Russia appealed to India with a proposal to simplify the procedures for issuing tourist visas. It was announced by the Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky who was visiting the Days of Russian Cinema in Delhi. The Russian Foreign Ministry supported the idea and addressed India officially.
Only last year more than 170 thousand Russians flew to India. India is an ancient civilization, mysterious, spiritually rich and often obscure for Europeans — a real tourist magnet. India is also the fastest growing of the world's largest economies and the population gap between India and China is rapidly shrinking. What's India in the 21st century like? Reporting, Maxim Kiselev.
"1959 Ambassador — the pride of India, the car of the presidents, ideal for the Indian roads. Speed is in miles, as it is in England. You see the ceiling? Original".
It's been 3 years since this car stopped being produced for presidents or even taxi companies. The legendary Ambassador, the first car assembled here is not assembled anymore. It just so happened, that once copied from the English Morris Oxford it never changed its design and faced its end in the same year India declared that it wants to live in a new way.
Narendra Modi, PM of India: "I want to tell the whole world — come and make it in India".
"Made in India" is a sticker that the country dreams of putting all over the planet over the "Made in China" stamp. India invites the whole world to join its mission offering billions of workers in exchange for technologies and money.
Indian workers are now 3 times cheaper than the Chinese. In the 90s, the local car industry first pulled and then dragged the Indian economy to the positions where it's breathing down the leader's neck. In some aspects, China is already behind.
The frenzied market burns more oil products than any other country — 4 million barrels a day. More than a billion hungry people that could have become a critical disadvantage was used rather as a bonus. An unparalleled number of consumers ensured the economic boom despite the quality of consumption.
Shikan Varpeya, owner of a Tata Nano car: "The car consumes so little gas — 4 liters per 100 kilometers. It's small, but swift and nimble, just what a city dweller needs".
Tata Nano is certainly not a flagship but a unique design engineered entirely as a means of transportation without any luxury. Invented by the Indian auto-giant in the hope of making Indians switch their motorcycles for cars of the same price and size.
Niraj Agarval, manufacturing director of Tata Motors:
"When the head of our company saw a whole family riding a single bike he started thinking, what could he do to ensure every family has a car. The idea was revolutionary, that's when all of this began".
In the state of Gujarat, a whole Tata plant was built from scratch stuffed with robots and the best Tata personnel. Inventing a car at a price of $2,500, put the tiny engine in the trunk the spare wheel and the gasoline tank — under the hood.
- "It's a kind of an engineering miracle we have all been aspiring to. The first prototype was assembled in 2008, a long time ago. Our engineers endeavored to make the car as compact as possible".
In order to reduce the price of the car, the initial design had no doors. Instead, there were racks that prevented the driver from falling out. However, they realized, that an Indian woman wearing sari wouldn't fit in such a car. The basic model of Tata Nano lacks an air conditioner radio, window lifters, and side mirrors.
Gujarat paid 1 rupee for the plant to be built in the state — a price for the text message to the company's management with a proposal to set their assembly lines in the wasteland. Over the years, the auto-giant has brought the region more than a hundred million dollars. India at its best — minimizing initial investments and maximizing profits.
The same thing happened to Bangalore when the Indians decided to make it a new Silicon Valley. At the end of the 20th century, the sandlot at the outskirts of Bangalore where the land costs almost nothing and the registered capital of the first company was only $250. Now Electronics City is one of the main IT-centers in the world and Bangalore has the most dollar-millionaires per capita.
A simple mechanism at work — a high-tech company was freed from taxes and the computer equipment from import duties. English as the second state language, as well as the geographical position, came in handy. While the US sleeps, India is coding. The country became the world's largest IT offshore. Every major company has contracts with Bangalore. Every young man, and they make up a half of the population, knows what to aspire to.
Vasuta Agarval, general manager of an IT-company:
"Those who graduate from college, especially engineers, computer and IT-specialists want to work in IT industry, that offers ample career opportunities."
What's the most valuable thing India received from the auto and IT industries flourishing almost like Chinese ones? Billions in turnover or hundreds of thousands vacant computers and workbenches. In the land where 50 million people dream of having a job, the number of the poor exceeds the US population, and 250 million city dwellers have no access to electricity, and have only the sun to hope for.
Dipak Mahabal, solar cell engineer:
"The temperature here fluctuates between 20 and 30°C, even in the winter. 4 cells produce 1 KW of energy per day."
There are millions of such panels. Every day the solar cell plantations pump out thousands of MW from the Sun. India wants to make the sun work everywhere. Solar energy is used to land airplanes in the Delhi Airport and to illuminate the underground in Mumbai. By 2030 the mirror fields of solar cells should cover half of the country. Since summer, a train covered in solar panels runs from the suburbs to the capital. Small solar stations are planted across the south like crop fields.
Whether the economy can keep up with the population growth remains unclear. The economy is under pressure from the half obsolete caste system that still forms the relationships in some traditional industries. When the streets are swept by the Garbage Clan, and only sons of shoemakers can become shoemakers. The assembly line of identical fates that's been working for centuries.
- "There are 20 of us that work here. We're all relatives. It's all hard manual labor, that's why only men work in our family".
The family economy is both a burden and the engine of progress. A family stood at the beginning of something that now boosts India to the pace comparable only to the Chinese.
It's now that Adi Godrej is a Forbes-tier billionaire the head of the empire that covered the Mumbai slums with modern residential areas. His grandfather taught Indians that suffered from burglaries to lock their doors by starting to produce locks. At that time it was the first product in the market labeled "Made in India." Now the family installs their locks even on spaceships.
Adi Godrej, Godrej Group Chairman of the Board:
"We were the first ones to produce something in India. At that time, the British ruled the country and running a business was tough. Now India is free and independent, the world's fastest-growing economy. In the next 20 years, we expect even faster growth".
The locks are not manufactured anymore, but the soap, that the family invented at the same time, remains a national brand — the only detergent in the world's biggest laundry.
- "We use the special local soap made from the soap tree, it's 100% natural. These chunks have no smell and don't wash away the color. Soap, brush, and rinse. No stains left".
The sounds of wet laundry hitting the stone baths flood Mumbai since the times of the East India Company, whose executives quickly grasped that manual labor can be cheap and qualitative. if there are thousands of laborers.
The British left, but for these people, the world at the center of the economic capital of India remained the same. They are dhobi — the washerman clan. 700 dhobi families do all Mumbai's laundry. Automatically and manually, never mixing up the laundry from hotels and private clients.
This seamless conveyor works almost like it did 120 years ago. The open-air production doesn't stop even during the monsoon. They're always soaked anyways. Even some major hotels bring their sheets here entrusting expensive fabrics only to these hands exclusively male. A tradition of family business.
- "All the men in my family worked in this laundry My father, his father, the father of his father, and I. We all work here. And my sons will surely be working here as well. The money's good — almost 10 thousand rupees per month".
The machines spin the laundry, the bonfires boil the water. Everything else is done manually. Even the ancient non-electric irons are an advantage here unlike electricity, coal is never out of stock. There's no mess here. Tons of clothes and bedsheets from millions of clients starting with sorting and ending with drying, are never lost.
- "We never lose anything. It's a system — each one has their own clients. They can be private clients, hospitals or hotels. We make special marks. Mine, for instance, is yellow." "I mix all these spices and get masala."
The best-selling Indian spice, masala, consists of 22 ingredients. It reminds of India — a mixture of colors, smells and sounds. Even the most popular movie genre in India is called masala.
It seems like Bollywood rarely feels the wind of change. Indian movies always had exaggerated emotions, over-the-top music and fighting. It hasn't changed a bit. The masala genre — a melodrama and a soap opera where they sing while explaining something, or prepare a robbery, and use any excuse to dance seems weird to the whole world, except India.
The universal language of masala is a power that unites the nation that has 28 officially recognized languages.
Suchitra Pillai-Malik, actress:
"A commoner in India is not a money-bag sitting in his palace. A commoner is a rickshaw — a taxi driver. He wants to forget his misfortunes and troubles. He wants to watch something that will make him smile and swing to the rhythm".
The viability of the old forms of Indian cinema that produce more movies than Hollywood. The inevitable popularity of the tales about rising from rags to riches are independent witnesses of the old heavy burden carried by the land that shot up into space, and breeds billionaires like it's baking cookies. The Indian lion is preparing for another leap trying to leave behind the bustle of Chandni Chowk street. But sometimes it has to pounce back, to let the holy cow pass.
Maxim Kiselev, Viktoriya Golovkina, Phillip Dubrovsky, Vladimir Averin, Alexander Kutataladze, Vladislav Mirzoyants. Vesti News of the Week, India.
