Quotes of the Day

Try finding a hotel room in delhi or bombay these days and the chances are that, unless you booked weeks in advance, you will be turned away. India's cities are packed with international businessmen keen to sell in one of the world's most important emerging markets. Multinational conglomerates eagerly seek local partners. And nearly every corporate head of consequence makes the now-obligatory pilgrimage to Bangalore to pay homage to the country's booming software industry.

As far as the urban middle class is concerned, there has never been a better time to be Indian. After decades of being the only significant English-speaking market in the world to be ignored by nearly everybody else, India is suddenly the flavor of the new century. Vogue will launch an Indian edition next year. Every rock act of note plays Bangalore: the Rolling Stones were here three years ago and U2 will perform in the autumn. Chanel spent several hundred thousand dollars on a single evening's festivities to announce its entry into India, and Christian Dior, Giorgio Armani, Gucci and the others are on their way. Nor is the traffic one-way. Indian companies are now expanding abroad. The Tata Group, the country's largest conglomerate, recently announced huge investments in South Korea, and its Taj hotel chain has just taken over New York City's tony Pierre Hotel; software giants such as Infosys and Wipro are scouting for acquisitions abroad. Then there's the cultural dimension to the new confidence. Three Indian restaurants in London now have Michelin stars; Bollywood is suddenly fashionable; and remixes of Hindi film songs play in Europe's trendiest clubs.

In some ways, Lakshmi Mittal is the symbol of the new Indian confidence. Even a decade ago, who would have dreamt that the third richest man in the world would hold an Indian passport? Integral to the way in which Indians regard Mittal is that he is not a child of the diaspora, not some person of Indian origin who grew up in Leicester or New Jersey. He is, for want of a better term, an Indian Indian, the son of one of Calcutta's leading businessmen, and still regarded as much a part of the Indian business scene as his father and brothers. A few months ago, when Mittal moved into his swanky new home in Delhi, the guests at the housewarming included a Who's Who of India's business and media élite, many of whom had known the family for decades. It's now common to hear Indian businessmen hold up Mittal's success as an example of what Indian financial and managerial acumen can achieve, given the right global opportunities.

Perhaps. But nobody asks this: Would Mittal have been as successful if he had remained in India? Why do so many of our success stories — from conductor Zubin Mehta to economist Amartya Sen to author Salman Rushdie — live abroad? Is there something about the Indian environment that discourages achievement? Whenever globally successful businessmen have come back home, they have failed to replicate their international record. Even the Mittals are far more successful abroad than they are in India.

Some of this has to do with the mind-set of India's bureaucracy and the hangover of the old-license raj, with all its petty meddling. Then there is our traditional envy of success. Every child knows the story of the basket of Indian crabs: it did not need to be covered because every time an ambitious crab came close to the top, the other crabs pulled him down. It is no accident that many of the men who feature most often in our business magazines are nonresident Indians who live beyond the clutches of the bureaucratic establishment. But much of it also has to do with us. We are still a society that does not prize excellence and one that demands too little from our bureaucrats and politicians. Elections are still won and lost on populist slogans. Voters seldom reward good governance with renewed mandates. And Parliament and state assemblies are full of legislators with criminal records who neither believe in ideology nor bother about performance.

So while I am thrilled that the world is flocking to India, and pleased that Mittal is straddling the global steel business, I sometimes wonder why it is that Indians are more successful outside of India than at home. My fear is that unless we confront this paradox, we will be no more than a bulk market for canny foreigners, a country whose biggest success stories will always lie across the ocean.

• VIR SANGHVI
• The country may be booming, but it still seems uncomfortable with the idea of celebrating success