The Dosa Man

My wife's parents threw an amazing party the other night, complete with freshly made dosa.  The man behind the dosa had this great touch where he'd use the little bowl to ladle the batter onto the griddle then smack it a few times and use the flat back of the little bowl to spread the batter, like a crepe paddle.

That was a party.

Optimism & Jugaad

A newly released pole quantifies the optimism I mentioned in my earlier post on India. The Mint has a basic recap here. For a full copy of the survey conducted by London's Legatum Group, look here.

The Mint piece mentions jugaad, which is a Hindi word meaning basically "a quick and dirty fix." It's analogous to our "Yankee ingenuity" or the "can-do spirit" but implies a bit more in the way of obstacles.

I heard about jugaad from a number of people while I was in India. Its implication can vary widely. Some people use it positively, like Yankee Ingenuity. It can also be sardonic as hell.

Hopefully, the optimists win out. The Legatum survey suggests that entrepreneurs are nearly unanimous in wanting a more responsive and less corrupt government. As this constituency becomes more powerful, that may well come to pass.

Also, IBM is extending its start-up partnership program to India. That should give India start-ups some necessary infrastructural support and access to clients they currently lack.

Links

There was a very good article in yesterday'sNY Times about the testing culture in India's middle class, focusing on the need for more good colleges and universities to handle the country's huge young population. Random impressive statistic: 320,000 students applied for I.I.T.'s 8,000 open spots.

The university overcrowding was behind the Cabinet's recent decision to open up higher education to foreign universities--three cheers for another protectionist barrier falling!

To drive home the connection between university quality and development, here's an article from the January Economist about the "Engineering Gap" between the U.S. and India.

But that is not just an issue for outsourced jobs--the Indian tech sector still lags behind in creating new technologies despite its huge domestic market.

Red Tape Indian-Style

Certain times in history belong to specific places. Chicago in the 1890s, New York in the '50's, Paris in the '20s; where all the varied currents in the world seem to come together in one spot and define a moment. Right now the moment belongs to the BRICs; Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

To visit India now is heady stuff. In Mumbai they are repaving the airport's runway with a gang of women using hand tools and baskets full of gravel on their heads. But the airport is busy with new low-fare airlines, and increased middle class air travel is pushing that expansion. An Indian wine industry is gaining real traction.

Our generation is the last to know a pre-reform India--a country that derided its own stagnant economy as the "Hindu rate of growth." There was nothing inherently Indian about the poverty, though. It was the country's forty-year experiment in socialism that held it back. Rampant protectionism, planned economies, and a self-propagating bureaucracy strangled an economy that, at independence in 1947, was one of the developing world's most vibrant and industrialized. Now the restraints are falling away.