India: The Land of Snake Charmers or the Outsourcing Hub of the World?

India: The Land of Snake Charmers or the Outsourcing Hub of the World?

Steven Spielberg the great Hollywood Veteran Director/ Producer of the famous Movie “Indiana Jones” portrayed India as a land of Poverty, Diseases and famously projected it as a land of snake charmers. India for more than century long has been viewed in the same fashion by majority of Westerners who looked at India from the narrated stories and visuals point of view. The most common perception about India is that it is a country comprising of a large number of chronic diseases, a large portion of the slums and poor people, a backward society with poor political system and so on.

But if we truly investigate into reality and carefully analyse what India is and what it poses as potential to be in future, we would see an India which is quite opposite of the old perception which people from west poses still today. Let me take you through few examples of What India was, is and what India would be in near future.

To Start with let me take you to the history of Yale University (One of the most reputed University in the World). Today the Westerners feel proud about their Universities and Education system, but if we keenly analyse the History of Yale University, we may find that there wouldn’t have been something called as Yale University if a country like India wouldn’t exist. Elihu Yale – one of the first founder members of the Yale University was for 20 long years the Governor of the “British East India Company”. When Cotton Mather, who represented a small institution, the Collegiate School of Connecticut approached Mr.Yale for funds for buying a new building for setting up an institution in New Haven, Yale provided him with a carton of goods produced in India which Mather sold for huge amount in his country and set up an University and Named it after Elihu Yale, today called as “Yale University”. Thus British-India Trade facilitated launching of Yale University.

That was the century old example of the greatness of India and what the west owe to India in the form of respect. If we look at the power of India today, then a lot such examples flash in front of the world. I was going through a book titled “Billions of Entrepreneurs” written by Tarun Khanna where one small story about how Mahindra and Mahindra Tractors ruled out John Deere in America in terms of sales. John Deere world’s leading manufacturer of agriculture equipments lost its market share in its native country after the advent of M&M India Tractors in the United States. The sales of M&M shoot up and scared the giant “John Deere”. The Giant tried all the ways possible to stop this growth of an Indian company and came up with an advertisement offering people “if you buy John Deere in place of M&M we give you $1500 rebate”. The offer captured 3% of existing users of M&M and 97% said they are happy with the service of M&M Tractors. In counter M&M came up with a more sophisticated advertisement portraying a girl riding a tractor (Majority of clients of M&M Tractors were females): “Deere John, I have found someone new”. That the power of Indian intellect and commitment today.

Thus in my overall belief India is no more a land of snake charmers, it has gone far from this by becoming one of the world’s largest economy and in race to become 3^rd largest soon.