Passionate About India

On 20th of January, 2009, when Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of United States of America, delivering one of the most outstanding speeches ever, many would have thought it to be a tokenism, as reversing the economic fortune of the current order is easier said than done. Only time would perhaps prove how much he would succeed eventually. But if one has to go by the precedence being set on each passing day, Obama is perhaps not just on the right track, but is also indicating why he is the only person who deserved to be there in these times. By announcing his intentions in clear cut terms of curbing the salaries of top executives of companies to a ‘maximum’ of $500,000, which have been seeking bailout packages from the US government to remain afloat (under the Troubled Asset Relief Program), Obama has made it clear that the much needed change of fortune of the US would not happen unless the highly skewed income disparity is arrested and the culture of carrying on with obs...

I am taken back to the year 2000, when during the then American President Bill Clinton’s historic visit to India, I had started my seminar series called “The Great Indian Dream – India can beat America,” with a front page advertisement in leading dailies welcoming Clinton on the day of his arrival to India. The header of the ad said, “LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN SUPREMACY.” It has been seven years since then, and the time has come for people to realise the unfolding of the same in front of them and grasp the reasons behind the same. The time for the great power shift has come – the time for power to shift from the American hands to the Chinese, Indian and, dare I say, the Middle Eastern hands. As I wrote in my editorial two issues ago in The Sunday Indian magazine, on account of the cataclysmic losses that each of the US financial behemoths has been suffering, many of them have been incessantly bailed out by Middle Eastern petrodollars. So, while the investments of Kuwait Investment Authorit...

Capitalism is a great slave, but a pathetic master. This truth unfortunately gets lost in our chase for that elusive dream . . . especially in America, the land that has been marketed as the land of dreams – the great American dream. It’s the dream of being independent masters of our lives, the dream of making big bucks and the dream of being happy – even if that happiness is being bought by money which all of them chase out there. No doubt, the US, on its part, has been fairly successful in creating material comforts aplenty. It has upped the living standard of its average citizen to an extent that it stands amongst the highest – even if that is a result of more than 200 years of unbridled growth and exploitation. Thus, the shop window of Americanism looks lucidly attractive; you’ve got all of them standing there – from Bill Gates to Michael Dell – in Tommy Hilfigers and Ralph Laurens! And that is what has made the rest of the world mindlessly chase Americanism, not necessarily happin...