The Developing India
The Tata Group of India has entered the final fray of buying JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) from Ford. Jaguar and Land Rover are arguably the royalties among the current noveau riche crop of car marquees. In the same breath, the Tata Group has unveiled the one-lakh-rupee (BD1,000) car.
Priced at $2,500 the car is the cheapest ever made in the world. This mass model will leave Model T, or the people's carrier VW Beetle far behind in its utter vision of democratising the car market. Straddling opposite, often paradoxical poles has been a forte of the Tatas - from small cars to heavy vehicles, tea to information technology, steel to hotels and much more from the portfolio of the Tatas. Tata is only an example or rather on-the-face manifestation of how this world constantly juggles with paradoxes.
We do not have to go far. Last evening, a European colleagues of mine, was narrating his experience at a health centre he had visited in the course of his CPR formalities. He said he had not expected such an unending sweaty queue of blue collared sub-continental CPR aspirants. I informed him that some of those aspirants may have spent close to $ 2,500 by mortgaging their only house or some precious jewellery, just to get themselves a life of physical toil so that they can feed their children or provide some medical care to their ailing parents - and mind you I am not getting sentimental about the whole thing because most of us staying in Bahrain for more than two years have numbed ourselves off to this all pervasive reality.
The other day I was exchanging notes on real estate with a South African colleague (aren't we all doing it these days during most of our leisure time!). He informed me that a good spacious villa can be had for $ 0.5 million in Johannesburg. I was surprised, but not to the extent he was, when I told him that it's literally impossible to buy a villa in Mumbai and some regular sized apartments are priced more than $12m! Dichotomies and more dichotomies.
Much is being said about India gearing to be the new superpower, about its galloping economy, about the success Indian businesses are meeting all over the world, the increasing numbers of Indian executives at all levels in all sectors in all countries and the role they have played in creating modern Gulf economies, as business managers or brick layers. Paradoxically, this same country carries the ignominy of approximately 250m population below the poverty line and the same country has its citizens living dismal lives in foreign countries. To people with deeper insights, above stories are only pieces of an iceberg - threads in the fabric of paradox which makes the world of reality. Any passing alien will be dumb found when he sees filthy ghettoes behind the shining Manhattan skyscrapers, dusty faces of Sierra Leone miners striving for shining precious things called diamond, desperate workers on the scaffoldings making the world's tallest sky kissers, impoverished farmers (hundreds commit suicide every year in India seeing their kids bellowing with hunger) tilling the land to fill the world's stomach, workers spreading greenery in the desert sweating in the sweltering Gulf sun.
Maybe that's the way the Creator had intended it. Or maybe it's just a fleeting aberration in the long (some say more than 4.6 billion years old already) march of time. I saw my son being born six months back and I also saw a suicide bomber exploding himself,at Benazir Bhutto's rally.
Priced at $2,500 the car is the cheapest ever made in the world. This mass model will leave Model T, or the people's carrier VW Beetle far behind in its utter vision of democratising the car market. Straddling opposite, often paradoxical poles has been a forte of the Tatas - from small cars to heavy vehicles, tea to information technology, steel to hotels and much more from the portfolio of the Tatas. Tata is only an example or rather on-the-face manifestation of how this world constantly juggles with paradoxes.
We do not have to go far. Last evening, a European colleagues of mine, was narrating his experience at a health centre he had visited in the course of his CPR formalities. He said he had not expected such an unending sweaty queue of blue collared sub-continental CPR aspirants. I informed him that some of those aspirants may have spent close to $ 2,500 by mortgaging their only house or some precious jewellery, just to get themselves a life of physical toil so that they can feed their children or provide some medical care to their ailing parents - and mind you I am not getting sentimental about the whole thing because most of us staying in Bahrain for more than two years have numbed ourselves off to this all pervasive reality.
The other day I was exchanging notes on real estate with a South African colleague (aren't we all doing it these days during most of our leisure time!). He informed me that a good spacious villa can be had for $ 0.5 million in Johannesburg. I was surprised, but not to the extent he was, when I told him that it's literally impossible to buy a villa in Mumbai and some regular sized apartments are priced more than $12m! Dichotomies and more dichotomies.
Much is being said about India gearing to be the new superpower, about its galloping economy, about the success Indian businesses are meeting all over the world, the increasing numbers of Indian executives at all levels in all sectors in all countries and the role they have played in creating modern Gulf economies, as business managers or brick layers. Paradoxically, this same country carries the ignominy of approximately 250m population below the poverty line and the same country has its citizens living dismal lives in foreign countries. To people with deeper insights, above stories are only pieces of an iceberg - threads in the fabric of paradox which makes the world of reality. Any passing alien will be dumb found when he sees filthy ghettoes behind the shining Manhattan skyscrapers, dusty faces of Sierra Leone miners striving for shining precious things called diamond, desperate workers on the scaffoldings making the world's tallest sky kissers, impoverished farmers (hundreds commit suicide every year in India seeing their kids bellowing with hunger) tilling the land to fill the world's stomach, workers spreading greenery in the desert sweating in the sweltering Gulf sun.
Maybe that's the way the Creator had intended it. Or maybe it's just a fleeting aberration in the long (some say more than 4.6 billion years old already) march of time. I saw my son being born six months back and I also saw a suicide bomber exploding himself,at Benazir Bhutto's rally.
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