Tuesday, August 14, 2007

India's 60th Independence Day

Tomorrow is India's 60th birthday. This morning Padma and I a long conversation about how far the nation has come since booting the British out of the country. Economic gurus are heralding that India will be one of the world's next economic super-powers and the country still produces far more English language poetry than any other nation on earth. There are still huge challenges facing the country: chief among them equity for the hundreds of millions of people who live in abject poverty and caste oppression. However in for such a short span of time India has sloughed off much of its colonial baggage to become a world player. And in a colorful, if unfair, example of colonial chickens coming home to roost, The TATA group, an Indian company out bid every other major player in a successful take over of the one of the largest steel companys in the world--the Anglo-Dutch Corus Group in a $4.3 billion deal.

In other unfair comparisons I would like to point out that India's Gross Domestic Product is $4.165 trillion: more than twice England's $1.96 trillion.

Happy Birthday India.

Labels: ,

6 Comments:

At August 15, 2007 9:43 PM, Blogger SidR said...

Whats the per-capita gdp number?

Is it even the same order of magnitude?

:)

 
At August 16, 2007 8:37 PM, Blogger Scott Carney said...

Don't spoil the fun with actual math. Take this at face value and feel your nationalism swell.

 
At August 19, 2007 4:46 PM, Blogger Aparna Muralidhar said...

For a country as young as 60, we are doing well, but it's still hard to buy into the optimism when we look around. Materially, we're better off but the spirit that won us our freedom is gone. We don't care too much about our country anymore.

 
At August 22, 2007 5:18 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

Not to quibble, but the Corus deal was GBP4.3bn ($8.6 bn).

 
At September 20, 2007 5:51 PM, Blogger Sirensongs said...

---the country still produces far more English language poetry than any other nation on earth. ---

Yeah, but none of it is any good!
;-)
Sorry, I couldn't resist....

 
At August 07, 2008 8:22 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dear,Friend
On 15 August 1947, India attained freedom from the British rule. Every year,

August 15 is celebrated as the Independence Day in India. This national

festival is celebrated with great enthusiasm all over the country.
Please Visit For More detail
Independence day

 

Post a Comment

<< Home