Ani's space

Recently, Mr. Thomas Friedman published an article titled "No, No, No, Don't Follow America", an article on how the Tata Nano is a bad idea. While I do agree with his views mostly, there is only thing I find wrong about the article. And that is his comparison of the Transport system with the Cellphone revolution in India.

 

If you observe the Cell-phone penetration in India and why it "leapfroged" over traditional land lines... laying traditional landlines involves a lot of work and needs a lot of land. This involves govt sanctions etc. basically a slow lengthy process filled with Govt bureaucracy and the resulting corruption. Cell-phones on the other hand don't need all of that. A few towers that can be raised over private buildings and small pieces of land do the job. Hence Indian Entrepreneurs found this to be the easy route to fill the "communication gap" in India.

 

Unfortunately, transportation does not have the luxury of this shortcut. You will have to deal with Govt. for any infrastructure. The only way out is that the Tatas and the Reliances take up the job of building end-to-end transportation infrastructure as a business. But that would mean privatization of the country's governance which will go against Democracy and result in Monopolization.

 

Hence, in my honest opinion, comparing mass-transit infrastructure to the Cell-phone revolution is not a good comparison.

Bangalore introduced me to the concept of "Multi-Cuisine"  restaurants. The city is dotted with these special restaurants that serve South Indian, North Indian, Chinese etc., all at one menu.

 

But this restaurant chose to be different... click the picture and you will see what I mean

We all know that India has a major advantage of a huge English Speaking population. This is the section of the society that is helping bring millions of dollars through the Services and IT industry.

 

While these group of folks are busy chiselling their English, attending Finishing Schools and accent neutralization classes, the rest of the country is trying to keep up by doing their best at communicating with these folks in English.

 

The result.... some hillarious signs, business names and just plain funny statements painted all over the town. Some are so hillarious that it made me start a new section on my blog.

 

Here is the first one one in the series (click the image).... all I can say about this one is.... Naughty Road!!!

 

More pictures are on their way :-)

Whenever a discussion on India comes up, you get to hear one of the following sentences: "India will never become like the US"... "India has a long way to go".. or "India is getting rich too fast and it is not getting time to organize itself like the US".

 

Now, here's my question... where is the written rule that for a country to become a successful economy that it must follow the west. That India must first transform itself into the US and then become a super-power.

 

If becoming a super-power needs a plan then chances for India are next to nothing because... well... there is no plan for anything. Does that mean India cannot? That is for time to tell. Several centuries ago when India was called the "Golden Bird" of the east, was it like the US? Well, was there anything known as the US?

 

Becoming a Super Power is circumstancial. US became a super power because of Nazi Germany. They created a threat, that forced the US to innovate in Military and other technologies which in turn got sold to rest of the world and US made money.

 

One thing that is going good for India right now is it's entrepreneurship. It's opportunistic mind. No country with the history, culture and demographics of India has done as well and that is what we need to compare with. And when I say this, some of my friends immediately bring up two countries... Singapore and Malaysia. Well, my argument still stands. Calling Singapore a country would be like calling Madagascar a continent. You cannot compare a 42 Kms diameter island to a 3.3 million square kilometers spread of India (and lets not even dare to compare the population).

 

Malaysia... yeah, agreed that they have done well for themselves as a tourism destination but they still rank 34th in Purchase Power Parity (GDP $290 Billion) as opposed to India that ranks 10th (GDP of $1 Trillion). So once again, just tourism is not going to get them too far. You need entrepreneurship like India. You need The Tata's, The Ambanis and Malayas.

 

If India must become a super power, it must do so with all it's baggage (poverty, illitracy et al). It's not a step process.