India a Sleeping Giant ?

23 April 2007 - 17:32

India - Dreams of Empire ?

This is my first post on what is for me a new topic - India. Let me make a couple of things clear from the outset - I am not Indian (I was born in the UK in 1950 from British parents and have no ancestral connection with India) and I have never been to India ! A bit strange maybe for someone with a blog about India ? I do, however, have a connection with India through my philsophical and spiritual leanings, mainly through the teachings of advaita. I also have a great respect for India, it is just one of the strange quirks of my life that I have never been there.

This blog will deal with news and developments in India in all areas, though mainly in the area of business. It is clear to anyone living in the UK that India with a population of 1 billion will have an enormous influence in the coming century. Here in the UK everyday we see more jobs being outsourced to India, for two obvious reasons. Wages are much lower in India than in the UK (around 10 - 25% of what people earn over here so I believe - I read not so longer ago that you can lead a comfortable life in India on US$ 300 a month - in England you need twice that just to rent somewhere to live) and English is spoken more or less throughout India. As a result, and because of the improved global telecommunications systems, a lot of service sector jobs that used to be done in the UK are now being done in India, particularly in areas such as banking, insurance, computing and online teaching. I suspect there are already some people in England who have emigrated or are considering emigrating to India.

I will not be going into the rights and wrongs of outsourcing, I will just be commenting on new, and hopfeully interesting, developments as I see them and as I hear about them. Things change and at the moment India is reaping economic and financial benefits from these changes. It would be nice if these economic and financial benefits were to help the population at large, but given that this is capitalism that we are altking about, I won't be holding my breath on that one. Although I expect there will be some genral improvement in living standards. But we haven't got rid of poverty and exploitation here in the West yet, so I don't expect it to disappear in the East any time soon either. Life sucks and then you die ? Maybe not, how about - life sucks and then you realize it was only a dream anyway ? For those who have no knowledge of Hinduism, that is more or less the central message (comments welcome !). Life sucks and if you realize it is a dream/illusion then you are free of it, if you don't realize it then you are re-born again and again until you do. So if you fancy living in India, then maybe you will, next time round.

So right at this moment in time I've got to get back to my day job, but I hope to be posting something 'interesting' soon.

Have a good day !