"I remember the first time I travelled to India. It was 2 years ago for ArcelorMittal and before I left, all my friends and family were giving me their idea of what India would be like. Although I travel quite extensively (for business and for pleasure) I really had no idea what to expect.


Truth is, and I'm quoting a friend and Indian journalist here, "...there are as many India's as there are Indians".


For me this first trip was a revelation. A revelation that an economic giant of epic proportion was in the making and that not that many people had noticed. The streets of Delhi, buzzing with advertisements for brands I had never heard of, the shopping malls of Gurgeon, full of products that an ever-growing new middle class was eager to buy, the 1000 new cars released every day in the breathtaking traffic of Delhi, these images have marked me profoundly.


While everyone seems to know that China will be the world's 1st economy in 2050, less people seem to realise that India will by then be the 3rd...


Two books - one conclusion


Nirmalya Kumar's book, ‘India's Global Powerhouses' doesn't have much in common with Aravind Adiga's ‘The White Tiger'. But both lead to a very simple conclusion. And after having read both books, you'll probably be inclined to agree somewhat with the prediction made by Aravind's voluble, digressive, murderous protagonist. "White men will be finished in my lifetime," he tells us. "In 20 years time it will just be us brown and yellow men at the top of the pyramid, and we'll rule the world."


He's speaking about the phenomenon at the heart of ‘The White Tiger's' dazzling narrative: the emergence of that much-heralded economic powerhouse, the ‘new India'.


Both books address this topic through two completely different angles. While ‘India's Global Powerhouses' is a meticulous and extremely well documented study case about India's blue chip companies, published by the venerable Harvard Business press, ‘The White Tiger' is an exploration of the Indian growth through another loupe: its underbelly.


In ‘The White Tiger', we see through the eyes of Balram, born into the ‘darkness' of rural India, entering the Delhi lights to become a driver for the son of a rich landlord. After escaping servitude he is now himself a rich businessman. What's more, his unlikely journey involved a murder, which he confesses to very rapidly, as the novel is a series of letters Balram writes to the Chinese premier, soon to visit India.


The novel and the business book also share something else. Both explode the clichés associated with what many believe to be India. ‘The scent of Saffron' and the ‘serenity of the Taj Mahal' are replaced with a sometimes violent depiction of the new Indian miracle and its cast apart (pun intended). Forget lyrical and ornamental prose and dive into meticulous study cases explaining the making of giants like Suzlon."


Welcome, to one of the many Indias.

Stefan Schwarz