As the world is busy praising the fast-developing Chinese market, India, China's neighbor, is receiving increasing attention as an emerging economic power likely to set forth a development paradigm in the world.
At the ongoing 2005 Fortune Global Forum in Beijing, corporate executives from across the globe listened to the interpretation of the Indian story from an insider's perspective.
Lakshmi Narayanan, the Indian-born CEO and President of the US-headquartered IT company Cognizant, admitted that his envy of China's sound infrastructure but was obviously confident in his country's ability to "do a lot of catching-up" quickly.
Widely recognized as a potential leader in the world's knowledge processing industry, India has been reporting robust growth in its IT-centered service sector.
"We will continuously find intellectual, management and leadership resources and develop them across the globe," Narayanan said, proud of the market growth of the Indian IT industry over the past ten years.
As the world's second most populous nation, India boasts a large proportion of relatively young people with people aged under 45 accounting for 30 percent of the country's total population.
"India's young social structure propels the country to create more jobs and grow more rapidly," said Michael Patsalos-Fox, Chairman of Mckinsey & Company Americas.
Endowed with a sound educational system and a large population of young talents fluent in English and well trained in professional disciplines, the south Asian country also enjoys a full-fledged capital market, a big advantage over China's chronically bearish stock market.
Meanwhile, India's increasing exposure to social and economic achievements scored by peer developing nations such as China also helped create an "incredible" urgency in India for social and economic progresses, said David Kirkpatrick, senior editor of the Fortune magazine, impressed by the Indian people's overwhelming " we will succeed" mentality.
"The aspirations for growth constitute the catalyst for change," said Nandan M. Nilekani, CEO, president and managing director of Infosys here on Tuesday.
Although relatively high production costs and the fact that government still controls the market stakes in India are impeding the country's further development, the calls for a more responsive government are gaining popularity in the south Asian country.
NDTV Chairman Prannoy Roy said the Indian voters now only awardthe politicians "who perform," sharply contrasting the situation 20 years ago when almost no statesmen were voted out by constituencies for underperforming their jobs.
Indian business circles have also realized the importance of leaving business to businessmen.
"Not much regulation. It is important," said Nilekani, obviously favoring the practice of keeping the government away from the industry.
When asked whether China and India will clash as two economic giants in Asia, McKinsey's Fox said he thought not.
"I don't see why the two countries could not cooperate," said Fox, referring to both nations as "immature economic entities."
"Cooperation will create development opportunities for both China and India," he said.
China and India established diplomatic ties 55 years ago. Bilateral relations reached a highpoint earlier this year as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao headed a big business entourage and toured India, expressing hopes for closer cooperation with India particularly in the IT industry.
(Xinhua News Agency May 18, 2005)
