 |
| China Syndrome: Tarun Khanna |
Not India vs China but India and China
It is from Kamal Nath I first heard the sentiment after the Commerce and Industry Minister had returned from a trip to Beijing: “It’s not India versus China, it’s India and China.”
The two countries are compared and contrasted in a new anecdote-filled book, Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are reshaping their futures — and Yours, by Tarun Khanna (Harvard Business School Press; $29.95).
Khanna was at Asia House in London last week, attempting (on the eve of the Dalai Lama’s UK visit) examining what can be done to make China see sense over Tibet (not much).
Or what can be done to encourage the comrades in Calcutta to move on from their knee jerk, pro-Peking stance since the Chinese Communists themselves have become born-again capitalists (again, not much).
Khanna hails from Punjab, grew up in Bangalore (Bishop Cotton and St Joseph’s), Bombay and Delhi, arrived in America at 18 and is now, at 41, the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School where he “works with entrepreneurs, companies, and NGOs in emerging markets worldwide”.
He is a “deep admirer” of Amartya Sen, the Lamont University Professor at Harvard University, who has “endorsed my book”.
Khanna offered me what seemed the best analysis of why the Chinese authorities are unlikely ever to relent over the Dalai and Tibet: “It’s a calculated decision because of the kind of signal that will be sent to other parts of China by acquiescing to people who are outside the Chinese mainstream.”
He added: “In Chinese tradition there is this idea that stability is the thing that creates the ambience for attracting capital and that capital is the engine that freewheels the Chinese motor. Shifting away from that, when the only mandate for legitimacy for the Communist party is economic growth, is a risky proposition in their eyes.”
Khanna has withheld permission for a translation of his book to be published in China because the publishers there want to remove bits they don’t like.
India No. 1
 |
| Men of priorities: Aditya Mittal with Lakshmi Mittal |
India followed by China are to be the next big target areas for expansion for ArcelorMittal, according to Aditya Mittal, the chief financial officer for the world’s largest steel company.
“It’s our No. 1 priority,” pledged Aditya in an interview last week with the Sunday Times in London.
This will come as a relief to Vasundhara Raje, the easily irritated chief minister of Rajasthan who would quite like the Mittals to get on with completing the Information Technology Institute on the 100-acre site near Jaipur given to them by the state.
The patrician lady has threatened to boycott future Mittal functions — “even if they invite me” — unless the promised institute is delivered.
The institute is not necessarily the most pressing concern for 32-year-old Aditya and his father, Lakshmi (who is again expected to be named Britain’s richest man in the Sunday Times rich list due to be published in London today).
Aditya has, more or less, confirmed an earlier report in The Telegraph in India that he and his wife, Megha, may have had personal reasons for being grateful to the Great Ormond Street Hospital, which has received a £15 million donation — the single biggest in the establishment’s history — from the couple.
The couple, who have two daughters, offered the gift because “they felt a debt of honour,” the Sunday Times recognised.
“But my wife will kill me if I say any more,” Aditya told the paper.
At this, the Sunday Times interviewer, Andrew Davidson, observed: “You can work out the rest for yourself.”
 |
Time, please
The book business is really taking off in India, we all know. It follows, therefore, that readers will see displays of probably the most sold and least read book since the universe began.
I refer to Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes.
Since it is generally believed that 99.9 per cent of those who start the book fail to finish it, I decided to be perverse and read it from beginning to end.
I must not quote out of context, but the average reader (i.e. me) begins floundering when Hawking, 66, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge (Newton once occupied this chair), asserts: “The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary also has implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe.”
Or: “The increase of disorder or entropy with time is one example of what is called an arrow of time, something that distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.”
What is especially worrying is that I spent years at university coping with this kind of stuff, suggesting I have forgotten it all or, more likely, didn’t understand it in the first place, anyway.
Hawking once predicted: “I believe that life on Earth is at an ever increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go into space.”
As a first step, he flew to America last week to give a lecture at the George Washington University to mark Nasa’s 50th anniversary.
Speaking through a voice synthesiser and aided by his daughter, Lucy, he revealed he had been thinking a lot about the cosmic question, “Are we alone in the universe?” (probably not).
“If the human race is to continue for another million years,” added Hawking, “we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.”
That means boldly going into a bookshop to get your very own copy of A Brief History of Time.
Healing touch
 |
| Health conscious: Camilla Parker Bowles |
Once, while touring India with the Prince and Princess of Wales, I remember everything stopping while Charles disappeared to Old Delhi to meet a venerable hakim.
Back in England, people think Charles is eccentric, partly because he swears by traditional Indian medicine.
He did it again last week while visiting the West Midlands with Bibi No. 2.
While Camilla posed with a skeleton — losing weight is all the rage these days — Charles spoke of his enthusiasm for “ancient wisdom” when tackling health problems.
“I happen to be one of those people who has a great admiration and affection for the culture and religions of the people of India and the subcontinent,” he said. “So often in the modern world it’s so easy to forget how to look at the whole picture, mind, body and spirit.”
Then he tasted a “really nice” slow-cooked Kurzi chicken at a Warwickshire restaurant and confided that as an undergraduate at Cambridge, he tried cooking curries, invariably “with much failure”.
Today, it is said, his mum simply sends out for a takeaway tikka.
Tittle tattle
 |
Vikas Pota, the bungee-jumping managing director and co-founder of Saffron Chase, the “public affairs & communications strategy specialists” — the PR firm represents Labour Friends of India in the UK — is shortly to open a branch in India.
Curiously, the word “Saffron” is being dropped.
“It will be called Chase India,” Vikas tells me.
It’s not a bad name, considering everyone is chasing India these days.
