Among today’s news there was an announcement by Mr. Ratan Tata, the Tata of India Group Chairman, that he will sell motor vehicles at half the cost of the present cheapest Indian product. The new 4-door subcompact will sell for 100,000 Rupees – the equivalent of US$ 2,484. The new plant will have a capacity of 250,000 cars/year. In one swoop, Tata will replace Suzuki as the cheapest car manufacturer in the world.

But that is not the whole Indian story – India is also building and selling to the internal market all sort of luxury cars – the likes of Bentleys, Rolls Royce and Maybach. The BMWs sell quite well – thank you.

Having seen those news earlier in the morning, I was quite anxious to hear what the joint meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Mission to the US, and the USIndia Business Council will have to say at     a luncheon organized at the Asia Society New York Headquarters. The Mission was headed by CII President, Sunil Bharti Mittal and with him Hari S Bhartia, Co Chairman of CII Energy Council, CK Birla, Chairman of Hindustan Motors Ltd and of the Indian Smelting & Refining Co Ltd, Tarun Das, Chairman of Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd, Atul   Punj of the CII Committee on Hydrocarbons, Anajit Singh, Suhel Seth, and Kiran Pasricha, Head-CII USA. We listed here only positions in energy and auto-manufacturing, but each of the members of the delegation had up to 30 (!) listings of of chairmanships, board memberships, think tank memberships – you name it – that is in India and in the US – in further Indian various bi-lateral trading groups with the UK, Japan, Singapore etc, up to philanthropies, universities, hospitals, and organizations like the Aspen Institute. We wrote down their names – so if anyone wants to follow   up – the Google is the address. This delegation represented quite a few billions ($) in business.

Sunil Mittal made the main presentation, and then Mira Kamdar of the Asia Society, recent author of “Planet India” (Scribners)   engaged him in a follow up conversation, with added questions from the audience, and involvement of other members of the delegation. This was a two hours event. Actually the meeting was opened by Citigroup and the short introduction provided the information that India is now the second biggest market in the world for Citibank. Then “Chip” (Charles Kaye), Co-President of Warburg Pincus, pointed out that with 150 million people entering the workforce in the next 15 years, India will become a serious reservoir of trained people to supply also the needs for people in the US. Actually now 40% of medical doctors in the US are already of Indian heritage.

Sunyl started by giving some history: In 1981-82 India was bankrupt. The World Bank came to help, India started to come out from the previous socialist economy and “people like me were waiting in the wings.” Then came the IT revolution, airlines …India has now quite an open economy to the outside world. There are still some restrictions in financial markets and in insurance, and even that might open up. The banking sector will open up 2009-2010. There will be 750 million people in the working force, while the US will be short by 75 million people, so will Japan. By 2025 India will be the third largest economy and it will grow in a south-south context (these are my words – what he said was that much of the world is more like India then the US – thus the success of India marketing to the world at large.) The $100 computer will become cheaper – the $2,000 car will also be cheaper. India knows already how to make things, they have now to learn how to exports the products. It was IBM that taught them how to export the IT Indian model. Sunyl spoke now of Sustainable Development as the model that the Prime Minister wants to see become an industry driven reality, but Sunyl does not want to see the industry replace government.

India has the second largest agricultural area in the world, and is number one in irrigated area in the world, but it counts for less then 1% of the food market in the world – this could change. In-bound tourism will grow.

Energy is expensive in India – it is heavily taxed and there is conservation. Everything is recycled. The labor is now available and the goods are expensive – so there is little waste. Sustainable Development and energy conservation are targets of the industry and the government; there are public-private partnerships. He does not see yet carbon sequestration technology, but he sees gas substituting coal for the next 10 years.

At this point, a speaker from the floor coined that marvelous definition of India being a developing country that is emerging. He said this because he does not regard India as a developing country, neither is it an emerging economy – this seems to us – he wanted to say that India is now neither Africa nor Russia. It is a democracy that wants to achieve progress without resorting to dictates by the government – just simple guidance. America and India, according to him are joined at the hip, and that even in the 50’s – when the government was with the Soviets, “WE WERE WITH THE US.”

At this stage I felt confident to raise my pet question: