic in proportions. As the world took the next leap forward, we found ourselves tucked in an ugly li’l corner that we had carved out for ourselves stagnating.
It was still waiting for its tryst with destiny.
In 1989, the wall finally fell. Literally.
Post-liberalization, it was India itself that India needed to conquer. Three hundred years stuck in an abyss, India was in the waiting room for so long that it had almost forgotten what it was waiting for.
Yes, India could build tall buildings, write the next generation of software, have its own breed privatized financial institutions and multinationals, raise money in Bombay like they did in New York and London, show long lingering kisses in movies, have jobs so that we could graduate out of college and not take the first flight out. And of course, beat Australia in cricket.
Never was private wealth and enterprise celebrated with such ferocity. It mattered that an Indian ran the biggest steel conglomerate in the world, and an Indian publicly- held company would one day drive home Jaguar from Ford.
They say we are in global financial meltdown.
The Bombay Sensitive Index, India’s equivalent to the Dow Industrial Average, has plummeted to 9,975 from a 52Wk High of 21,206.77. The Foreign Institutional Investors (FII’s), who happened to be more often than not the big banks that find themselves in a spot, have liquidated $ 9 billion worth holdings in India.
It is apparent that India will get hurt too.
World over, there is a growing call for more regulated markets and bigger government intervention.
Wasn’t Regulation what got India there in 1991? Wasn’t it the all-encompassing evil that kept India back as the world moved forward? Now they tell us to learn otherwise.
It is like getting up one morning and realizing that your neighbor is your actual father.
But a funny thing has happened. The years post-liberalization, even if kicked off by creative investors who couldn’t make returns big enough and the excessive liquidity that characterized all these years, India has somewhere realized that if a billion people get up every morning, brush their teeth and go to work, the economy would prevail.
But this financial crisis, unlike 1991, the IMF and the ‘ostensible’ free markets needn’t dictate anything. India has $300 Billion worth of foreign exchange lying around, and an economy that even by the most conservative estimate, will continue to grow at 6.5 %.
Things will get ugly. But wasn’t this where India wanted to be all along? The era of easy foreign liquidity might be over, but it is an India that finally could do without it. This is our tryst with destiny. And now that we have almost made it, let us not let it slip away.
The credit crisis hits India, but it may profit [The Economist- 10/14/2008]
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Sport and the heady days of Childhood; who needs Politics?
I just got back after seeing Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias (International: The Year My Parents went on Vacation). The movie happens to be the Brazilian selection for the Academy Best Foreign film, charts the events of Brazilian history 1970 through a 12-year-old kid’s eyes. I don’t have a movie review here, but as I saw the movie, I could not help but reflect on an India I grew up in.
I grew up in India of the nineties. Fresh of about half a century of socialism, I grew up in that inert period between those times and the blatant consumerism that defines times today, when politics was defined by confusion everywhere. Damn, I still remember those embarrassing Third Front Governments that were around between the Narsimha Rao’s Congress Government and the National Democratic Alliance years between 1999 and 2004 characterized by the charismatic leadership of Atal Behari Vajpyee. We did not have the brashness of today’s Urban India, none of the French Connection’s and Sex and the City lifestyles, or any of the swagger a weak Dollar and a Strong Rupee has brought.
But from nothing, during the course of my lifetime, somewhere the script changed. The Bombay Sensitive Index went from 2800 to 20,000 in the last ten years, property prices went an average 500% in the National Capital Region. Bottomline being that India was swash with liquidity, Bentleys rolled in, Bollywood made better movies and it became an interesting place to live in.
Now, as a Politics Major, I look back at that period, but I have no recollection of all that churn my childhood should have been. I live in a city that did not exist ten years ago in a map. I grew up in India of the nineties. A McDonald’s opening was news, and I have driven across the city to eat a Cheeseburger. On the day of the fiftieth year of Indian independence in 1997, a McDonalds came in my neighborhood. Nothing ever really happened. Television was either cricket games that India invariably lost or government broadcasting stations that had no programming after 2200 hours. Then, late nineties we had Cartoon Network. Bollywood films were always romance with the stars in GAP, complete with kitsch song and dances shot in the Swiss Alps, and had happy endings. Yes, a GAP fleece hoodie was what we wanted. Boys read Hardy Boys. Girls read Sweet Valley. Enid Blyton reached a unisex audience. Till the triumvirate of Nike, Adidas and Reebok came in the latter half, our concept of a sports shoe was no frills white canvas. Till 1996, India had three cars you could choose from. The bestseller was the Ambassador, Indian for the 1966 Morris.
Today, my Study back home is a veritable museum of Apple. I don’t think New York of any different than New Delhi, and young people in both places have more of the same lifestyles than different. Somewhere I should have felt the pinch of a skyline that did not exist coming up and an unprecedented economic growth only superseded in human history by Modern China.
But my answers lay in that kid, the protagonist of the Brazilian movie, and not in any politics textbook. History might remember that era as something else, maybe they might call it the roaring 90's, but for me that is childhood. It was more Cricket than anything else. And we were darn excited about live streaming of cricket games. I still remember Sachin Tendulkar walking out in the Semi- Finals and a 120, 000 disappointed fans at the Eden Gardens in Calcutta, as India lost the 1996 Edition of the Cricket World Cup to the eventual winners, Sri Lanka. Just like with Pele, Tostao and Rivelino, it was easy to ignore everything, even politics, but Soccer.
Sport and the heady days of Childhood; who needs Politics?
I grew up in India of the nineties. Fresh of about half a century of socialism, I grew up in that inert period between those times and the blatant consumerism that defines times today, when politics was defined by confusion everywhere. Damn, I still remember those embarrassing Third Front Governments that were around between the Narsimha Rao’s Congress Government and the National Democratic Alliance years between 1999 and 2004 characterized by the charismatic leadership of Atal Behari Vajpyee. We did not have the brashness of today’s Urban India, none of the French Connection’s and Sex and the City lifestyles, or any of the swagger a weak Dollar and a Strong Rupee has brought.
But from nothing, during the course of my lifetime, somewhere the script changed. The Bombay Sensitive Index went from 2800 to 20,000 in the last ten years, property prices went an average 500% in the National Capital Region. Bottomline being that India was swash with liquidity, Bentleys rolled in, Bollywood made better movies and it became an interesting place to live in.
Now, as a Politics Major, I look back at that period, but I have no recollection of all that churn my childhood should have been. I live in a city that did not exist ten years ago in a map. I grew up in India of the nineties. A McDonald’s opening was news, and I have driven across the city to eat a Cheeseburger. On the day of the fiftieth year of Indian independence in 1997, a McDonalds came in my neighborhood. Nothing ever really happened. Television was either cricket games that India invariably lost or government broadcasting stations that had no programming after 2200 hours. Then, late nineties we had Cartoon Network. Bollywood films were always romance with the stars in GAP, complete with kitsch song and dances shot in the Swiss Alps, and had happy endings. Yes, a GAP fleece hoodie was what we wanted. Boys read Hardy Boys. Girls read Sweet Valley. Enid Blyton reached a unisex audience. Till the triumvirate of Nike, Adidas and Reebok came in the latter half, our concept of a sports shoe was no frills white canvas. Till 1996, India had three cars you could choose from. The bestseller was the Ambassador, Indian for the 1966 Morris.
Today, my Study back home is a veritable museum of Apple. I don’t think New York of any different than New Delhi, and young people in both places have more of the same lifestyles than different. Somewhere I should have felt the pinch of a skyline that did not exist coming up and an unprecedented economic growth only superseded in human history by Modern China.
But my answers lay in that kid, the protagonist of the Brazilian movie, and not in any politics textbook. History might remember that era as something else, maybe they might call it the roaring 90's, but for me that is childhood. It was more Cricket than anything else. And we were darn excited about live streaming of cricket games. I still remember Sachin Tendulkar walking out in the Semi- Finals and a 120, 000 disappointed fans at the Eden Gardens in Calcutta, as India lost the 1996 Edition of the Cricket World Cup to the eventual winners, Sri Lanka. Just like with Pele, Tostao and Rivelino, it was easy to ignore everything, even politics, but Soccer.
Sport and the heady days of Childhood; who needs Politics?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
