New Delhi, Nov. 23 :
New Delhi, Nov. 23:
This morning as Colette Mathur tied up the loose ends in preparation for the India Economic Summit hosted by the World Economic Forum, someone asked her how long has she been travelling to India.
'For thirty years,' she said.
'Thirty years,' the man said, aghast. 'And, you are still coming?'
Mathur burst out laughing.
'Some people play golf, some like the arts, I come to India,' she explains.
For the director of the World Economic Forum - probably the most elite institution of its kind - her sasural is also her playground. Married to late M.G. Mathur, former deputy director general of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Colette, the Frenchwoman born in Belgium, is, in the words of Arun Bharat Ram, president of the Confederation of Indian Industry, the face of India Inc overseas.
It is also the face that is the most outspoken in the charge of the reform brigade. Since 1986, she has been the chief organiser of the India Economic Summit which the World Economic Forum (WEF) hosts in partnership with CII. When the 16th summit takes off this weekend, Mathur will be on the job again.
Maybe she should have been bored with it. 'It's easy to tire,' she says, then grits her teeth and whispers in dramatic fashion: 'I just want this country to make it.'
So Colette has lined up for the economic summit starting Sunday a series of meets where Anil Ambani and Rahul Bajaj and the rest of industry will speak its mind and bureaucrats and ministers will listen.
'I still have plenty of memorabilia to remind me how 'Third World' Delhi looked 20 years ago - old tin cans on the streets that passed as cars and fridges that were full of defects but still people queued up to buy them - and realise how different it is now. The point is, it isn't enough,' she says.
Indian Airlines and Air-India are up for sale, so is Maruti; insurance has been opened up; the power sector is up for grabs, the states are bending over backwards to attract investors but all of this is still not enough for Colette Mathur?
'I think there is a lack of determination and political courage.'
If Colette were speaking only of politicians it would still be cliched. In the discussions of the World Economic Forum - and Colette says that India figures frequently enough in them - there potential investors are almost as critical of bureaucrats - 'they are not facilitators' - as of sections of Indian industry who still abhor competition.
The World Economic Forum itself is reaching out to India. Among the criteria fixed for its membership is that it will allow within its folds only companies that have annual turnovers of $ 1 billion or more.
The Forum currently has 1,000 members and its membership is now closed because the annual meet in Davos and Switzerland cannot accommodate anymore. Forty Indian companies are WEF members. But, says Colette, the criteria applicable to most members have been relaxed to some extent for Indian firms and other companies in emerging markets.





