The Hindu Business Line : From optimism to frustration

Last Sunday, I had occasion to accompany to India 20 leading CEOs, members of a German Employers’ delegation, all first-time visitors. Our first stops were Mumbai and Jamnagar. India Inc. overwhelmed the team with its manufacturing and services supremacy, giving them the “India Shining” perspective.

The “Blemished India” angle was provided by the Administration, all the way, through the appalling roads and airport infrastructure, and the indisciplined, reckless and death-defying traffic. The investors were not amused.

Bandhs

Over a century ago, pioneering work on social movements in the work of Gustav Le Bon considered crowds pathological, like “microbes feeding on decaying flesh”. And democracy was decried as the rule of the mob. Most of us would, I imagine, laugh at such inane quotations but, camouflaged in various forms, like the “remote dissenter” who brings germs to otherwise healthy communities, Le Bon’s influence remains seminal.

On October 1, a day before Gandhi Jayanthi, we were flying to Coimbatore and the newspapers splashed headlines that the proposed Tamil Nadu bandh had been banned by the country’s highest court. My German investor friends were delighted. We landed in Coimbatore airport and on our drive through the city to get on the highway to Palakkad, in Kerala, we noticed there was no activity or traffic and all the shops and offices were closed.

A bandh seems to have become the choicest means of protest for all political parties or organisations, in India. Perhaps, deep down, Indians like those bandhs, which give them a respite from the daily grind. This “bandh” was preceding a national holiday. My German friends asked what the common man, who manages his one meal a day, would do.

In Europe, protests are such that the common public gets an active part to play. Public discussions, suggestions, door-to-door campaigns, candle-light marches and slogans are different ways of making a point. Bandhs and hartals are unknown in Europe.

Checkpoint Charlies

As soon as we entered Kerala (Walayar forest range), the roads turned bad. I have seen and heard of the nightmare Walayar check-post on the busy National Highway No 47 that usually sees a long queue of trucks carrying commodities. The check-post officials are said to detain lorries even for two days, resulting in revenue loss for the truck operators besides a hold-up in the goods reaching the markets in Kerala.

I had heard and read in the media that the Kerala Police, Commercial Tax officials and the authorities had put in efforts to end the practice of abnormal delays at the check-posts. But, to add to my embarrassment we saw the same long queues and interminable delays at the Walayar checkpost. There was an endless chain of lorries stranded at the checkpoint. “How do you call yourself one country” is the question my German investor friends asked me. I had no coherent answer to give them.

Roads and Safety

As we crossed the border from Tamil Nadu into Kerala, the countryside changed dramatically. But the concrete road from Coimbatore airport gave way to a deeply-rutted, potholed apology of an asphalt road, into Kerala. The faces of my German friends expressed barely hidden horror and discomfort at the roller-coaster ride and the bumps suffered!

Road safety is very high on the European agenda and government partnerships with businesses and civil society are very common. Road safety is highly monitored by the Police and most European States levy very high fines for traffic violations, together with stringent punishments that are a sure deterrent. The Police use the revenue from traffic fines for road safety improvements.

The population of Germany is the same as that of Kerala. But the number of fatal road accidents in Kerala is five times that of Germany. What with treacherously overtaking lorries and buses, road accidents seem to have become a part of Indian existence.

In Europe, there are very strict guidelines for lorries and buses. Speed limits are strictly monitored and overtaking is banned. Those who break the rules are mercilessly fined and ruthlessly punished. This could be a revenue-spinner for Indian cities and States.

Similarly, Indian pedestrians who jump across the road, much like Spiderman, disregarding all pedestrian rules, were a source of shocked amusement for the German team members. In Europe, pedestrians can be fined up to one thousand euros if found crossing streets outside the pedestrian crossing.

Autobahns

German roads, the so-called “autobahns”, are wide-built highways with at least two lanes and one separate emergency lane on the right. Some of these roads were built at the beginning of the last century. They offer one of the most exciting driving experiences as there are often no speed limits on them.

One can actually drive as fast as the vehicle can go, of course, as long as it does not result in harm to the other traffic participants. In fact, Germany is the only country in the world where you could drive at unlimited speed.

Despite this, Germany has amongst the lowest accident rates in the world. Europeans, come autumn, will have an opportunity to drive their cars through the new autobahn being constructed through the Grunewald Forest, just outside of Berlin, which is to be one of the finest of the exclusive automobile roads of the world. On infrastructure, “continuous improvement” and “perfection” seem to be the keywords in most European countries.

Dirk Gently, in his quantum theory, propounded that all atoms in the universe are truly interconnected, part of a complex balance, it is probably justified in believing that there are, here and there, points of criticality, regions of severe cosmic significance, where the air is just a little bit sharper, the senses just a little more heightened, intelligence just a little bit broader. Kerala is one such place.

However, after a three-day stay, the German investors, who started off with unbridled optimism, became quite frustrated and left with an anticlimactic mix of apprehensions about investing in Kerala.

To sum up, while it seems like India is “shining”, Europeans perceive Indians as blinded by the “shine”, inebriated by new-found wealth and intoxicated with new-fangled avariciousness.

In European eyes, the Indian intellect seems to have lost all sense of discerning right from wrong, fair from unfair, and truth from deceit — all paving the way for a rapidly emergent “big-headed” and arrogant society made of egotistical individuals.

(The author is former Europe Director, CII, and lives in Cologne, Germany. Feedback may be sent to mohan.murti@t-online.de)

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