INDIA RISING

I sense a good feeling wherever I go about the booming Indian economy. India is in the spotlight in all international magazines. The Share market sensex has touch a all time high of 14800 points and economist forecast that the Indian Share market will touch the 50000 points mark by the year 2020.  The world is looking at India, with a big awe. Multinationals are rushing in to find a place into this big market before it gets too crowded.

What does all this mean?  Have you woken up to the secret, the world has discovered before we did. Yes, the secret is India is set to be the second largest market in the world after China in another 10 years. The entry of the multinationals into every type of business is a clear indication. Name any business and they are there. Right from insurance companies to retail chains, car factories to mobile phone manufacturing units, they are becoming omnipresent in the Indian economy. The world has got a pulse of India. They seem to understand and respect our language and cultural difference. They customize not only their advertisement campaigns but also their products to fit the regional market. You are aware, Nokia makes phones which facilitates SMS in Tamil, Hindi or any other regional language. The market is too big and they are finding it difficult to cope up with the market demand. People are willing to buy at any price, if the product catches their imagination. Something which was unheard of in the recent past.

The country which has been talking about 60% of the people living below poverty line all of a sudden has awakened to the fact that poverty cannot be prevented, but has to be replaced with abundance.

During my last visit to China, one local person told me, China too was once a very conservative country like India and there too the value systems were too strong to permit western influences in their lifestyle.  There were big debates on this at every parliamentary meetings. Then it boiled down to a matter of choice:  Whether China prefers to hold its cultural heritage and remain poor or compromise on its value systems and grow rich. The country chose the later. Today, if you go to any city in China you will find the night life bubbling with so much of entertainment. They are all set to please the foreign visitors. They want to focus an image of culturally friendly people.

India is in a similar crux. We have a strong value system embedded in our culture, which does not permit so many things, but we have to look at western preferences too. Few cities like to Mumbai and Bangalore, have geared up to the situation.

If India is feeling so rich today it is because of the amount of foreign exchange flowing into this country. The considerable amount of job opportunities and the earning potential created by foreign dependent IT companies, has made the nature of money fluid.

We are living in a age of cultural convergence. May be the days are not too far, that the countries will lose its cultural identities and have something called a “global culture”. 

In this issue of PALMS PLUS, I have included an interesting article on “Learning from the West”, by Infosys fame Naryana Murthy. A dynamic entrepreneur, who has reached great heights in the IT industry owing to his untiring hardwork. This article I hope would throw more light on the matter I have discussed.

Happy Reading,

D. Senthil Kannan

Article Dated May 2007