Outsourcing and high-tech booms and marketing campaigns like “Incredible India,” came and suddenly India’s image had gone from pauper to looming global player. Except the reality hasn’t. Sure, there are pockets of prosperity like Bangalore and Hyderabad, roads and airports and railway lines are under construction, foreign investment is up and Indian companies are moving out into the world. But the truth is that much of the new India is still like the old. One pointer: religious conflicts, which still hold modernizing India hostage. Just last week, Sikhs and a sect that includes Sikhs, low-caste Hindus, Christians and Muslims clashed for days, while a bomb in a Hyderabad mosque and subsequent rioting killed 13 people.
Frustrating poverty: The lack of progress wouldn’t be so noticeable if India’s marketing gurus hadn’t raised expectations so high. Last year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, India’s government and industries backed a publicity campaign dubbed “India Everywhere,” which overwhelmed conference attendees with facts and figures about the wonderful new India.
But since I arrived in India almost seven months ago from Africa, I have heard countless foreign businessmen and women in New Delhi and Bombay complaining about the gap between the image India projects and the reality.
Take health. In 2000, 47% of Indian children under 3 were malnourished. Today, the malnourishment rate in kids is 46% — only a single percentage point better. The Prime Minister regularly points out the country’s dispiriting disparities.
Indians going to China return awed by its incredible transformation, and are strangely quiet when you ask if they believe India could soon be its equal. I came to India looking forward to a place with a sense of momentum and hope. I knew India was still poor and frustrating as well as fascinating and exciting and full of great stories. I have found all those things, but I have also realized that parts of Africa have better services and infrastructure than India, and just as good prospects for development. It’s just that Africa hasn’t yet come up with a catchy slogan to sell itself. I hope it doesn’t. Better to be surprised than disappointed.
