Knowledge Work

“India is a roaring capitalist success story.” So says the latest issue of Foreign Affairs; and last week many leading business executives and politicians in India celebrated as Lakshmi Mittal, the fifth richest man in the world, finally succeeded in his hostile takeover of the Luxembourgian steel company Arcelor. India’s leading business newspaper, The Economic Times, summed up the general euphoria over the event in its regular feature, “The Global Indian Takeover”: “For India, it is a harbinger of things to come — economic superstardom.”

This sounds persuasive as long as you don’t know that Mr. Mittal, who lives in Britain, announced his first investment in India only last year. He is as much an Indian success story as Sergey Brin, the Russian-born co-founder of Google, is proof of Russia’s imminent economic superstardom.

The Myth of the New India - New York Times (Op-Ed, July 6, 2006)

Guest editorialist Pankaj Mishra goes on to point out that India’s per capita GDP is only slightly greater than that of sub-Saharan Africa, and “only 1.3 million out of a working population of 400 million are employed in the information technology and business processing industries that make up the so-called new economy.”