Reimagining India was Foremost on the Mind, a Week After Historic Elections

By Jawahar Malhotra

HOUSTON: A week after the historic elections in India which saw the Bharati Janata Party catapult into the helm of the nation in a landslide victory, curiosity was rampant at the perfectly timed launch of the book “Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower” in front of an audience of a little over 200 people at the Asia Society’s auditorium on Southmore in the Museum District.

“The book was two years in the making”, said Adil Zainulbhai, the former chairman of McKinsey India who emceed the panel discussion onstage and set the tone for each panelist to express their opinions and later follow it up with a brief question and answer period in the two-hour long program held on Thursday, May 22, in the evening.

Indian Consul General Parvathaneni Harish opened the program up appreciating the timing of the event. He commented on the essay on Kansas, saying that was coincidental that his office has jurisdiction over Kansas and that he was struck by finding a few Indian doctors practicing in the rural countryside. “It struck me then”, he recalled, “that in India, a similar policy to send doctors to rural areas to practice for a few years was met with severe objections”.

Written in the same concise and proficient manner and style in which the same team wrote the 2011 book Reimagining Japan: The Quest for a Future That Works, this latest book on India features interviews with some of the same corporate leaders, such as Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz but adds interviews and essays by famous India industrialists and corporate leaders as well as intellectuals from across the globe in the six chapters that the 432 page book is broken down into.

Many would enjoy the insights into the phenomenon that is modern day India by writers like Fareed Zakaria who wrote The Rediscovery of India or In Search of the Indian Dream by Anand Giridharada or We’re Not In Kansas Anymore by Howard Shultz and The Paradise of the Middle Class by Manu Joseph, to name just a few of the 60 essays that are contained in the book which was released in November last year. It is also full of the statistics that you would expect from a production that came from the esteemed McKinsey & Company.

The panel discussion in Houston was put together by the President Emerita of the Asia Society, Vishaka N. Desai, who was instrumental in making the new home of the Houston Asia Society come to reality. She is a Special Advisor for Global Affairs to the President of Columbia University and a Professor of Practice at its School of International and Public Affairs and spoke about the soul of India and its capacity to influence how others perceive, express and pursue culture.

The remaining panelists were Harris County Judge Ed Emmett who has traveled extensively in India and has a son who lives there; Patrick French, a British journalist, writer and historian who has written a book, India – A Portrait, in 2011; Barnik Maitra, a partner in McKinsey’s Mumbai office who spoke about agriculture and agri-business in India and Drayton McLane, the former owner of the Houston Astros and chairman of the McLane Group which is involved in the import and export of foods with India.

Zainulbhai asked the panelists what they would tell the new Indian government to do after they took office on January 26 and to frame their responses in that context. Each was persuasive in their areas of expertise, with McLane saying it was not easy doing business with India, but added that he was impressed with his first experience at the Asia Society’s new building. Emmett said India had lots of government but not enough governance and bad infrastructure. “India was formed from the top down”, he added, “and the US from the bottom up”

Maitra added that there were few famines now, though still a lot of malnutrition, while India was the sixth largest exporter of agri products and that its 3 per cent annual growth could be increased to 5 to 6 per cent. French reflected on India’s independence struggle and the looming aspirations of the mostly young demographic of 100 to 120 million new voters who had ushered in the new government and threw out hereditary politics.

When Zainulbhai asked what three things the new government should address immediately, the answers from the panelists ranged from eliminating bureaucrats, to encouraging entrepreneurs, using talent, change land use, improve employment law, enforce contracts, improve delivery, accountability, the Merchant Marines and logistics and give a boost to wine and coffee production and exports.

In the relatively short discussion which explored ideas in essentially few words and over a whole range of topics, the panelists assumed that the audience, though mostly Indian, had enough of a familiarity with the Indian framework that they could easily follow the arcs of their discussions. Although the discussions were thought provoking, the topics and the myriad of interjections that they elicited have been discussed in many quarters for years and as such, did little to bring forward a unique futuristic perspective that the title of the discussion, Reimagining India, elicited. The book itself, which was on sale in the lobby, promised to provide these answers.