THE AWAKENING OF INDIA

UNOFFICIAL TRANSLATION 

(Please make due allowance)

 By Florencia Costa : Special envoy to Hyderabad (India)

The popular wisdom says that money attracts money – in India’s case, it attracts money and much more. That’s why the eyes of the world are looking for this country, the second most growing one of the globe, only behind China. India has been keeping for 25 years the admirable yearly average of 6%-growth – in 2005, it reached 8%. And if it is being cherished for so long as an emerging economic power, India is now being treated as a skyrocketing giant also in the sandy lands of geopolitics. The US has just given to India a new status in the global chess: they offered India the key to enrol in the exclusive atomic club, whose partners are UK, Russia, France and China – besides US, of course. These nations are the only recognised as “genuine” holders of nuclear weapons. If India enrols in this privileged group (the agreement must be submitted by the US Congress), India will be considered the sixth nuclear power, eligible to have access to the civilian nuclear technology of the US.

It would be a golden opportunity for this country with more than 1 billion inhabitants and the sixth highest energy consumption of the globe. The Indian Prime-Minister Manmohan Singh is a brilliant economist with PhD in Oxford, and one of the responsible for the economic opening of the country during the 1990’s, when he was the Minister of Finance. He already warned: the growth of his country should continue steady and firm, as the “steps of the elephants”. In the end of last year, Singh forecasted that India would continue growing at an average yearly rate from 7.5% to 8% till 2008. From this point, in his predictions, the most challenging prediction of reaching the 10%-level. In the beginning of last March, George W. Bush visited New Delhi, and this was the third visit of an US President in a 28-year-period. Bush agreed with the Indian Prime Minister an historical agreement that may finish with the Indian nuclear isolation. This hand given by Bush shows how much the US is betting high with this strategic partnership with the Indian emerging power.

As per the agreement signed with the Yankees, India permits the inspection of 14 out of their 22 nuclear reactors. And, before Bush, Jacques Chirac signed a similar agreement with them. Both Bush and Chirac praises India, who left being a nuclear plague to become a “responsible power”. The agreement is polemical, as the country is not a signatory of the TNP. For decades, India has been developing its own nuclear programme, including for military purposes, and the critics of Bush’s agreement say that he opened a door that will make more difficult the attempts to stop the ambitions of countries like Pakistan, North Korea and Iran.

Putting geopolitical questions apart, with its economy growing more and more, India has an endless thirsty for energy sources. Nowadays, the country is the emerging star of the BRIC – Brazil, Russia, India and China. The acronym became famous with the Goldman Sachs Report about the growth perspectives of these emerging economies. India should be the third biggest economy of the world till 2040 and investors from everywhere are with their eyes on the Indian immense consumer market – the Indian middle class totals 300 million inhabitants (the Brazilian population is of 180 million approximately). It is a social extract that is modernising each and every year, eager for new products and that is greater than the Brazilian population in 120 million people – a market that consumes US$ 200 bn annually in durable goods.

The power of India goes much farther than the financial values: it is also in their famous brains. The country has been investing for years in higher education, it has one of the best technologic institutes of the world and graduates 3 million people a year, 700 thousand post-graduates and 1500 PhDs. Since the 1990’s, the country is becoming the nest of IT Enterprises and service companies like Call Centres. It also became famous for the development of biotechnology & pharmaceutical companies. The growth of the middle class sparked the expansion of markets like telephony, automotive and processed food. That’s why Bush availed his visit as maximum as he could. Besides the nuclear pact, he negotiated economic agreements in views of doubling the commercial exchange between both countries till 2010. Doubling means reaching US$ 30 billion...

ISTOE Weekly News Magazine, No. 1907, 10.5.2006, pages 106~108

(In the box)

A boiling country

Name: Republic of India (Bharat)

Area: 3.287.590 km2

Population: 1.095.352.000

Religions: Hinduism (80.5%), Islam (13.4%), Christianism (2.3%), Sikhism (1.9%)

Capital: New Delhi (300 thousand inhabitants)

2005 GDP: US$ 720 billion

2005 per capita income: US$ 3400

Unemployment rate: 9.9% (2005)

Literacy rate: 59.5%

Population below the poerty line: 25% (2002)

Sweetheart of the investors… (India has already overtaken the US)

Aggregated value – the sector of services employs 25% of the Indians and is responsible for almost a 50%-slice of the GDP

Luxury & Comfort

Luxury – the market of luxury goods reaches US$ 14 bn. Approximately 40% of the Indians admit paying more for brandy products.

Telephones – 80 million Indians have mobile telephones, a number that increases 2.5 million every month. Mobiles are seen as status; one of the models (Vertu Signature White Platinum) costs US$ 39.000

Trips – There is an increasing number of travelling Indians (aircraft). Since 2003, this number increased 125%.

Living freely... - Traditional values about the task of the woman and family are being questioned

Work: the call centres join men and women in the work, breaking taboos. The operators adopt the US accent and attitude to deal with the consumers.

Love life: prejudices against the sexual life before or after the marriage still exist.

Going shopping... - The number of malls skyrocketed.

Back