In 1977, in my geography class, we were taught a chapter on something like: India vs The World. In that, there were tables comparing India’s per population ownership percentage in various goods like bicycles, watches, radios, etc. When I read the data, I felt small, slighted and demeaned. India’s percentage penetration of such stuff was in the third decimal place or worse, while the West was well in double digits... before the decimal, that is!
I came back home and corralled my dad, who had just returned home after helping mine coal that was feeding India’s steel plants, which were making our power plants and of course the Ambassador cars.
I asked my Dad: Are we really this bad? We are even worse than Africa on some parameters.
The wise man that he was, he said: Son, that’s true. But that’s exactly the opportunity in India. We have only one way to go. And that’s up.
It’s sad he didn’t live to see all Indian fund managers’ (me included) slick PPTs to foreign investors, which basically is nothing but an updated version of the same data from 1977 on how under-penetrated India is across a variety of goods & services.
The second event that convinced me of India’s permanent bull market was a mini-tsunami that happened in Mumbai sometime in 2007 or 08. The Met Department had forecast giant tidal waves on the Marine Drive. Mumbai police went around telling the city to stay away from Marine Drive on that fateful day when the tsunami was supposed to come (ETA was around 4 PM). I decided to leave my office at Nariman Point early that day so to be home early and safe.
As I entered Marine Drive, I fell into a swoon. Instead of a deserted Marine Drive with people safely away in their homes, watching tsunami on TV, the entire population of Mumbai was... hold your breath... on Marine Drive! They were plastered on the embankments, they were hanging onto the bus shelters, they were clambering onto the rocks. I asked my driver “Why are these crowds here” He said happily “Sir, aaj kuchh tsunami naam ka toofan aaney wala hai. Public tsunami dekhne ko aayi hai. Mien bhi aapko chhod ke aaonga”.
I shook my head and said, “Who can stop this country when even a @#&&$ tsunami doesn’t scare us”.
India, indeed, is unstoppable.
Prime Minister Modi has made some really insightful points in his interview with Moneycontrol. One of them is about frugal living. We Indians have consumed less, per capita, almost everything. Perhaps we have under-consumed. But, hey, why do we need 4 pairs of jeans per year, that an average American buys?
India has recycled for decades. Remember selling our raddi and bottles to kabadiwala? The West now gets it.
With the government’s push into green energy and away from fossil fuels, as the PM explains, there will be no conflict: we have used cow dung for centuries as fuel.
In so many ways, India is the perfect country. A country that can never be a rogue nation. And now, with the heft of around 1.5 billion people and a $3.5 trillion economy, to borrow from the old EF Hutton line “When India talks, people listen”.
An aspirational society where your maid will save money to send her kids to a good school so that they work in proper jobs. A country where kids make designer handbags in Dharavi while similar kids in Brazilian favelas, mug people on Copacabana beach.
I have always believed that given an intrinsically, smart, aspirational billion people, a growth of 5 percent for a long time to come, is almost a given.
And when you add India’s “leadership alpha”, Indian growth, will be a good tsunami for a world struggling to buy its fourth pair of jeans.
India or Bharat, ki farq painda yaaron!
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