The changes taking place in India and China are seismic. I don’t have to emphasize this point to you MBA students from India studying in
Canadian business schools.
You have the great advantage of a
superb Canadian education that you can
take to whichever part of the globe you
choose to make home. The Financial
Times a few years ago noted, ‘companies
that do not yet have an India strategy are
in danger of being left behind.’ All of you
will be the strategists and leaders advising us on how to get it right.
When you combine India’s
emergence with China, you can
see why BusinessWeek stated in
2005: ‘Never has the world seen
the simultaneous, sustained take-
offs of two nations that together
account for one-third of the planet’s pop-
ulation.’ Our interest with India is best
summed in the words of Raja Mohan, a
leading Indian strategic thinker, when he
observed in 2006: ‘India is arriving on
the world stage as the first large, eco-
nomically powerful, culturally vibrant,
multiethnic, multi-religious democracy
outside of the geographic West.’
In my view, it is this combination of
economic rise with geopolitics that
makes the study of India a most com-
pelling one to understand. All the other
reasons that are usually cited — democ-
racy, widespread use of the English lan-
guage, rule of law — are profoundly rele-
vant, but by themselves provide an
incomplete picture of our current and
future interest with India.
An area that has not garnered much
attention, although it should, and it will,
is the India-China relationship, both on
the economic front, where the bilateral
numbers are increasing at a phenomenal
rate, but also in the political arena where
their relationship will be more nuanced.
Strategic concerns on China’s actions on
India borders, in Asia and beyond —
Indian Ocean, Africa, diversification of
energy sources — are all factors which
will make these two giants collaborators
and competitors. China and India have
been dealing with each other for over
2,000 years. In Dr Amartya Sen’s highly
readable The Argumentative Indian, the
Nobel Laureate devotes an entire chapter to the interactions between these two
great civilizations. Then of course is the
fact that India exported Buddhism to
KASI RAO
China.
While there is this relationship stretching over many centuries, about four and
a half decades ago, a seminal event took
place between them. The month of
October 1962 will forever be etched in
our memories for the Cuban missile crisis. That same month, half a world away,
China and India were at war, which
ended swiftly and decisively in China’s
favor. It left an indelible imprint in
Indian strategic thinking.
The India-China relationship will need
to be understood, and as you can see, not
just from the business perspective but
from a much wider lens. As business
leaders, if you can combine the depth of
your business education with the
breadth of politics and history, you will
be able to advise your organizations even
more strongly on the global developments that will take shape in the coming
decades. To do this, we all will need to:
1. Demonstrate an attitudinal shift.
From a conceptual standpoint, we need
to recognize the breadth and the perma-
nence of this rise. According to a BCG
report three years ago, which has since
been updated, 21 Indian companies are
on the list of top 100 global challengers,
with China at 44. Interestingly, five
Indian automotive companies made it to
this list. India has emerged as one of the
fastest growing car markets in the world
and the production of the Nano is fur-
ther testament. Similarly, in the fall of
2007, Business Week listed Asia’s top 50
performing companies. Of these, 12 were
Indian or India-based; more interesting-
ly, only one was from the tech sector.
Kasi Rao is a consultant with several
Canadian universities.
