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The Myth of the New India
July 8th, 2006 at 10:52 Björn Hallberg
“INDIA is a roaring capitalist success story.” So says the latest issue of Foreign Affairs; and last week many leading business executives and politicians in India celebrated as Lakshmi Mittal, the fifth richest man in the world, finally succeeded in his hostile takeover of the Luxembourgian steel company Arcelor. India’s leading business newspaper, The Economic Times, summed up the general euphoria over the event in its regular feature, “The Global Indian Takeover”: “For India, it is a harbinger of things to come — economic superstardom.”
This sounds persuasive as long as you don’t know that Mr. Mittal, who lives in Britain, announced his first investment in India only last year. He is as much an Indian success story as Sergey Brin, the Russian-born co-founder of Google, is proof of Russia’s imminent economic superstardom.
This week India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, made it clear that only a small minority of Indians will enjoy “Western standards of living and high consumption.”
Many serious problems confront India. They are unlikely to be solved as long as the wealthy, both inside and outside the country, choose to believe their own complacent myths.
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