Bharat Mata in the Bundesrepublik

“B harat Mata ki ...” Silence, followed by a hesitant ‘ jai! ’ The second and the third rounds were confident and loud. I was at first a bit lost, and it felt like a throwback to one of those black and white documentaries on the Indian independence struggle.

But this was the Indo-German Business summit at the Hannover Messe, packed with CEOs, media and political heavyweights, and being addressed by the Prime Minister of India himself. The Germans did not get it and I murmured an explanation to my German friend, an old India hand.

I have been living in Germany for about five years, studying, working and living with Germans — an experience which has been deeply enriching with its share of confounding moments.

A country where one of the best-selling chocolates is advertised as “quadratic, practical and good” and where you need to have 120 sq ft of apartment space per person if you invite a guest from a foreign country, the German attention to detail and tendency to cut though the rhetoric to bare facts is why products engineered here have their legendary reputation — but makes it difficult for Germans to engage in ‘small talk’.

Given this background, the ‘Make in India’ campaign presenting our country with its extremities as an attractive investment destination to the industrial giant at the Hannover Messe was bound to be interesting.

The press coverage of the event from the liberal-conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to the centre-left weekly newspaper Die Zeit was cautiously optimistic, acknowledging the opportunity and the positive market sentiment while pointing to statistics on skills scarcity, corruption and creaking infrastructure.

At the Indo-German business summit, Modi talked in detail about the initiatives to make India an easier place to do business. He blamed the previous UPA government for the hostile business environment and took personal responsibility for making the lion unstoppable.

The German response was to welcome the campaign but wanting what they call a Vorleistung — roughly translated as advance payment. They would wait and see how regulations, infrastructure and governance actually change on the ground before pumping in investments.

At the sessions on investment hosted by States such as Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, there was insignificant German investor presence, but the Indian diaspora was thrilled to take selfies with Bollywood actor Vivek Oberoi.

The ‘How to do business in India’ session was a test of national pride when, as a response to the mention of corruption, an Indian CEO of a German subsidiary stated that he never paid a bribe and that corruption in India was exaggerated.

Received with a big round of applause from the Indians, our pride was salvaged with comments such as “We have a huge youth population which consumes a lot and if I were a German manager, I would pack my bags and go to India” or “India is a different country, not a difficult country”.

The German presenter had to apologise to save the situation. I was surprised and embarrassed by our insecurity and unwillingness to discuss an existing problem and, instead, gloss over it with the fact that we managed to create a lot of children in the past 30 years who buy a lot of stuff on Flipkart.

Yes, we have reduced poverty significantly, have a briskly growing economy, and have some great global companies, but doing business in India still remains a challenge.

Yes, it is not easy to be told by outsiders that we have problems, but wishing away a problem is no solution to it. If India wants to be a part of the global value chain, it has to be open to global standards and be compared to others. ‘Make in India’ also means that, along with global capital.

People would have to move in here to work, albeit for a limited time. Purely based on western media reports on pollution, safety of women and sanitation, how many German managers would want to move into a Delhi or Mumbai with their families?

For comparison, if sub-Saharan African countries (which have been consistently growing above 5 per cent) were to make a pitch at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi to invest there, would most of us not think that Africa is a dangerous place, given the reports of HIV and civil wars? I worked in parts of Africa and am amazed at how wrong our perceptions have been.

The ‘Made in Germany’ label came into existence through the British Merchandise Marks Act of 1887 because the British wanted to protect their consumers from buying poor quality copies made in Germany. Over the years, the label has become a symbol of innovation and quality and not least because of the German readiness to discuss problems openly and take concrete steps.

Big German companies have been in India for decades, but the famous Mittelstand (the SMEs) finds India too challenging to enter. An Indian businessman who has been to the Hannover Messe for the past 11 years told me that he had to demonstrate continuous presence and deliver consistent quality to be taken seriously by the Germans.

Yes, there were many deals made and MoUs signed, but despite being the partner country, the number of Chinese exhibitors were more than twice that from India.

If India wants to attract German investment, it should get over the ‘Make in India’ blitzkrieg and focus on the basics of infrastructure, skills and regulation. The investment will automatically follow.

A German is easier convinced by good execution than nationalistic political rhetoric. An old German proverb goes, Wer den Kern essen will, muss die Nuss knacken , roughly translated as ‘He who wants to eat the kernel must crack the nut’.

The writer is with the Bertelsmann Foundation in Germany. The views are personal

COMMENT NOW