Will India be the definitive G-20 breakout nation?

 

 

Photo by Navneet Shanu: https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-carriage-wheel-672630/

With the much talked about G-20 summit set to commence in New Delhi on the 9^th of September with the leaders of some 60 countries arriving in the Indian capital, it is a good time to ponder over the question-“Will India be the definitive G-20 breakout nation in the years ahead?”

 The Indian economy is projected to hit a creditable $5 trillion as early as 2027[1] making it the third largest economy in the world, something that the IMF has endorsed. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his part has expressed the hope that India will become a developed country by the year 2047.  Things look headed in the right direction because India is inarguably the fastest-growing large economy in the world at a time when most nations are having a tough time coping with the aftermath of the Covid pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine. China’s economy in particular has slowed down spectacularly on account of its rapidly aging population which has also witnessed a decline in the total number of its people-something that does not augur well for its economy. Add to it, its troubled relationship with the West and most of its neighbours and the country seems headed for serious economic trouble, something its despot of a president is exacerbating with his terrible economic policies.

Can India take China’s place as the growth engine of the world? That may seem like a tall order, but it is best placed amongst all the nations in the G-20 group-both the developed nations of the Western world and the major emerging economies of the world to do so.  India has already shown what it is capable of by building world-class information technology and pharmaceutical industries. Its large and well-educated middle class, a great many of whom are English-speaking helped the country get there. If it could similarly grow its manufacturing ability to match that of China's it could possibly hope to take its place as the world's leading exporter. Another huge advantage that India has over China is the fact that its consumer demand is 15% more than China's at 55% of the economy.[2]

 That India is headed in the right direction is borne out by the fact that it stands a good chance of increasing its share of the global manufacturing export pie with the government seeking to increase manufacturing to 25% of the GDP by 2025, from 17.7% currently.[3]  Given India's size and demographics and its strategically fortuitous geographical position with the major sea routes of the world passing below peninsular India allowing it to not only secure its interests but also use that access as leverage against an overbearing China, there is every reason for it to assert its voice on the world stage.

It has great and increasingly strategic relations with Western and Western-style democracies which are the richest and most liberal nations in the world. The Indian diaspora which is amongst the most educated and well-qualified of all expat communities around the world has reached the top positions in industry, commerce trade and politics in practically every major economy of the world from the US and UK in the West to Singapore in the East. The rise of India unlike the rise of a revisionist and increasingly belligerent China will be looked upon by the world as a stabilizing force for good and therefore welcomed. India is certainly in a good spot right now. How well it rises to the occasion and takes its seat at the high table will become clear in the next few years. Here's hoping for the best.

 

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[1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/finance/road-map-for-5-trillion-economy-focusses-on-growth-and-all-inclusive-welfare-finmin/articleshow/102316785.cms?from=mdr

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/12/india-is-quietly-laying-claim-to-economic-superpower-status

[3] https://press.spglobal.com/2023-08-03-S-P-Global-India-in-a-Defining-Moment-for-its-Ambitions-to-Become-a-Global-Superpower#:~:text=India%20has%20come%20out%20of,will%20rise%20to%20about%20%244%2C500.

Why the world needs India more than China

 

 

Photo by DEBRAJ  ROY: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-walking-on-the-street-14687500/

India and China are two of the world's most ancient civilizations and have a lot in common in the sense that both nations have been in existence a lot longer than all European and most certainly North American ones. They may not have existed as modern nation-states like in the present times, but there certainly was a global recognition of India and China as two well-defined regions of the world since the times of the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians.

Photo by Markus Winkler: https://www.pexels.com/photo/the-forbidden-city-in-beijing-china-5102098/

Both nations made extraordinary discoveries and inventions that helped changed the shape of the world. India gave the world its numerals, the decimal system and the zero, whole China is credited with inventions like paper, gunpowder and the magnetic compass. Both nations suffered the consequences of colonial rule, though this was more direct in the case of India.

For much of their history, there was largely no conflict between the two nations. India was in many ways the spiritual godfather on account of Indian missionary monks introducing Buddhism to China, which quickly became one of its major religions. Buddhist monks, students and pilgrims had been coming to visit the holy Buddhist destinations as well as the great universities at Nalanda and Taxila down the centuries of the first millennium.

This association came to an end with the rise of Muslim power in India and the subsequent destruction and decay of many of the nation's premier ancient universities and monasteries. China and India hardly ever engaged again until after India became independent again when it came face to face with a communist and revisionist power whose ideology could not have been more different from its own. While India came to terms with its colonial past and made peace with it and adopted the best aspects of what its long encounter with the West taught it in the shape of the Westminster model of democracy, a finely developed judicial system, a well-functioning bureaucracy and widespread use of the English language, communist China seethed with indignation and resentment at its colonial past and determined to right historical wrongs, which put it on a confrontation path with almost all of its neighbours and the world beyond.

Its earlier economic policies were disastrous for its people causing famine, death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. It wasn't till it abandoned its command economy model in late 1978 and adopted Western-style capitalism albeit without the accompanying democratic form of government that it managed stupendous economic success that saw it outperform India for a few decades.

India delayed liberalizing its economy till the early 1990s which saw it fall way behind China in the economic race. However, things have come a full circle with the Chinese economy decelerating at a breakneck speed in the post-pandemic period with their supreme leader Xi Jinping reverting to the ways of the command economy even as the Chinese economy goes into a tailspin on account of its ageing population, all-round falling incomes and demand.

 India on the other hand is one of the fastest growing economies of the world with a much younger population all set to propel it to become a $5 trillion economy in the next few years. Besides, it is a vibrant and functioning democracy with a free and vocal press. It has more speakers of the English language than even the United Kingdom giving it a unique advantage over the inscrutable Chinese. India's foreign policy is rules-based and follows none of the wolf warrior diplomacy nonsense that China is known for. In a world fraught with danger where Russia is unravelling at a break-neck speed under its ageing dictator Putin and China facing an economic meltdown, India is a force for stability in the world. 

The US continues to be the sole superpower in the world and with China fast running out of steam, it is in the former's interest to support India via enhanced economic and defence ties, apart from the already strong cultural ties on account of the large Indian diaspora in that nation. The same is true of Europe, Australia, Japan, South East Asia and even the Middle East. Where does that leave China? Nowhere.

 

Getting Famous Online

The Internet can be used to get famous. Really famous. There are several ways of doing that. Some have been well documented and in the last chapter we discussed the attributes required to get famous. Given below are five unknown, very fun, but highly effective ways of getting famous, leveraging the potential of the Internet.

Videos that go viral

We come across these supposedly accidentally shot videos of someone doing something remarkable without noticing  that they are being filmed. The person may be doing somersaults on the roof of a high rise building practising his flips right next to a sheer 100 foot drop, oblivious to the danger and enjoying his routine. Somebody uploads it and the clip has millions of hits online. Soon the man’s identity is known and he becomes a household name, and the media are at his door with interview requests, and he is even asked to lecture school kids on the benefits of exercise. Sounds far fetched but this is how the phenomenon of viral videos pans out. And mind you these are invariably pre-planned and anything but spontaneous.

Now what is noteworthy here is that a viral video can make you very famous in the proverbial overnight time span, and if you can successfully effect one you have had it made. If one were to learn from the various examples of successful viral videos one will realise that it is not really that difficult to pull it off.One of the ground rules to follow is that the length has to be kept short what with people’s short attention spans and the veritable deluge of viral videos that has descended upon us.

 It has to be remembered that a video is not inherently viral. It has to be worked upon and made that way. A whopping 3 billion videos are viewed on YouTube everyday! How do you make yours viral in such a scenario. The content needs to be reached to the right target audience first for it to receive the right push that will make it viral.

To ensure that the video gets the initial attention, it does of course have to create a

good first impression. Then the description or transcription that accompanies the video is important too and the key words should be chosen with care. Remember that YouTube is also a social medium. So get the conversation flowing back and forth by initiating it and actively participating in it. Get the traffic flowing so that it eventually it reaches viral proportions.

Take the case of the Star Wars kid video which got viewed a 900 million times. And what was it about. A fat kid foolishly waving his stick about again and again proving that there is vast market even for stupidity. See how much better you are then. You probably have something useful to showcase. Justin Bieber apparently had the same idea when his video of the song Baby was put up on YouTube, paving the way for him to become the pop sensation he is today. He started off with 50 million page views. The examples are umpteen actually

Or take the case of Amber Lee Ettinger whose video depicting her love for President Obama was viewed 14 million times. Then there is the case of Ted Willimas, the man with the amazing voice who got a job as an MSNBC anchor thanks  to his viral video on YouTube. So we see that viral video are a proven and extremely effective way of gaining fame, provided one is able to use it the right way

Go Blog

Blogging is one of the simplest and most effective ways of getting famous, and the best part is that you could be anybody-the average Joe or the wiz-kid of the block; both of you have an equal chance to hit it big by blogging. The basic premise is that there have to be numerous people who are more or less like you and would respond positively and appreciatively to what you put up on your blog.

The way to achieve success is by updating your blog on a regular and consistent basis and by focusing on quality. It might take some time for you to build up your audience, but you will get there if you persevere. The trick is to socialise. Comment on other people’s blogs and get them to comment on yours. Let people know about your blog but do not over do it. Use the right vehicles like Facebook and Twitter to reach your message to a vast audience in an unobtrusive way.

It might also be a good idea to enable sharing buttons on your website. That apart you can share links with other websites. When you do that traffic gets diverted from your site to the ones that are linked. Those sites will get to know of this through a ping back and they may in turn get interested in yours. This way you create a virtuous cycle. Putting together a side-bar embellished with link widgets takes you a step further.

While it is all very well to be blogging regularly you should monitor the direction that your efforts are taking. Find out what constitutes the major portion of your traffic, and customise your posts to cater for that section. It also pays to be a bit smart. For instance you can closely study the strategy applied by the most successful bloggers and try and replicate it. It might work wonderfully for you and in double quick time too.

 Another way of getting noticed by the right people is to occasionally blog as a guest on other sites, which have synergy with your blog. This will put you in direct contact with just the target audience you have always drooled over. This will be your chance to win them over.

In essence blogging is something where time is on your side and you can and will willy nilly make a great success of your blog, if that is what you want to do. Really one of the best ways to get famous.

The truth of this is borne out by the many success stories of bloggers who have become celebrities in their own right by the very power of their blog posts. The most famous blog in the world is the Huffington post, which specialises in breaking news pertaining to a wide array of subjects-world news, entertainment, business, politics and fashion. Started by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerra and Jonah Perreti in 2005, the blog was acquired by AOL in 2011 for $315 million. Then there is the Micahel Arrington founded technology blog Tech Crunch with a whopping $4.5 million subscribers, which was again acquired by AOL for $25 million in 2005. You have traffic, the biggies will be waiting in the wings to pay you a huge some for your coveted blog. That is the way the cookie usually crumbles if you can show substantial traffic to your site.

For the gadgets aficionado there is Engadget, the blog started by the former Gizmodos editor Peter Rojas, provides information on everything that there is to know about electronic gadgetry. The popularity of the blog can be gauged by the fact that it operates ten other blogs in English and six other languages. This blog too is one of the famous purchases of AOL.

The point in sharing these examples is to showcase the tremendous power of a blog in terms of how famous it can make you and the kind of revenue you can possibly generate. Now not everyone will possibly be this successful, but one can understand that a fair degree of success is possible for anyone who is able to follow the methodologies discussed above. The degree of success of course depends upon the degree of innovation and capacity to leverage displayed by the individual.

 Nothing like Entertaining

If there is anything that people take to instantly, be it the offline world or online world it has to be entertainment. Music, dance, food, fashion and culture make the world go. And if you can put up stuff online that people find genuinely entertaining you are set to achieve success, fame and wealth.

If you are a comedian or a singer or perhaps a painter there is no better way of acquiring a fan base, than being on the Internet. People have this urge to know the smallest detail about famous entertainers-their hobbies, their food habits, their hang out joints and what it is that they wear. If you can get a sizable group of people genuinely interested in your craft, you will have them eating out of your hand, by leveraging such information on the Internet.

Get across to your target audience by writing blogs about your performances, posting videos. Give them a glimpse into your life- your joint performances with other artists, any new deals you may have signed;the works. 

You have got to remember that your success and livelihood depends upon your fans being happy. So take full advantage of this interactive platform and get to know your fans up close and personally. Respond to their comments and criticism, chat with them online, send them mails, do everything it takes to keep them hooked on to you and see where that gets you.

The thing that is of paramount importance for you should be of identifying the right niche and segment that you want to focus your energies on. If for example you are excellent at rock ballads but can sing hip hop too, rather than diluting your image by catering to both the segments, it would make sense to focus on your core competency. You will naturally attract more and better quality traffic with something you are really good at rather than in dabbling in several things you are only average at. In economics this is referred to as the theory of the comparative cost advantage.

Once you are sure of your genre, you have got to give it your all. Use blogging, social media,  and YouTube for all its worth and try and form associations everywhere. A multi pronged online approach will create opportunities which will sometimes exceed your wildest expectations. A singer might be approached by a multinational record label,  and a cookery blogger might get approached by a TV company for his own show.

The online world has so many examples of people fulfilling dreams of a lifetime simply by being on the Internet. The website College Humor was founded by  Baltimore high school friends Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen as a means of keeping in touch. Today it has grown significantly and receives 8 million male visitors between the ages of 18 and 24 every month. And how do they entertain? By popularising a novelty foam hand by parodying the well known ‘We’re no 1’ foam hands sold at sporting events. 

They actually used an inside joke of college students and turned it into something else. Last heard they had signed a deal with Paramount Pictures which has to do with making movies on college humour.Take the unique case of self proclaimed ‘pirate’ George Ouzounian or Mddoz who hails from Salt Lake City, Utah. He created the website, The Best Page in the universe-the name has its origin in the now defunct Yahoo policy of blocking sites which had the word best as part of the title. 

So this started off as a form of protest and took on a life of its own and eventually made one of the most controversial and visited sites because of its often vitriolic content that targets detractors. The point to be noted is that notoriety is the flip side of fame, but as long as you get the traffic and don’t break any laws, you will be attractive to marketers who will want to be a part of the action.

A similar example is that of Rotton a website dedicated to morbid curiosities. Revolting perhaps, but there are people who are drawn to this. It was started in the California Bay Area in 1996 and has grown into this great purveyor of the macabre with a dedicated fan base. Now there are regular entertainers like actors, singers, performing artists, fashion designers and of course regular people like you and me and not just the weird  eccentrics, who use the Internet to entertain, inform and engage.

You think  you have what it takes to become an entertainer make the Internet your friend. It is cheap, easily accessible and can put you in instant touch with your prospective audience. Plus you get real time feedback on your performance which you can effectively use to improve your act and make it more in line with what people want. If you get it right, in time you are bound to grow big.

Be a specialist

The Internet is a world that is teeming with people’s posts, blogs, articles, pictures, videos, e-books, games and some not so savoury content. How do you get noticed in this bewildering maze of content. Going back to the economic theory of the advantages of comparative cost, by specialising in a particular niche. Now what can that niche be? It is something that you are particularly good at. Something that you can call your own. You are so good and adept at providing that product and service there is no one else who can replace you.

The online world is driven by content or information. If you are effectively meeting specific requirements of a set of people better than anyone else be it in the shape of music that your produce or game that you create, then for that particular niche you are irreplaceable. The fact of the matter is that your target audience expects you to be an expert. So you had better be, by doing research and refining your skills. Make it your niche and yours alone and nobody else’s. 

Once you have the above sorted out and have traffic in place you can go ahead and make money from this traffic. This can be done by signing up for an affiliate program that lets advertisers place their advertisements on your site for a consideration. Not only do you make money by marketing the product or service, you also specialise in leveraging the traffic to your site to earn more money-a win-win situation for you.

You can learn from the examples of others  who have done wonderfully well for themselves by focusing on the right niche. You would be surprised that some of the best examples of niche marketing are not small timers but large corporations. Take the case of the remarkable revival in the sales of its computers by Apple. They designed silver boxes as replacement for the old black boxes which were perceived as boring and Steve Job went after designers and  Microsoft geeks and eventually re-established Apple. Or take the case of Groupon which made online coupons fashionable in preference over boring old paper coupons. Their niche? Local businesses whom they wooed with their creative writing style. Or take the case of Etsy which came as a godsend for  crafters and buyers. No longer did crafters have to depend upon summer markets and farmers markets for their income.

A classic example is Hotmail the pioneering email service provider. Sabeer Bhatia the Indian immigrant techie in the United States quickly realised the humongous possibilities by making the email a ubiquitous service that it is know. From being nearly broke to having Microsoft buy his small set up in a multi million dollar deal, Sabeer Bhatia’s is a classic tale of how correctly identifying a niche for you to exploit can one day make you a fortune.

Be special

Following up on the above where one talked about creating or discovering one’s own niche; this cannot and will not happen unless your product or service is unique and in a class of its own. Before you come to as to what makes you or your offering unique, we need to address a more basic question. Who are the people that you plan to serve? For example if you plan to be an author, you cannot be writing about everything under the sun and expect to make any headway. There would be so many like you who wouldn’t have the slightest clue about what the profile of their average reader would be. 

However if you want to be known as an author who writes books whose characters hail from Brisbane, you would be able to identify your target audience-the people of Brisbane. Now you can go all out and woo the people of Brisbane. How many authors would there all of whose characters would be from Brisbane? That would make you unique. You would be able to through you books on the city explore different facets of it. Its history, its people, its culture, its cuisine,  its entertainment hot-spots and so on.  You could literally go to town with snippets from your forthcoming books, information about the real life people and events that inspired you, the part of Brisbane you grew up in and other like trivia. By and by you would create a unique position as the definitive voice on Brisbane.

I

f you are looking for examples of uniqueness saving the day for websites, the successful ones are all unique. Take the case of Facebook which propounded a unique model of online social networking. Today there may be many copycat sites. But can they replicate even a tiny fraction of the success that accrued to it? Not a chance!. Because they were clearly not unique.

Well Facebook may be a legendary example, but there are many many more which validate the contention that being unique is the first step taken towards online celebrity and fame. Take the case of Saddleback Leather, the leather bag company par excellence. There is no other lather bag company that manages to have its aura, its personality and its fan base. Log into the website and you will come across bull fights in Mexico, travel in third world countries, the everyday joys of life and heart warming anecdotes about the owner’s pet Labrador Blue. What further touches a sympathetic chord with its core audience: ‘They will fight over it when you are dead!’

If there can be so much passion and uniqueness attributed to handbag The Mast Brothers can be forgiven their obsession with hand crafted chocolate. For that is indeed their USP,  marketing jargon that stands for Unique Selling Proposition. Rick and Michael Mast convey that “we’re from the 18th century, back when craftspeople were revered and took pride in working with their hands.” That line conveys their uniqueness unequivocally.  They drive in the uniqueness of their product by travelling by sailboat to foreign shoes to being home the best cocoa possible for their chocolates. Now wouldn’t their clientele be theirs and theirs alone for life. They naturally have gone to town on the Internet publicising the uniqueness of their products in the most unique way possible.

You may think that this is an over the top and eccentric way to prove that you are unique, but when the stakes are high can it be otherwise? Work out your uniqueness quotient before you even begin to think of making mass contact. That being said, there is nothing in this world that stops you from finding your niche.  The Internet universe is a much fairer and more democratic organism than what has ever evolved over the eons, and everybody has a fair chance at communicating with like minded individuals. This is the Internet’s greatest strength. Make it yours

Does the economy look okay?

When you look around yourself do you get the sense that you live in a BRIC economy that is attracting all the capital in the world and where people are enthralled at the prospect of many years of growth or do you feel a sense of despondency around you? You really can't tell, can you? The mega scams of the last few years, the cynical electoral deals that the political parties make, and the recent near collapse of the rupee-things don't look do good, do they?

Yet the good times too don't end either. Car makers keep on announcing new models. People are still buying their second or third homes. Eating out has not diminished, and despite the hike in air-fares, people are  travelling more than before. At the same time we all do find the going tough in our jobs and our businesses. Orders come after a struggle, every penny is fought over. Clients cancel or renegotiate contracts and the payments take their time in coming in.

Fuel prices do a yo-yo dance, food inflation has been high for far too long now with things like fruits priced almost beyond the range of the common man. The Indian middle and upper middle classes are holding on to their recently acquired affluence(tennis clubs and swimming pools in gated housing community projects) by somehow hanging in there. The poor and the underprivileged (as also the lower middle class) must be growing through harrowing times in an era when inflation is highest with respect to food items.

While in many sectors like housing and infrastructure there is a noticeable slowdown one sees a veritable explosion in the health and education sectors, with international tie-ups, bench-marks and affiliations being bandied about with gay abandon by every trader and builder who has entered the fray- beware Ivy League, here come the best universities in the world. Viva Ghaziabad, Noida, Faridabad, Jalandhar and perhaps Meerut!

India is a young country in terms of its demographic profile.With a huge market like this where the majority of the people are in the earning age-group, everybody in the world wants a finger in the pie. Never mind things like the suitability of the products and services to the market. But all the same any investment and economic activity does create jobs and there is development no matter how lop-sided.

So how does the citizen of this country feel? Where Jaguar and Jugad(locally assembled auoto-motive contraptions), Lear jets and bullock-carts(still find them not far from any urban centres), call-centers and manual scavenging, computers and  medieval mind-sets all compete for attention. Does he feel that the economy is rocking? Or is he as clueless as you and I?