Tag Archives: india

David Cameron’s visit to India

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Last time DC went to India, I commented on the BBC that he may as well concede that we were the junior partner in that relationship as well, just as he had referred to relations with our American cousins who he had visited immediately prior to India.

This time things are a little different. Let me explain.

Last time DC visited it was in the immediate wake of forming the coalition. This time, I would suggest that this visit is focused on creating opportunities that are specific to the UK electoral calendar – electioneering has started!

The same can also be said of India and her politics. With Narendra Modi’s success at the polls, the only real discussion taking place is whether he will be the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate. Electioneering in India has also begun as polls are due in 2014.

Such a cycle can play a major role in how these visits are organised. What do you think the major goals of this visit should be? How should DC’s success be measured? Volume of commercial deals done, parity provided to the Opposition, agreements on counter security… ? Interested in your opinions. Leave a comment

There’s hope for India, after all the Chinese are humans

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Having just returned from the World Economic Forum in China, I’m filled with optimism and hope for India’s prospects. Let me explain:

For quite some time, there’s a line that’s been pushed through the media of the Chinese being super-human, super efficient, and all such super things. My visit last year to China confirmed this, but on reflection I feel I was awe-struck just to be visiting China – its hard not to be considering all the hype you hear about the economic juggernaut that’s going to increasingly shape all our futures.

Having taken the opportunity to scratch beneath the surface this time, I found that in many respects the Chinese are no different to my Indian brothers and sisters, it’s just that the state does a good job in presenting a different picture – one of an organised system and collective entity – which is certainly not the case.

In fact, witnessing and experiencing such difference, almost makes me like China more, it makes the place more humane, and for this reason more attractive as a place to visit and perhaps even invest in.

In India, the one thing we all know is that the government is simply incapable of trying to shape the world’s perception of India – which is no fault of their own, but simply a characteristic of the society it has become. With such rapid proliferation and scrutiny by the media and civil society groups, the government is held accountable – and perhaps does a better job at it than the Opposition parties in India.

When we look at macro trends, the economic advantages India is going to derive over the next thirty or so years from its demographic profile are absolutely gigantic. As Professor Tarun Khanna of the Harvard Business School cited at the Summit – India will have a surplus of approx. 50 million skilled workers over the next few decades, whereas the rest of the world will have exactly the opposite.

Given this is the case, does it not stand that India has a fair chance of lapping China in this race to the top?

Education at the bottom of the (Indian) pyramid

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I, like almost everyone I talk to, am bothered about the state of affairs regarding education & skills. I’m not referring to the political agenda in England revolving around free schools, the promotion of academy status for schools, the education maintenance allowance, university fees or any such subject that’s being debated in our political media; rather I’m referring to the injustice of the 60million or so children who’ve never set their eyes on a school building. More so, I get even more vexed when I hear about the millions of children who do attend a school, but leave without learning anything! How comes that never comes up in our media?

The reason I mention this, is recently, I was fortunate to have met with Madhav Chavan, who in the mid-90s founded a NGO in India called Pratham. Later that evening, I attended a dinner hosted by their UK chapter where he laid out the challenge.

His argument was simple. One of the main reasons children fail in the Indian schooling system is because they lack basic literacy skills – they can’t read or write. As a result of this realization, Pratham’s dedicated itself to reaching the absolute bottom (of the famous Indian) pyramid to equip those children (and now adults) with these skills.

To assist their work, one the most valuable things that Pratham instituted and conducts with rigour is a national survey, called ASER, which has now become the de-facto study on education in India, as approx 720,000 people in 16,000 villages across the sub-continent are surveyed.

Chavan highlighted some of the following statistics, which made me sit up and think (read: pull my hair out):

• 97% of children in India are enrolled in a school – emphasis is on enrolled. They don’t necessarily attend or sit exams.
• After four years of learning, in class 5, between 40 – 50% of children can’t read or can’t write.
• In rural India (which is the majority of India), after four years of schooling, in class 5, 60% of children fail to solve a simple division sum.

If this is the case, regardless of where we live, we all need to worry.

If a quarter of the world’s work force is expected to reside in India within the next 15 years, where are all the skilled workers going to come from? Yes, India has a large, and young population that could be a massive advantage in its ascendancy to super-power status, but there’s simply no hiding from these facts.

Right now, it’d be quite easy to take a pot-shot at the role of government, but as Chavan explained, India is a very complex country, where there is a long term commitment in fixing this problem. I assume the challenge comes in dealing with the situation here & now – which if you’ve ever visited India is a challenge in most spheres of life.

As is so true, he explained that where good leadership exists, you find change. For example, some progressive state governments do recognise the huge hurdle that exists and are doing something about this. Bihar is a good example. It has 10 million illiterate adults, and to institute a programme to equip them with “employment ready” skills will require an army of volunteers, which Pratham is trying to marshal with the support of Nitish Kumar, their Chief Minister.

Similarly, Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, realizes as a result of ASER data on his state that in order to translate his success in attracting massive investment commitments he needs a skilled and educated workforce. He’s now mandated his Ministerial team to visit schools to assess for themselves the problems in their system.

If you read my first post in January 2011, you’ll see that I took my kids to a Pratham school in Mumbai. The thing that struck me was that Pratham’s model works because it’s so simple. Because it’s low-cost. Because they’re at ground level. But more importantly, because they can prove their method works.

At the dinner later that day, surrounded by ultra successful entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and city professionals, Chavan conveyed his message with great effectiveness. His audience were positively agitated and somewhat pissed off at the situation in their beloved motherland. In typical fashion, wanting to put the world right several suggestions were offered by those assembled, but Chavan put it all in perspective, at least for me. He explained: in a country where almost 75% of the population defecates in the open, you need solutions that take into cognizance the reality of India, here and now, and build on them rather than building clouds in the sky.

He’s right. You & I know it. By offering our support to the likes of Pratham, we’ll be doing something about the challenges facing our future generations.

There’s cows on the roads!

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Ever since my kids were born, I’ve wanted to take them to India – the land of my ancestors. Partly, as I wanted them to connect at an early age with their heritage, and partly as I think they’ll be better equipped for the future if they start understanding the nuances of India – a country that everyone’s accepted as being central to global prosperity in the future.

In their lifetimes, they’ll see massive change. The centre of gravity will shift from Europe & North America to India & China. Given their obvious link to one of these future superpowers, our purpose was to introduce them to the sights, smells, and joys of our motherland.

So, we took them to Mumbai – home to the Indian film industry, commercial capital of India, and a bustling metropolis that is, arguably, the most outward looking of all Indian cities where their eyes came alight with – not the razzle dazzle of neon lights – but by seeing cows, goats, and pigs sharing the roads with the human race and by witnessing the sheer number of people on the streets of Mumbai.

Although I say it in light jest, it’s an important lesson that they realize that a civilization as ancient as it is, respects & shares with others, and that the concept of private space is (a luxury, and) perhaps, unique to the western hemisphere.

Along with the (rather, costly) saree shopping we had to endure on this visit; on New Years Day, we took the opportunity to visit a community school run by a NGO called Pratham in a Mumbai slum. I’d heard and read a lot about their stellar work, but visiting projects such as the ones we did reminded us that India may be a wonderfully colourful, vibrant, and hip place to be but there’s absolutely no escaping the fact that India is still home to a third of the world’s poor.

Cars, scooters, and rickshaws not only share roads with cows and other animals, you also visibly see the increasingly affluent sharing their immediate vicinity with some of the poorest people on the face of our planet.

My kids visited a crammer class of 20 students aged 7, who all sat cross-legged on the floor in a one room building with a teacher who used a blackboard to coach them on how they could attain a 80% pass rate for an exam, which if they did would provide them with 750 rupee (just over £10) scholarship to study further.

We worked our way through the slum – with open sewers, noisy workshops, and a dhobi ghat, to visit a room that also doubled up as a community library, which had fewer books than, not our local school library, but the books on the shelves in my children’s bedrooms! It may have been woefully inadequately resourced, but what came through was the immense pleasure of the children’s faces from being able to read the few books that they had at their disposal. With every page they turned, you could see their minds working overtime to grasp and understand what the author intended.

Lastly, we visited another home, where 20 children aged 2 – 6, who had never gone to school, were able to say the days of the week, read an early stage book, and respond in English to us.

All of this served to bring to the fore not only that we’re materially better off and have comforts that so many don’t, but the fact that there’s an entire generation that’s young and hungry to succeed. They’re going to take every opportunity that comes their way to improve their lives.

Economic forecasts show that as a result of various factors, primarily due its very young population, almost 25% of the world’s workforce will reside in India, not in 50 years, but in the next 15 years – in our lifetimes!

The basic message that we want our kids to recognise is that they have an inbuilt advantage, which they would be wise to embrace given the strides that India’s going to be making. Their economic well being in London, will in some shape or form, be dependent on how they understand and interact with India.

As parents, my wife & I committed to doing everything at our means to ensure our children run faster than we did, have larger dreams that we had, and in all are able to stand strong, not on their own, but realizing they belong to an increasingly interdependent and connected ecosystem – on in which they understand that their actions can have a major impact on someone else’s prosperity and vice-versa.

Whilst, I’ve focused on the material benefits of a relationship with the Indian subcontinent in this post, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that that’s all India offers for the future. It was Mark Twain who aptly described India as “India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only”, meaning that her ancient traditions, religious practices, philosophical outlook could perhaps address and teach us how to be better people and, just perhaps, answer the mother of all our questions – “what is the meaning of life”.

My daughters are way too young to grasp such issues, but, I hope that as a result of the connection they made in their 2010 Christmas break, they’re able to run that little bit further, climb a bit higher, and dream a bigger dream.

From Russia with love

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In the past year, you’ve seen the who’s who of global politics make a bee line to New Delhi. Despite scams, corruption, failure of governance, and all such less desirable faces to India, David Cameron, Barack Obama, Nicholas Sarkozy, Wen Jiabao, and now President Medvedev seem keen to cosy up to a country, which when spoken of is often referred to as a slow elephant in comparison to the Dragon that’s come to symbolise China.

With the global economy facing severe challenges, its understandable that they seek to forge stronger partnerships with a nation that’s averaging GDP growth of 8.5% and with an increasingly young & affluent population. But is this the only reason?

Clearly, no.

The movement towards India is also, if not more so, about geo-politics. It’s about regional balance.

It was said that Cameron’s love for India is really about countering the emphasis the Blair gave to developing relations with China. America similarly after decades of a cool relationship with India warmed up by paving the way for the game-changing civil nuclear agreement, and the French have always been good friends with India, just as the Russians have.

In fact, it comes as no surprise that Medvedev is in India. There are some parallels and reasons to work together. Both have a massive need for infrastructure, which friends suggest, India is more likely to get done because it’s more open to foreign expertise and has lots of cheap labour. The significant differences are that India’s democracy is more developed and Russia has a serious demographic problem. It has some natural resources that India needs, but I’d say that Russia is definitely in a weaker economic position long term. That’s why Medvedev needs to work with India.

On a strategic plane, the India- Russia relationship goes back decades, for it was the Russians who were early to recognise India’s potential, both on the economic, and also on the geopolitical matrix as a counter to China, decades ago. Medvedev will be pushing an open door when in New Delhi.

You don’t need to be a genius to work out that India & China are key to the prosperity of nations like ours, but what’s critical is that the dance between the slow elephant and the fierce dragon doesn’t lead to an all out x-factor type contest where instead of houses being divided as to who’s the more meritorious, countries have to decide who to back for the big time. That’s why, in my opinion, Premier Wen’s sojourn to India was probably the most important visit of the lot.

It matters that China and India work towards resolution on key issues. It matters to the prosperity of future generations, in Russia, and the world over.

Af-Pak: this is the ONLY game changer in the UK – India relationship

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ADVICE TO DAVID CAMERON FOR HIS FORTHCOMING PRIME MINISTERIAL VISIT TO INDIA

Accompanied with the increasing level of media interest in the Prime Minister’s forthcoming visit to India, it’s heartening that my recent posts on the bilateral relationship have also stirred some interest.

Regardless of the substantive points that result from this visit, it’s obvious that this opportunity will be used to affirm the new Government’s desire to bring a step change to the relationship.

There’s been speculation as to the shape and size of the accompanying delegation, and the only difference from the past, as far as I’m concerned is that David Cameron’s taking almost a third of his Cabinet with him, I assume, to underscore the emphasis on building a wide ranging, cross departmental, relationship. So, I’m lead to believe Messrs Hague, Willets, Cable, Osborne, are definitely on, as are blue chip CEOs like Stuart Rose of M&S.

Such a symbolic act serves to assure Indian counterparts of Team GBs’ seriousness, which I’m sure will be warmly received and all goodwill credited & reciprocated over the term of this parliament.

Apart from the presentational aspects of the visit, which I accept are fairly important, my thinking on the substantive points that may emerge and set the path for an enhanced relationship have also been in development.

In previous posts, I realise that there’s been a far too great an emphasis on the trade & investment relationship. Actually, when I sat down to think about the real game-changers in the relationship during the Blair era, the vast majority came as a result of a change in thinking in our Foreign Office.

So, it’s no surprise that William Hague, during his years in wilderness, has cultivated a fairly strong understanding on India, and that he should realise that the following two aspects are critical to the step-change that the coalition govt aspires to:

DECOUPLE INDIA-PAKISTAN

Not that I see this as too much of a problem, but there is a tendency to link the two neighbours. This hyphenation creates unnecessary tension, as the past ten years clearly demonstrate, India’s charted a very different path to Pakistan, there’s definitely a sense that the world needs to treat both countries on their own merits and not as a hyphenated couple.

The most obvious example of such a change in thinking i.e. one based on merit, is that of the US – India Civil Nuclear Agreement, which broke the mould and provided a much needed step change to the US – India relationship. Despite both India & Pakistan being nuclear armed nations, it was made clear that no such deal could be done with India’s neighbour as a result of her poor proliferation record.

We really don’t need to balance what we do with India in Pakistan. Both countries are separate entities, with their own prospects and challenges. So let’s treat them as such.

The added advantage the Tories have is that they don’t need to be worried about the Pakistani vote bank in constituencies across Britain, which to a degree resulted in Labour’s need to perform a finely balanced act in the way it treated India & Pakistan. It was felt that the impact in Labour seats of any divergence in treatment could have a material impact in local & general elections.

AFGHANISTAN

That India wants what we and the Americans do is not in doubt. A stable Afghanistan is the aim that the international community rightly aspires to. However, the big difference is in approach.

Also, there’s a school of thinking that promotes that India has a limited role and view to offer, which couldn’t be further from the truth. India has a vested interest in the region, and used to share a border with Afghanistan pre 1947, so to argue otherwise shows a shallow understanding of the region.

The difference in approach I refer to is that of engaging the enemy, which in this case is the Taliban… which we seem to favour. For India, this is a total show-stopper. Given that the last time the Taliban got involved in running Afghanistan, India suffered badly.

We’d do well in remembering the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 184 in 1999 where the Taliban regime provided safe passage to the Pakistani hijackers who took control of the plane, which was forced to land in Kandahar. On the airstrip, the Taliban even moved its well armed fighters near the aircraft in an attempt to prevent Indian Special Forces from storming the aircraft! This flash-point was a massively significant event for India, which played out on national TV for days and is etched permanently in their national psyche. So to ask them to cast it aside as an extreme, sole example shows our total insensitivity.

Furthermore, it transpired in later investigations that one of the Pakistani militants who was released by the Indian authorities in the barter deal for the return of hostages, went onto form a terrorist group called Jaish-e-Muhammed, which received extensive aid from the Taliban and pro – Taliban groups in Pakistan for attacks in India.

To say that the approach to bringing an enduring stability to Afghanistan matters is important, would be a major understatement and show a major disregard to a country that Cameron is trying to forge a “strategic partnership” with.

A “strategic partnership” necessitates the convergence of views on domestic, regional, and global issues, where you try and understand each other’s sensitivities in order to work more effectively to achieve mutual goals. In 2004, Blair ensured there was a convergence of views on foreign policy – by stating our support for India’s seat on the UN Security Council; by calling a spade a spade when it came to condemning Pakistan for supporting cross border terrorism in Kashmir; and finally by ensuring India was invited to G8 meetings, albeit as an observer.

We may have our political pressures in wanting to bring our troops back home, but if this means that we’d have to engage the Taliban in discussions, India’s track record with them and their obvious discomfort need to be taken into consideration, as once we’ve left we’re going to have to rely on regional partners (read: India) in ensuring Afghanistan’s stability.

Prime Minister Cameron needs to work towards assuring India that our approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan would have their interest at heart. Without this, I fear the “strategic partnership” that we’re all looking for remains an aspiration.

If there’s a game-changer, then this is it.

Where can the UK – India partnership go? Take Two…

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If you recollect the 90s, any mention of India in the West used to be hyphenated with the word Pakistan following it. It was at the end of one of the most gruesome and violent periods in the recent history of India that the Blair Government swept to victory. India had a nationalist coalition government at its helm for the very first time, who flexed their muscles on issues concerning national security. In 1998, they broke the moratorium on nuclear testing and suffered global sanctions, which are now defunct and removed.

Recognising the need to hedge its bets, Blair embraced India as a counterbalance to China, despite it not having the promise that we see today; and in all fairness stuck at it despite disastrous visits by the Queen and also by Robin Cook, the then foreign secretary. Little did he know at that time the Y2K bug would actually prove to be a major boon for bilateral relations as it was around this time that Indian IT firms started winning global IT contracts as a result of their price advantage, heralding a promising trade & investment partnership.

Blair’s New Labour Government followed this up by a phenomenal visit to India in 2001, where he signed the New Delhi declaration, which he broke the mould. Simply put, he turned the way the world thought about India, and India knew his endorsement really mattered. For the first time, the UK stated that India was a deserving member to the top table of the international community – he committed to campaign for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. This was ground-breaking on any terms.

He followed up by ensuring that India became Britain’s largest bilateral aid & development recipient. His logic was simple: to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, the UK taxpayer needed to assist India in eradicating poverty, after all to make an impact on the global scale, India was critical as a third of the world’s poor live in India.

Like this, whether we talk about improving defence ties, promoting education exchanges, increasing trade & investment, Blair pushed the boat out. Every single government department had to have an India champion within it.

In later years, Brown as PM continued on the same trajectory. By this time, India was a permanent fixture at G8 meetings – which would’ve been inconceivable even a few years before, and a true partnership emerged between Manmohan Singh – an economist and former Finance Minister of India & Gordon Brown – an academic and long time Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In later years, the wheels may have come off slightly (read my post on David Miliband’s visit to India as Foreign Secretary, click here), but it’s important to recognise that the Labour government was radical in its approach to India. Like I said before, they truly broke the mould.

Given all the rhetoric on the Conservative Government’s desire to build an “enhanced partnership” with India (the Queen singled out India in this year’s Queen’s Speech), I’m scratching my head as to how they’re going to differentiate themselves from New Labour’s record on India – which incidentally could’ve alienated a massive anti Indian support base that exists within the Party, which almost makes Blair’s support for India even more praiseworthy.

Here are my suggestions as to what the Conservative Government could do to deepen relations with India:

1. Build on the foundations of the UK – India Education & Research Initiative, by promising more funding to promote institutional linkage that can take advantage of the new Indian laws allowing foreign universities to set up there.

2. Take stock of the trade & investment relationship. Why is it that despite so many independent agencies and taxpayer funded promotion bodies our trade support system struggles to excite SMEs to seek partnerships in India. The legend that is Alpesh B. Patel, again reinforced the view that we (read ‘he’) do well in attracting Indian investors to the UK, but struggle in the opposite direction.

3. Don’t cut aid to India. When Andrew Mitchell visits India, he’ll be surrounded with millions of reasons of why we should continue. My friend – Geoffrey Clifton Brown MP, who at the time was a Shadow International Development Minister, visited India last year as part of the IPT delegation and recounted his experience which supported and recommended continued support & aid.

4. Engage the diaspora, for example invite prominent members of the thriving business community to join business & political delegations to India. One of our biggest assets is our diversity. With so many people of Indian origin in this country, make the most of it.

Maybe like George Osborne’s efforts to crowd-source views and suggestions, Prime Minister Cameron may wish to throw a life-line to the civil servants whose job is to put some meaningful suggestions on what an enhanced partnership could look like before his widely expected first visit to India.

Incidentally, another friend – Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, who’s a leading policy expert on strategic & security issues at the IISS wrote the following piece, which proves to be a good read: http://www.iiss.org/whats-new/iiss-in-the-press/june-2010/uk-india-a-special-relationship-for-the-21st-century/?vAction=fntUp

The Conservatives & India: Politics of climate change

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So, I was invited to the launch of the UK – India Business Leaders Climate Group on Friday at the London Business School, in which David Cameron MP launched a new forum that links businesses in UK & India to find synergies and technologies that fight global warming.

Amongst the good and great, Lord Chris Patten – one time Chairman of the Conservative Party, Baroness Hogg – Chairman of 3i and former Head of John Major’s Policy Unit at Downing St, and Sir Stuart Rose of M&S – all rubbed shoulders with almost half a dozen Shadow Tory Ministers and approx 50 business folks.

On the face of it, great idea… but I can’t help thinking that DC’s statement that the group was an apolitical force for good, is slightly misleading given the make up of the room and the critical remarks of the current government.

Looking at this from the Indian side, this represents a much cleverer manner to court the Conservatives, rather than the approach they’ve adopted in the past few years of going after them in a more aggressive manner. This, the more subtler approach is probably a reaction to the narrowing in opinion polls, in which it seems we’re headed into hung-parliament territory and not a certain Tory win.

In conversation with Jim O' Neill – emerging markets guru at Goldman Sachs

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Attended a Q&A with Manchester United mad fan – Jim O’ Neill – author of the BRICs report and Chief Economist of the mighty Goldman Sachs, in which he spoke about the I in BRIC. I thought the following was interesting:

He referred to the current economic crisis we’re facing as the “crisis of the developed world”; and highlighted the fact that countries like India were experiencing growth of over 6% at a time in which ours is contracting. Jim referred to this as being “pretty remarkable” as it wasn’t too long ago that economists believed that India wasn’t capable of breaching the so called 3% Hindu rate of growth that she was known of hovering around for a very long time.

In marked contrast to China, India’s growth is a result of her personal consumption. People are still spending money and it’s domestic demand is what’s keeping it going. Interestingly, the current challenges that China is facing, Jim said, was going to be good for the world as it’ll force China to rebalance their dependence on exports.

Often criticised about the inclusion of Russia in his analysis, which shows that despite what’s happened in the last year, Russia has long outperformed Goldman’s first tranche of projections to 2050 – hence keeping those arguing for the removal of the R from his BRICs analysis at bay.

On India, the recently concluded general election was welcomed by the markets, with a surge in the Sensex of approx 20% on the day after the results were announced. Interestingly, Jim’s co-authored a paper titled ‘Ten Things for India to Achieve its 2050 Potential (http://www2.goldmansachs.com/ideas/brics/ten-things-doc.pdf) in which he highlights the need for improved governance as one of these factors.

He was asked as to what indicators would demonstrate that India was taking this seriously, which was a brilliant question that needs further consideration. In many senses the answer may be as straightforward as some of India’s biggest crooks – bureaucrats and politicians – having to face penalties for their behavioural failings. O’Neill said he would start thinking of this and perhaps write something on this matter. Please leave any comments on this post if you have any ideas.

Also asked of the real impact of being surrounded by some very populous countries, he reiterated that the potential for the entire sub-continent being lifted onto a different plane if cross-border trade could be encouraged, was noted and well received.

The briefing was taking place a day after the first BRICs summit, in which the Heads of Brazil, Russia, China, and India were meeting to discuss substantive matters such as the establishment of an alternative currency to the Dollar. In response to a question on the potential of this bloc, his analysis explained that Brazil and Russia were commodity rich, whereas India and China weren’t, which suggested that if they were to work together to realise synergies like this, then the grouping would have a dramatic effect on global economics.

In addition, he highlighted that any discussion on tackling climate change without these four economies would be futie. He joked that it was time that international institutions like the G7 & G8, the UN, IMF could do more than just “invite them for coffee on the sidelines”, which drew a few sniggers from the audience.

There’s not many people on this planet that could take the credit for coining the name of an international summit that brings together future superpowers together to discuss major issues that should concern all of us.

For this and more, Jim – we salute you.

Being such a smart guy, it beats me why you’d want to support Manchester United! Viva Barcelona 🙂

Slumdog Millionaire Shines for India

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What a film! I finally got around to watching Slumdog Millionaire last night and have to say that for once, the film exceeded all the hype that’s been thrusted on us since its release.

Quite uncharacteristically for a Gujarati to shower superlatives on someone else, but I have to break tradition and insist that we salute Danny Boyle for his direction, AR Rahman for a beautiful sountrack, and of course, Vikas Swarup for writing the book in the first place.

I can understand the reasons that some people – mainly Indians – are kicking off about the film – it shows India’s shameful poverty like no other film has – and in these times of intoxicating economic growth – I can see why they’d want a better narrative to portray India, but let’s not forget that a third of the world’s poor reside in the motherland.

Not surprisingly, those non-Indians who’ve watched the film – who i’ve spoken with over the past few weeks, have all said that despite the poverty depicted, they’d love to visit India.

Even if Slumdog walks away without winning any Oscars this year, this film will have done more for India and Bollywood than the past two decades of films (since Gandhi), heavy investment for the Incredible India advertising campaigns, her cricketing prowess, and diplomacy of India’s elite foreign service, all bundled together!

I recently interviewed Kishore Lulla, CEO of Eros, which is India’s most successful film production and distribution company, for a book I’m writing on Indian business going global, and it was he, who prophetically said that India’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would come from nowhere – a total suprise at a totally unexpected time. Looks like he may have been right.

Slumdog, at least in my opinion, should surpass the impact of Crouching Tiger, as it speaks volumes not just about the Indian film industry but for modern India as a whole, unlike its Chinese equivalent, which for me demonstrated how far its industry had come along. In the case of Slumdog, its not Danny Boyle, Anil Kapoor, or even Dev Patel that’s on show, the story is simply about India.

Brilliant film, a must see for anyone interested in India.