Hope floats, post Obama’s visit

By VINEET NAYAR
Vice-Chairman & CEO, HCL Technologies

I LEFT India for the US the day after President Obama landed in India. So, I had the unique privilege of seeing his visit from both sides of the borders — and the proverbial lens!
    In fact, such has been the depth of symbolism, expectation and hope from President Obama's visit that most conversations I have had on this trip have either started or ended with the President's Indian sojourn. And they started right at the New Delhi airport with a friendly, casual remark from the airline's ground staff: "All roads are leading to India right and you are off to the States?" "Business", I said explaining my rationale. "That's what I meant", she said!
    The world believes that the primary reason for President Obama's visit to India was commerce. Who could've thought that one would live long enough to see an American President visit India to promote 'business interests'! I am reminded here of one of my favourite author Nassim Nicholas Taleb's famous 'Black Swan theory' which refers to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences.
    Could President Obama's visit be described as a 'black swan' event for India? I think so. The Black Swan theory also says that a 'black swan', in spite of its outlier status, is explainable and predictable.
    If the White House fact-sheet is to be believed, over the last decade, investment capital from India to the US grew at an annualised rate of 53%. Add to that the fact that US is India's largest trading partner in goods and services, and India is now among the fastest-growing sources of foreign direct investment entering the United States. The 50,000 American jobs that this visit itself has created are being viewed as an emphatic underlining of the potential of free bilateral trade.
    We also have to view President Obama's visit from two lenses. He is just out of an election defeat. With increased muscle power, the Republicans are going to push for free global trade and if President Obama wants to make progress in the Congress, he has to adopt a different tune. The second is the open criticism by heads of state of countries like Germany whose Chancellor Angela Merkel recently described "trade protectionism (as the) greatest threat to global recovery". This censure is likely to reach its peak at the G20 summit.
    The global eco-political environment has completely changed and President Obama's action and speeches in India are a reflection of his appreciation of this changing reality.
    As he rightly pointed out that with "more than half of all Indians being under 30 years old", we are a country of millions of possibilities and America — with its culture of innovation — is a natural multiplier for this potential. And vice-versa. The time has come to celebrate an uninhibited fusion of – as a leading Indian journalist said - the 'new world' that is India and the 'old New World or the new Old World' that is the US.
    Hope floats, I say.