Catch a Tiger by the Tail
IN 1835, THOMAS MACAULAY wrote in a "Minute on Education" that the British were creating a class of Indians educated in English, to help the British rule their country; they were also to be "English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect." He predicted that India would eventually become independent, but also "an imperishable empire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws."
Nearly everyone who seeks to explain India's advantages in the global economy starts with the English language. Although introduced by foreigners, it is nearly the native tongue of India's political, intellectual and practical classes. Privileged children start learning English in kindergarten; very privileged children learn it at home. For everyone else, English has become the first hurdle for their ambition to surmount -- if they want to succeed in most businesses. And as an economy, India has succeeded in ways that would have astounded Macaulay and his contemporaries.
Ask an Indian
As many as 350 million Indians can get along in English well enough to drive taxis for tourists and point out the sights. The country produces more than a half-million English-speaking university graduates every year, 40% of them with engineering or hard-science degrees.
Call centers have become the most familiar sign of Indian entrance into the global economy. Call the customer-service line for Dell personal computers or any of hundreds of other products and services, especially in the evening, U.S. time, and you probably will be greeted by "Howard," or "Sylvia," who will ask "How may I help you?" in a distinctly Indian accent. They are well-programmed to use computerized knowledge bases to identify and solve basic and advanced computer problems.
And for every call-center employee, whose chief skill is communications, there is at least one other Indian working more invisibly for U.S. customers doing something considerably more difficult. Writing custom software is the most well-developed skill, but Indians are evaluating applications to American banks for home-equity loans, or analyzing investment opportunities in American companies or researching American legal issues. An Indian can use the Internet as easily as an American to check the assessed valuation in homes located in hundreds of U.S. counties, or to read Securities and Exchange Commission filings on thousands of American companies, or to look up obscure state cases for precedents in a complex legal action.
Surrounding the southern city of Bangalore are modern buildings full of young Indian university graduates doing all of these things, and the city itself is full of new businesses catering to their middle-class needs and desires. Indeed, Bangalore employers, which include many familiar American names -- as well as Indian companies like Wipro, Infosys and Tata Consulting Services -- are bidding up the price of skilled labor so much that other Indian cities are getting in on the action and advertising themselves as cheaper alternatives to Bangalore.
From Chandigarh in the northwestern state of Punjab to Cochin in the southern state of Kerala, developers are throwing up business parks on the model of Silicon Valley, in partnership with state governments promising better electric power, highways, other infrastructure and lighter regulation than is the norm in the country. Even Bengal, a state whose government is dominated by Communists, has taken steps to attract the infotech industry. In a move reminiscent of Soviet labor practices, Bengal has declared infotech a "critical industry" -- in which strikes are forbidden.
Coming-Out Party
Outsourcing brought India more than $7 billion a year in revenue in 2003. That number is widely expected to double by 2007, and double again by 2012. But outsourced business is only the beginning of India's exploitation of its global advantages. In many industries, Indian companies are poised to break out from outsourcing to be independent actors on the world business stage.
Bollywood, the Bombay-based Indian movie industry, already produces more movies each year than Hollywood. Nearly all of them are aimed at the domestic market: The films are quirky and sometimes almost incomprehensible to audiences outside India (although they are gaining popularity abroad). But they are usually profitable, and Bollywood producers thus have built a relatively firm financial foundation for their industry.
In addition, Western producers are leaving London and Rome and Vancouver -- their earlier refuges from Hollywood union rules and wages -- and looking to India for inexpensive skilled labor in lighting, sound, set-building, animation, computer graphics and the other trades that push up the cost of movie-making. Like so many other forms of outsourcing, this is raising Bollywood's production values ever higher. And Bollywood's now trying to increase its movies' global appeal.
Medical care in India ranges from world-class to quack-class. The country is too poor to provide anything beyond the most basic clinical care as an entitlement, so the rest of the health-care industry is as entrepreneurial as any economist could wish for. Private doctors, private hospitals, cash on the desk; and at the top of the clinical ladder, it is far more cost-effective than any Western system because costs and prices are low. People from Europe, Japan and Canada who are rationed away from all the care they want, and people from the U.S. who are unable to afford the care they want, are actually finding it cheaper -- including airfare -- to fly to India to pay far less for surgeries such as hip replacements than they would using the usual free-market alternative in the U.S. Some 150,000 foreigners a year are already making the trip.
India's indigenous pharmaceutical industry already meets world standards in some respects. The country boasts more factories certified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to produce drugs and intermediate chemicals for the U.S. market than any other country outside America. The Indian government and the industry, however, have annoyed Western governments and companies with their attitude toward patents. Like any infant industry, Indian drug companies regarded patents and trade secrets as unfair barriers to their progress. The Indian government did away with patents on substance, while upholding patents on manufacturing processes developed in India.
On the one hand, Indian companies acted as contract manufacturers for drugs invented elsewhere; on the other hand they became aggressive marketers of pirated drugs locally and in countries with an equally cavalier attitude toward patents. In recent years, however, Indian drug companies have matured to do their own research and are starting to invent, not merely to copy and supply. A sign of that maturity is a new willingness by the industry and the government to protect substance patents -- since Indian companies now or soon will have substances worth protecting. With an eye on foreign markets, Indian companies are looking to buy into Western drug companies.
World Leader
When the G-7 becomes the G-8 by including Russia, it will be denying the facts. India is already a larger economic powerhouse than Russia (so is China, for that matter). But the recent meeting of the G-7 was the first to which India was even invited to send an observer. That exclusion will not last, or the G-7, G-8 or whatever will be playing second fiddle to the G-2.
The CIA recently issued a report predicting that India and China would come to lead the world economy as soon as 2020. While it takes no great predictive power to say that the world's two largest countries will be the two most important when and if they reach a high state of development, the Central Intelligence Agency's analysts said that development will happen faster than most experts have dared to predict.
For most individuals, investing in India is attractive in theory, but daunting in practice. There are a couple of closed-end mutual funds, and a few companies have American depositary receipts trading on U.S. stock markets. In general, however, Indian companies trade only in India on the Bombay and National Stock Exchanges.
Fortunately for investors, publicly traded Indian companies produce annual and quarterly reports, in English, in formats regulated by the Indian equivalent of the SEC that are intelligible to transoceanic investors. Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have linked up with Indian investment banks and are covering a broad range of Indian stocks. (They are also pumping out initial public offerings at record rates.)
Everyone knows what happens to the person who grabs a tiger by the tail. He's in for a wild ride. He must hang on, or be eaten. Investing in India is probably going to be a wild ride, but a ride worth taking for most of the 21st century. After all, exploiting India has been profitable for the West since the 15th century. Now it's India's turn.
崛起的印度
1835年，托马斯?麦考莱(Thomas Macaulay)在《教育备忘录》(Minute on Education)一书中写道，英国正在培养一代受英式教育的印度人，以帮助英国统治印度；这些人“有著英式品位、英式观念，他们的道德和价值观以及智慧无一不是英式的”。麦考莱预言，印度虽然终有一天会独立，但也会是“我们的艺术、道德、文学和法制武装起来的不朽帝国”。
一谈到印度在全球经济体系中的成功之处，几乎每个人都会首先想到印度人熟练的英语。虽然这是一门外语，但几乎成了印度政界、知识界甚至劳工阶层的母语。家境优越的孩子从幼儿园开始学英语，家境非常优越的孩子还没上幼儿园就跟著家人说英语了。但对其他国家的人来说，英语是他们在商界闯荡的第一只拦路虎。作为一个经济体，印度的成功之路会让麦考莱及其同代人意想不到。
有多达3.5亿的印度人英语娴熟，足以为游客充当导游。印度每年还有逾50万英语娴熟的大学毕业生走上社会，其中40%都拥有一份工程或者自然科学学位。
呼叫中心已经成了印度跨入全球经济体系最常见的标志。如果在美国时间夜间拨打戴尔电脑(Dell)客户服务热线，或者其他上百种产品和服务的热线电话，很可能会遇到一位“霍华德”或者“西尔维亚”，用一口印度口音浓重的英语向你致意。他们的计算机知识足以帮客户解决在电脑使用方面的各种问题。
呼叫中心员工的主要技能是交流，但至少还有一类印度人在为美国客户做著更不引人注意但难度却更大的工作。编写定制软件是印度人最熟练掌握的一项技能，而许多递交给美国银行的按揭贷款申请现在也是由印度人负责评估的，他们还在分析投资美国企业的获利机会，或在研究美国的法律事宜。通过互联网，一名印度人可以像美国人一样轻松核对数百个美国乡村的住宅估价，查阅上千家美国公司向美国证券交易委员会(Securities and Exchange Commission, 简称SEC)递交的文件，或者为一项复杂的诉讼案件在浩如烟海的判例中查找先例。
印度南部城市班加罗尔耸立著一座座现代化高楼大厦，一批批朝气蓬勃的大学毕业生在其中进进出出。班加罗尔这座城市本身就充斥著各种新兴行业，专门为这些新生中产阶级服务。落户班加罗尔的公司中不乏声名显赫的美国公司，也有Wipro、Infosys和Tata Consulting Services等大名鼎鼎的印度企业，它们的竞争已经抬高了熟练工人的薪资，这给了印度其他城市以可乘之机，它们纷纷鼓吹自己的薪资水平比班加罗尔更有竞争力。
从西北部旁遮普邦的昌第加，到南部喀拉拉邦的科钦，开发商们兴建了众多类似美国矽谷的工业园，多数都是与当地政府合作进行的，后者许诺提供更充足的电力、更便捷的高速公路等基础设施，以及更宽松的监管环境。即使是共产党执政的孟加拉邦，也已采取了各种措施来吸引信息科技产业投资，并把信息科技列为本邦的“支柱产业”，也就是说不允许工人罢工。
2003年，外包业务为印度带来了超过70亿美元的收入。人们普遍预计到2007年这个数字会增加一倍，到2012年再增加一倍。但外包只是印度进军国际市场的小试牛刀之举，在许多行业，印度公司都将挣脱外包身份，成为全球市场的独立参与者。
孟买的印度电影工业中心宝莱坞(Bollywood)每年制作的电影比美国好莱坞(Hollywood)还多，这些电影几乎都瞄准国内市场：情节离奇，有时若不是印度人就根本无法理解（不过这些电影在国外市场的知名度已越来越高）。但它们总能盈利，宝莱坞制片人由此构筑了一个财务基础相对稳固的行业。
此外，西方制片人纷纷离开伦敦、罗马和渥太华这些好莱坞工会条例和工资标准的早期避难地，前往印度寻找廉价的熟练灯光师、音响师、布景师，以及动画、电脑图像处理等方面的专业人员，正是这些项目让一部电影的制作成本节节攀升。同其他种种外包形式一样，这也推高了宝莱坞的产品价值。目前，宝莱坞正在尽力提高自己在全球市场上的吸引力。
印度的医疗护理行业既有世界一流水平的机构也有江湖游医。印度是个穷国，无法提供基本临床治疗之外的其他医疗福利，所以这部分医疗服务完全是按市场化机制运营的。私人开业的医生和私立医院收到现钱才为病人服务；由于成本低廉，这一体系的成本效益比比任何西方国家都高。欧洲、日本和加拿大不能享受公费医疗的患者、美国无力承担医疗护理的患者，实际上都在印度找到了更廉价的医疗服务，包括更廉价的机票。在印度做一台髋骨替换手术的费用要比美国低。目前，每年全球各地大约有15万人飞往印度接受医疗服务。
印度本土的制药业在某些领域已经达到了国际水准。印度宣称，该国得到美国食品和药物管理局(Food and Drug Administration, 简称FDA)批准、可以向美国市场供应药物及药品原材料的公司是美国以外各国中数量最多的。但是，印度政府以及印度医药公司对待专利的态度惹恼了西方国家的政府和公司。像所有新生行业一样，印度制药公司认为专利和商业秘密都是阻挡它们发展的不公平壁垒。印度政府实际上不理会专利侵权投诉，同时却支持保护印度自己开发的生产专利。
一方面，印度公司是世界其他地区研制药物的合约生产商；另一方面，它们又是国内盗版药物大张旗鼓的营销商。近些年，印度制药公司逐步成熟起来，开始自行研发制药，而不仅是仿制和生产了。制药行业及相关政府机构走向成熟的标志是，它们有意对专利提供保护了，这是因为印度公司已经或即将拥有值得保护的东西。著眼于外国市场，印度制药企业已开始寻机收购西方制药公司。
七大工业国(G7)加上俄罗斯就成了八大工业国(G8)，不过这恐怕还是掩盖了一个事实，那就是印度已经发展成为一个经济实力超过俄罗斯的国家（就此而言中国也是一样）。在最近这次G7会议上，印度才首次获邀派观察员出席。这种排外不会持久，否则不管是G7还是G8都会成为二流角色。
美国中央情报局(CIA)最近发布报告，预言印度和中国最早在2020年就能成为全球经济领袖。虽然这两个全球最大的国家成为全球两个最重要的国家只是早晚的事，但中央情报局的分析师们认为，这一天的到来可能比大多数专家学者敢于预测的都要快。
对大多数人来说，投资印度从理论上讲很有吸引力，但实施起来仍困难太多。印度只有几只封闭型共同基金和少数几家公司在美国股市发行了美国存托凭证。印度的股票基本只在孟买证交所上市。
但投资者可以庆幸的是，印度上市公司用英文发布年度和季度业绩报告，使用的是于SEC版本相当的印度格式，大洋彼岸的投资者可以充分理解这些报告的内容。美林(Merrill Lynch)、高盛(Goldman Sachs)和摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)已经与印度投资银行携手，跟踪分析大量印度股票，印度股市进行首次公开募股的速度也是前所未有的。
大家都知道如果抓住老虎尾巴会怎么样，一场疯狂追逐就此开始，如果不是骑到老虎背上，就要被它吃掉。投资印度也差不多，但这场疯狂追逐在二十一世纪的大部分时间里都值得一试。毕竟，从十五世纪开始西方人在印度的探险就开始赢得丰厚回报了，现在该轮到印度人了。
