outh East Asia Diary

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South East Asia Diary

Counterpoint | Vir Sanghvi

March 3, 2007



I have been travelling to South East Asia for just over 30 years now. And the real revelation for me — over the last couple of years — is how completely the perception of India has altered in the countries we used to call the Asian Tigers.

In the late 1970s and in the 1980s, when I first started travelling through East Asia, India was not even on the radar of the people I met. To be fair, even China was a looming, menacing presence rather than an example to be emulated.

In Hong Kong, in 1976, everyone I met seemed apprehensive about China’s attitude to the colony once the British lease ran out. And over the next decade, the apprehensions only increased. In Singapore, in the 1980s, the mainland Chinese were treated as symbols of a culture gone wrong. In contrast, the overseas Chinese saw themselves as the real winners in Asia. In Thailand, the overseas Chinese ran the country, as they still do, but even they had no respect for mainland China.

Throughout the Eighties, Japan was the big boy on the block. Countries vied to attract Japanese investment. Japanese food, Japanese shops and Japanese habits were the cultural reference points for much of Asia. LN Mittal says that he decided to set up shop in Indonesia because he believed that the high levels of Japanese investment in the country guaranteed a bright economic future. In the 1980s, Bangkok seemed almost like a Japanese colony. Everywhere you went, people looked either to the United States or to Japan.

The Japanese took themselves out of the reckoning when their economy tanked in the 1990s. And the perception of China began to change around the same time when the mainland embraced capitalism and US multinational corporations (though not necessarily in that order). Today, China is on everyone’s mind in South East Asia. I don’t think they like it much more than they did a decade ago. But they recognise that it is a serious threat to their economic future.

Thirty years ago when people in the Far East thought of India, they felt pity. Lee Kuan Yew told an interviewer in the late 1970s that as far as he was concerned, India had missed the bus. In those days, East Asians judged everything on the basis of prosperity. And if you used that measure, then India was clearly the sick man of Asia.

Even the claims we made for ourselves — that we had democracy, the freest press in Asia and a non-aligned independent foreign policy — drew derisive laughter. What use was our democracy when our people went hungry? Could you feed India’s millions with a free press? And what was the point of non-alignment when it was clear that Asia’s future lay with the United States?

Till the end of the 1990s, if you travelled in East Asia you were usually treated as the guest of last resort. At airports, immigration officers would peer closely at you and check your passport to see if it had been tampered with. At airline check-in desks, they would assume that you were travelling economy and were carrying excess baggage. At hotels, nobody paid much attention to Indian guests. We didn’t have the money to matter. We weren’t going to give them much repeat business. And besides, we weren’t even very sophisticated.

The change began at the end of the last decade and gathered momentum in the first years of this century. I noticed it first in all the small things: in the way shop assistants responded to us; in the way that every taxi driver in Singapore no longer assumed that we all wanted to go and buy plastic buckets at Mustafa; in the way that restaurant managers in Hong Kong stopped their usual practice of attending to every other guest before turning their attention to Indians; and in the way that Asian hotel chains began to target Indian guests.

What made the difference?

Several things. The most important, of course, was prosperity. There was a time when no matter which airport you went to anywhere in the world you would find an Indian family sleeping on the floor of the transit lounge while their children ran around noisily. Such sights are much less common these days. Now Indian travellers have money. They fly club class, stay in the best hotels and shop at all the expensive stores. Some studies suggest that Indian tourists are the biggest spenders in such cities as Singapore. I am sure that this is as true of Bangkok, where the tony Siam Paragon mall resembles nothing as much as Bombay Central during the winter months.

Another factor — which we often underestimate — is the change in the attitude of the West to India. Most of East Asia watches the investment patterns of Western companies very closely. And now that the West has decided that India is one of the economic powerhouses of the 21st century, the Asian Tigers have begun to treat us with more respect. The one language they all understand is the language of investment.

A third factor is the influence of expatriate Indians. Nearly everywhere you go in East Asia, you find Indians who are doing well. They occupy top managerial jobs with international corporations. They run the best hotels. They are the wizards of financial services. They are often the best journalists in town. East Asians were used to Indian shopkeepers and businessmen. But the image of India has been reshaped over the last decade by Indian professionals, salaried employees who do a job and who do it well.

A fourth factor is a recognition that East Asia can benefit from India. Temasek, the investment arm of the Singapore government, is one of the biggest investors in India. In Thailand and Malaysia, governments have actively worked at improving trade relations between their countries and India. When Thaksin Shinawatra was Prime Minister of Thailand (he was overthrown by the military a few months ago), he found reasons to visit India on such a regular basis that his Indophilia became a political issue. Two years ago, I attended the Bimstec Summit as part of the media party that accompanied Manmohan Singh. I wasn’t surprised that Manmohan Singh quickly took charge of proceedings at the summit — he was clearly the brightest man in a roomful of Asian leaders — but I was surprised by the extent to which the other heads of government deferred to India.

The fifth factor is the obvious one: software. Five years ago, in Japan, a country where the image of India is largely fixed by the preponderance of curry houses in the big cities, I noted with interest how the many Japanese I met all enquired about our software industry. Many went further. With our software and their hardware, surely India and Japan made a perfect match, they said.

The sixth factor follows from the rise of China. Whatever reservations people in East Asia may have about India’s economic growth, these are nothing compared to their fear of China. They see China as a bully. And they see it as a source of cheap goods that will easily undercut their own manufacturing. The only alternative to China, in economic terms, is India which is not interested in cheap manufacturing and respects international trade protocols. Nearly everywhere I have gone this decade — in Seoul, in Taipei, in Tokyo, in Bangkok and in many other cities — there has always been somebody who has raised the subject of a joint alliance against China.

Can this goodwill towards India last? I believe it can and it will. Nobody ever disliked us — as they do China — and the strongest emotion they felt towards India was pity or a lack of respect. As our economic circumstances have changed, the attitudes of East Asians have also changed. Once, they were the toast of the world. Now, it is India’s turn. And they are shrewd enough to know which horse to back.

At a personal level, I feel a deep sense of vindication when I note the respect with which Indians are now treated in East Asia. For many decades now, I have argued with friends who have claimed that India’s achievements are worthless. Why did we bother with democracy when it put no bread on the table? Who cares about a free press? Much of Asia has done just fine with a tame media.

For years and years, I struggled to explain that as important as prosperity was it was worth nothing unless it was accompanied by freedom and a sense of dignity. I admired the economic achievements of East Asia. But I loathed their corrupt governments, their military dictators, their geriatric strongmen, their utter lack of respect for the human soul and their sterile, unreadable newspapers.

Today, we are poised, at the beginning of the 21st century, to become the only power in Asia to combine liberty with the prospects of massive economic growth.

That is an achievement to be proud of. It is worth more that the smiles on the faces of check-in clerks and the new warmth demonstrated by immigration officers at Asian airports.

Finally, we seem to have done it. And we did it our way.

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Rajeev Narula, Broker, REALTOR®
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Yes It very much true if is a country or a person/individual. Your own relatives will shy away if you are poor.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Rajeev Narula

outh East Asia Diary


Today, we are poised, at the beginning of the 21st century, to become the only power in Asia to combine liberty with the prospects of massive economic growth.

That is an achievement to be proud of. It is worth more that the smiles on the faces of check-in clerks and the new warmth demonstrated by immigration officers at Asian airports.

Finally, we seem to have done it. And we did it our way.

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in 70 and 80's india had knowledge but not the money and infrastructuer.
now india have both so nobody can stop to us......