India's Virtual Ties with the U.S - Fortune article
India's Virtual Ties with the U.S.The Internet is connecting the two countries in ways not conceivable a few years ago.
FORTUNEWednesday, February 23, 2005 By David Kirkpatrick
Before a recent nine-day trip to India, I purchased two Apple iSight video cameras—one for my wife and daughter in New York and one for me to take on my travels. What an amazing innovation! They attach to our Mac computers, and using Apple’s iChat software the three of us could share an Internet call. Not only was it free (once I got Internet access), but it also gave us a video connection. I was able to hold the camera out the window and give my family live views of the Bangalore skyline. Sometimes we just left the connection on, so I could hear our dogs barking at home, as I lounged around my hotel room 8,300 miles away.
We were sharing a sort of virtual presence using the Internet. That is a nice metaphor for the relationship between the U.S. and India. The two countries are increasingly experiencing the consequences of full-time mutual virtual presence, thanks to the Internet. For U.S. companies, this has created the opportunity to have work performed remotely in that country. And for India, it has opened a wide window to the world, especially the U.S. Meeting young Indians who talked about their credit cards and computer foul-ups gave me some insight into how their society is changing in ways inconceivable even a few years ago. Like my family and me, the two countries are now essentially coexisting in an electronic world.
In the cities I visited—Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Chennai (formerly Madras), and Bangalore—the presence and influence of the U.S. felt surprisingly strong. American brands were pervasive, indicating that India’s growing success will have lots of benefits for our country as well. Dell PCs seemed to be in almost every office. I was driven around mostly in Fords. And Citibank ATMs were almost as ubiquitous as in New York.
And while India's grinding poverty was evident everywhere, so was an amazing and familiar work ethic. An impressive willingness to work hard is one of the main things that distinguished Americans in the last century, it seems to me. Now we’re realizing that in parts of the developing world, especially India, workers have a comparable willingness to strive to get ahead. In Mumbai, the energy of the people on the street reminded me of Manhattan. Messengers hustled around, commuters crowded into trains, and construction workers were building new structures all over the city. The urge of Indians to better their condition, both individually and collectively, was palpable.
One major negative for the Indian economy was its decaying and insufficient infrastructure. When you arrive at the Mumbai International Airport, you’d think it was 1963. Most roads are rutted and, even in cities, often partially unpaved. The government, so far, has not gotten serious about this problem. It’s easy to imagine that India’s momentum may be slowed by this weakness. But right after thinking such thoughts, I would walk into an office filled with fresh-faced young people and be so struck by their energy and enthusiasm that I had to believe the infrastructure problems could somehow be overcome. The will to succeed there is strong.
Despite all the energy, the signature impression I had on arriving in India is the amazing juxtaposition of awful poverty with awesome wealth. I stayed in the Grand Hyatt Mumbai, one of the most luxurious and well-designed modern hotels I’ve ever seen. (It opened last April.) But out my window I could see the ubiquitous shacks that seem to line every road in Mumbai. The nearby Intercontinental Hotel actually has shacks right in front of its driveway.
Yet for wealthy travelers, everything that India offers seems accessible. I knew prices were low in India by U.S. standards, but it was amazing to see just how low they were. Not only does a nice suit in a department store go for $130, but a terrific meal in a good restaurant is $10. Even a globally standard product like a Coldplay CD costs only about $8 in the best record store in Bangalore. People from abroad are starting to travel to high-quality Indian hospitals for complex medical procedures like joint surgery, because the prices are so much lower than in the U.S. and Europe. Prices will very gradually rise as do incomes, but this place will remain very inexpensive relative to prices in developed countries for a very long time.
My gut feeling is that the Indian and American economies are going to become ever more intertwined, and that is probably a good thing. For instance, I found India so enthralling that I could imagine living there someday. Of course, it helps that one vestige of the British colonial system is that most everyone in the country's commercial world speaks English. That makes it easier for a guy like me to get around in India than in places like China or Mexico, to mention two of my other favorite developing countries.
It’s possible to live an extremely comfortable life in India on relatively little money. Someone in India living on $12,000 a year can have a cook, a driver, a housekeeper, and the benefit of all those low prices. I could imagine retiring here. It’s a comforting thought, at least, when I’m worrying about whether I’ve saved enough for retirement.
When I mentioned this to my wife, she protested that India was too far away from our families and friends. But her comment brings me back to the Apple iSight cameras. The free video connection made it possible for me to feel closer to my family halfway around the globe. If our telecommunications tools evolve as much in the next 10 years as they have in the last, we may be able to experience a virtual presence that really is convincing—in 3D, for example. It’s possible in the future we may really diminish the isolation of distance. That could make living in a place like India a lot easier for an American.
As the Internet continues to knit the entire world closer together, especially India and the U.S., we could be headed toward an entirely new kind of transnational lifestyle.
Questions? Comments? E-mail them to me at dkirkpatrick@fortunemail.com
FORTUNEWednesday, February 23, 2005 By David Kirkpatrick
Before a recent nine-day trip to India, I purchased two Apple iSight video cameras—one for my wife and daughter in New York and one for me to take on my travels. What an amazing innovation! They attach to our Mac computers, and using Apple’s iChat software the three of us could share an Internet call. Not only was it free (once I got Internet access), but it also gave us a video connection. I was able to hold the camera out the window and give my family live views of the Bangalore skyline. Sometimes we just left the connection on, so I could hear our dogs barking at home, as I lounged around my hotel room 8,300 miles away.
We were sharing a sort of virtual presence using the Internet. That is a nice metaphor for the relationship between the U.S. and India. The two countries are increasingly experiencing the consequences of full-time mutual virtual presence, thanks to the Internet. For U.S. companies, this has created the opportunity to have work performed remotely in that country. And for India, it has opened a wide window to the world, especially the U.S. Meeting young Indians who talked about their credit cards and computer foul-ups gave me some insight into how their society is changing in ways inconceivable even a few years ago. Like my family and me, the two countries are now essentially coexisting in an electronic world.
In the cities I visited—Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Chennai (formerly Madras), and Bangalore—the presence and influence of the U.S. felt surprisingly strong. American brands were pervasive, indicating that India’s growing success will have lots of benefits for our country as well. Dell PCs seemed to be in almost every office. I was driven around mostly in Fords. And Citibank ATMs were almost as ubiquitous as in New York.
And while India's grinding poverty was evident everywhere, so was an amazing and familiar work ethic. An impressive willingness to work hard is one of the main things that distinguished Americans in the last century, it seems to me. Now we’re realizing that in parts of the developing world, especially India, workers have a comparable willingness to strive to get ahead. In Mumbai, the energy of the people on the street reminded me of Manhattan. Messengers hustled around, commuters crowded into trains, and construction workers were building new structures all over the city. The urge of Indians to better their condition, both individually and collectively, was palpable.
One major negative for the Indian economy was its decaying and insufficient infrastructure. When you arrive at the Mumbai International Airport, you’d think it was 1963. Most roads are rutted and, even in cities, often partially unpaved. The government, so far, has not gotten serious about this problem. It’s easy to imagine that India’s momentum may be slowed by this weakness. But right after thinking such thoughts, I would walk into an office filled with fresh-faced young people and be so struck by their energy and enthusiasm that I had to believe the infrastructure problems could somehow be overcome. The will to succeed there is strong.
Despite all the energy, the signature impression I had on arriving in India is the amazing juxtaposition of awful poverty with awesome wealth. I stayed in the Grand Hyatt Mumbai, one of the most luxurious and well-designed modern hotels I’ve ever seen. (It opened last April.) But out my window I could see the ubiquitous shacks that seem to line every road in Mumbai. The nearby Intercontinental Hotel actually has shacks right in front of its driveway.
Yet for wealthy travelers, everything that India offers seems accessible. I knew prices were low in India by U.S. standards, but it was amazing to see just how low they were. Not only does a nice suit in a department store go for $130, but a terrific meal in a good restaurant is $10. Even a globally standard product like a Coldplay CD costs only about $8 in the best record store in Bangalore. People from abroad are starting to travel to high-quality Indian hospitals for complex medical procedures like joint surgery, because the prices are so much lower than in the U.S. and Europe. Prices will very gradually rise as do incomes, but this place will remain very inexpensive relative to prices in developed countries for a very long time.
My gut feeling is that the Indian and American economies are going to become ever more intertwined, and that is probably a good thing. For instance, I found India so enthralling that I could imagine living there someday. Of course, it helps that one vestige of the British colonial system is that most everyone in the country's commercial world speaks English. That makes it easier for a guy like me to get around in India than in places like China or Mexico, to mention two of my other favorite developing countries.
It’s possible to live an extremely comfortable life in India on relatively little money. Someone in India living on $12,000 a year can have a cook, a driver, a housekeeper, and the benefit of all those low prices. I could imagine retiring here. It’s a comforting thought, at least, when I’m worrying about whether I’ve saved enough for retirement.
When I mentioned this to my wife, she protested that India was too far away from our families and friends. But her comment brings me back to the Apple iSight cameras. The free video connection made it possible for me to feel closer to my family halfway around the globe. If our telecommunications tools evolve as much in the next 10 years as they have in the last, we may be able to experience a virtual presence that really is convincing—in 3D, for example. It’s possible in the future we may really diminish the isolation of distance. That could make living in a place like India a lot easier for an American.
As the Internet continues to knit the entire world closer together, especially India and the U.S., we could be headed toward an entirely new kind of transnational lifestyle.
Questions? Comments? E-mail them to me at dkirkpatrick@fortunemail.com
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