I was recently talking to an Indian friend who resides in America – he has been harping about coming back to India (Majority of them do, but very few actually come back). During our conversation, I realized one thing – He (like many others) is not very confident about prospects in India back home.
He asked a simple question to me –
Yes, it is true that India is one of the fastest growing nations and agreed that it is currently the land of opportunities, but do you think India can even be half as advanced and prosperous as US even in next 50 years ?
He went on to justify his point giving examples of Indian Infrastructure, Common man’s mentality, Corruption at every step of the way (CWG was his prime target), government’s apathy towards entrepreneurship etc etc… His point was – He wants to come back to India, but all these ground realities don’t allow him to.
I listened to everything he said and honestly nothing he said was wrong. There is no doubt we have problems in plenty, but there are also many things that make us tick.
To counter his point of view – I tried telling him about how we need people here who could bring about a change, Government initiatives like the UID project that are underway, which promise to bring down corruption to a very large extend. I also gave him rundown on some of the World class Infrastructure projects that are underway currently in India – harped about our Young working Population which probably is the biggest success factors going forward etc etc
Like in most cases – our conversation ended with status quo. Both agreed and at the same time disagreed.
Today morning, I came across this report which mentioned that India is the second most favoured FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) destination in the world just behind China.
Foreign Individuals and Companies across the world view India as one of the countries with most potential and they are betting by putting their money on India.
The Big question is –
Are we, the Indians, betting on India as much as the foreigners are?