‘Cool' India offers inclusive growth for all

At Café Schneider's, a strategic location in this Swiss alpine ski resort, an ‘India a dda ' has been set up to create a “mini India within Davos”.

Tuesday evening saw a host of Indian industrialists — Rahul and Sanjiv Bajaj, Jamshyd and Adi Godrej, Anand Mahindra, Pawan Munjal, Prakash Hinduja, Onkar S. Kanwar, Rajendra Pawar, Deepak Puri, Ajit Gulabchand and Hari S. Bhartia — gather at the adda , where ITC chefs specially flown in for the event served the guests vegetable pakodas , kachori , dal vada , matar-pudina kabab , kesar sandesh and masala tea.

“ Adda (Bengali for hangout) is a cool way to project that we are people who do business in a friendly, peaceful and non-threatening way,” notes Mr Chandrajit Banerjee, Director-General of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). Although he does not add “unlike China”, the subtext reference to a faster-growing yet overbearing competitor is obvious.

The ‘cool' theme is also being played out elsewhere in town, where, at key points, one notices display boards and banners proclaiming ‘Ancient Civilisation, Young Nation', ‘Free to Vote', ‘Free to Question', ‘Growth for All' and ‘Dreams for All'.

In all, the CII is spending nearly Rs 25 crore for its ‘India Inclusive' campaign at the five-day summit of the World Economic Forum, which began on Wednesday.

This includes a grand soiree to be hosted on the night of January 29 at the main Congress Centre. About 130 artists — from actor Deepika Padukone to music composer Ranjit Barot, and designer Anamika Khanna — will participate and showcase Bollywood, Indian music, food and wines at the event.

The campaign comes at a time when some big-ticket projects have been stalled on environmental grounds and problems of land acquisition have made the news, not to leave out allegations of political corruption and crony capitalism, all of which have raised concerns over the investment climate in the country.

Course Correction

According to Mr Adi Godrej, there is no need to be defensive about these “problems on the governance deficit and probity fronts”. But the Chairman of the Godrej Group feels the current investor perception crisis also presents opportunities for course corrections.

“The best way to do it is to ensure decision-making is not case-to-case and subject to discretionary powers. The recent auctioning of the 3G spectrum (as opposed to the more controversial 2G) is a good example of open and transparent decision-making,” he said.

Mr Godrej also felt that the problem of corruption is more serious in sectors such as infrastructure and natural resources. “Look at consumer goods where we don't have any corruption,” he said.

Mr Ajit Gulabchand of Hindustan Construction Company said that the world should look at India as an “economy in transition,” which was bound to throw up “conflicting agendas” at this stage of ground.

“What matters is that we are a large and free country with very good long-term fundamentals,” pointed out Mr Gulbachand, whose Lavasa hill city project is hanging fire for alleged violation of environmental rules.

Mr Chanda Kocchar, Managing Director of ICICI Bank and a Co-Chair of this year's WEF meet, said that the biggest advantage that India offered was its favourable demographics.

“The 11 million working age people being added every year makes us a compelling market for not just consumer goods, but even for channelising the surplus of global savings into development of physical and social infrastructure,” she added.

COMMENT NOW