INDImag – Contemporary fiction | Motivational short stories | Social stories | Short story criticism

In the not so distant past India had the dubious distinction of being noted for just it’s beggars, the TajMahal and Mother Teresa. A land of snake charmers & rickshaw pullers they said. Largely impoverished and illiterate to boot. The west’s perception of India left much to be desired. The fact that this land of a billion till a few decades ago, for centuries mind you, was under the mis-rule of the west is easily and conveniently forgotten. India on her part has not done much good herself. Post liberation from it’s colonial wrongdoers, corruption, religious strife and wars marred the first few decades. A slow but steady progress ensued thereafter till the early nineties. During this era India’s perception of the west was equally warped and jaundiced as well. The fear of the colonizers still haunted it. It was both an excuse as well as a means for political mileage. Bash the west. The change of heart that the erstwhile colonizers claimed to have, were treated to skepticism and mistrust. Claims of India’s ethnic culture and traditions being more respectable than the hippie west were many. Who needs the west was their rhetoric. It still plagues some sour grapes. For a while, it seemed like India was happy to be known for it’s beggars, the Taj and Mother Teresa only. Nothing more.

Right around the time of the noble nun’s death in late nineties, the notions about India and India’s notions about west had changed dramatically. A notable essay on the change is Thomas L.Friedman’s upbeat take in “The World is Flat”. It is a compelling read. His ten flatteners that made the world flat, ranging from Columbus’s quest to the fall of the Berlin wall to the Internet to Opensourcing to Outsourcing is a telling tale on how we got here. It is a veiled take on where the world is with regard to free-market and capitalism. Some hail it as an eye opener while others accuse it of over sensationalizing the obvious with Friedman not being able to extricate his emotional self from the narrative. Now that the din of its debates has abated, it looks like a good time to revisit and assess what it means in the current global context. More so in how the warped notions have changed vis-à-vis India and the west.

With the stock markets pushing west’s companies into an iterative growth spurt each quarter, companies were forced to seek lower cost alternatives. While staying away from the politics and merits of outsourcing, at a cultural perception level, there was a paradigm shift. A shift that states that the once defamed land of snake charmers was indeed capable of much more. With a large majority of it’s younger generation adept at English and technically trained, it was a goldmine waiting to be discovered. India on the other hand had the infrastructure to produce technical talent with very little of it being used. English was abundant. So was the notion that it was just a vestige of the erstwhile British raj. Given the new order, it seemed like a match made in heaven. The perfect storm lined up in the form of Y2K, millennium bug. The west needed help and the land of the snake charmers was more than eager to help and dispel its tag.

India did much more than to merely dispel it’s tag. It has come a long way since the Y2K era that gave it the much needed exposure. It has steadily garner a good and respectable share of the low – medium cost IT outsourcing pie. Not just stopping there, it has moved up the value chain to be a part of the Internet revolution with Indians contributing significantly to the World Wide Web revolution. Silicon Valley has Indian executives managing key units of very many fortune 1000s. Though you cannot say the same about India’s Olympic medals haul or human rights, India in technology is a force to recon with. Until recently, that brainpower mostly went in one direction. From India to west, benefiting the west more than India. Today, we see a bevy of chip, software, and e-commerce startups in both nations, mobilizing billions in venture capital. The economics are so compelling that some venture capitalists demand Indian R&D be included in business plans at the onset. New age visionary companies like Yahoo, Google & Microsoft have long heeded this and setup large research centers in India. These are not just to relegated low-end support calls. It is to engage in top of the line research. It is paying rich dividends. The Indian arms are leading the way in patent filings. Considering Indian cyber space uses Microsoft, Google and Yahoo as extensively as the west, it is only appropriate that they be a part of the development. Not withstanding the outsourcing hue and cry, even before IT shone it’s spotlight on the country, India has been a strong supplier of textiles & precious stones to the west. Indian grey cells are as much behind Hotmail as is behind Bose acoustics, India’s indigenous Nuclear, Space & Ballistic technologies. A new India has emerged.

If one had a penny for every time Bangalore was mentioned in the west, he would be a millionaire many times over. But what is oft ignored is that China and India represent not just threats to the developed west, but also great opportunities. A low pay, low respect job in the west translates to a high pay, high respect job in the east and at a fraction of the cost. This comparative advantage that mandates an Indian techie in Bangalore will on the backend get him to spend his newfound higher than the norm income to buy the products from the west. That is west’s comparative advantage. The proverbial ying and the yang.

Per Newton every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The gain in India’s IT sector is not without it’s share of costs. A job loss in Ohio is as much a heartache as is the loss of a few due to mom and pop restaurants closing, courtesy of MacD & Burger King. If the Indian low cost technology has killed a job position in Ohio, high volume deep pocket corporations of the west are doing very much the same for Indian businesses. The new found money in Indian IT has found it’s way into the bottom lines of Nikes, Microsofts, HPs, MacDs, BurgerKings, INGs, Fords, and Hollywoods. Newly sprung department stores that are brightly lit with shiny marble floors and endless aisles of well-stocked, neatly stacked inventory resemble any Macy’s or Sears in New York or London. Fast food restaurants, smoothie bars and coffee shops line the food courts while stylishly dressed young Indian men and women, garbed in a mix of designer western brand names and traditional Indian clothes, wander in and out of stores with shopping bags, while chatting on the newest style cell phone. From the Volvos that pick the techies to the HP work desks that run Microsoft to the Cokes and Pepsis consumed to the Nokias used to the Jay Leno or Hasslehoff on a Samsung or Sony. It is west and it’s businesses flourishing. Given the amount of dependency east has on west and vice versa, it looks like the world is flat. Like it or not, this is how business will be transacted in the future, experts opine.

So how does this equation reflect on the largest democracy and the most powerful democracy? The United States dominates the global policies like no country since ancient Cesarean Rome. It has been at the forefront of global policies, pushing for open markets, open trade and democracy. All of it much needed. India needs the United States to be it’s partner for it’s economic growth and to ensure peaceful co-existence with it’s non trustworthy neighbors. An economic partner and a geo-political deterrent. India has much to offer the United States and this has not gone unnoticed. Apart from a new, untapped, 1 billion strong market for it’s companies, the largest democracy all of a sudden seems a lot better bet than any Islamic fundamentalist ridden country United States has courted with in the past. Pakistan and Afghanistan are rife with sectarian violence and are more of headaches than true allies. Communist China needs contained. On the economic front, if critics are to be believed, Outsourcing is imminent for the United States to be competitive and India is the outsourcing Mecca. As opposed to the baby boomer retirement wave that is hitting the United States, India’s population medians at twenty five. Even within the United States, Indians are among the highest earners when segmented ethnically. They are largely peace loving and stay out of trouble. The number of Indian students, 70,000+ in US universities is one of the largest from any ethnic group. A lot of this is true for India with other western powers as well.

So with the ground realities drastically changed, no wonder the warped wrongful perceptions have since straightened out on both sides of the table. Myopic vision which illusioned a blurry horizon just had a much needed lasik surgery to see the world as flat. The paradigm shift for India has been — the west is not bad. Many were colonialists ; they have changed. We have the manpower sans the money; they have money and need manpower. We are talked of as having potential ; we need the west to realize our true potential. The paradigm shift for the west has been — India has poverty ; India is not worthless & poor. India has illiteracy ; India has scientific pool that even United States taps into, constantly at that. India has beggars; India is not a nation of them. India has her problems ; India is not a problem.

India needs the west, as much as west needs India.

@ Copyrights Athreya

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