Slum demolitions to spruce up a city hosting a mega-sporting event, long-running efforts to get a telecom company to pay back taxes, corruption in infrastructure contracts – reporters have been following these stories for years in India. But a series of recent articles along these lines didn’t actually take place here. India Real Time presents a round-up of pieces likely to make you think, “This really didn’t happen in India?”
Can you guess where these stories took place? If not, scroll down to the end of the post.
1. Officials here want to build a “world-class” city: Ahead of a huge sporting competition that will focus the world’s attention on this country, officials in the chaotic host megacity are trying to clean it up, hoping to impress foreign investors. The games are “an exceptional opportunity” to show off a “modernized” city, a city official told the Economist last week. “There will be criticisms, but the city’s image is being transformed.”
Among the criticisms: they haven’t started building a key stadium yet, and the homes oflong-time slum dwellers are being torn down as part of the games preparation. Soundfamiliar? Hmm, will they chivvy away beggars and street vendors too?
2. But efforts to improve “decrepit” infrastructure are held up by corruption: In a major corruption scandal that came to light last year, officials at a key ministry were demanding a 5% kickback to award contracts – and disbursed the cash from carts wheeled down the ministry’s corridors. Also, “businesses must cope with awful roads, high energy costs, archaic labor laws and a Byzantine bureaucracy,” the Economist complained. Indian equivalents: too many to link to.
3. With investors wary, the government is chasing subsidiaries of foreign firms for tax revenues: One of this country’s largest mobile providers, an affiliate of a European-headquartered telecom company, is battling efforts to get it to cough up hefty back taxes and penalties, sending its shares down on Monday. (The Indian equivalent)
4. Still, foreign firms are drawn here in spite of the red tape and other problems because individual consumption is on the rise. A booming middle-class – 40 million people have joined its ranks in the last decade — is fueling a boom in beauty in personal care products and services here, reported Agence France-Presse. That’s happening in India, too.
5. And this difficult environment is spawning life skills that could lead to innovation, particularly for the poor. If you want to navigate through the intricacies of life here, such as major red tape, innovation experts and expats say you need to master a key local life skill – it involves being canny, pushy and slightly shady. For example, suggests this writer, you’re at the end of a long bank queue and you spot a colleague way ahead of the line. Naturally you move forward to strike up a conversation with said colleague. At its best though, it’s a form of ingenuity that finds ways around the country’s many problems, observers say. Is there an Indian equivalent, you ask? Surprise, surprise, there is.
So where did these stories take place? The answer, in each case, is Brazil.India tends to stack itself against China – not surprising since, superficially at least, they have a lot in common. They’re both major emerging markets in Asia with gigantic populations. But the differencesbetween these two countries are also very vast, comprising everything from their Olympic medal counts to the absolute numbers of poor people in each.
Culturally, Brazil and India seem to have much more in common, although there’s a lot India can learn from Brazil, whether it’s from a real estate developer who’s “betting on maids,” or how to implement BRT bus corridors, since Rio’s Transoeste is apparently getting “high marks.” And the reverse is no doubt true as well.
Brazil: Apparently it’s just like India, with skimpier clothing (but the same passion for Swarovski crystals).
Have you seen news stories in recent days that sound like they should have taken place in India but didn’t? Share them in the Comments section.
Follow India Real Time on Twitter @indiarealtime.
Source: blogs.wsj.com
No comments:
Post a Comment