how do others view india?

i had an interesting experience at St.Gallens university the other day... it is quite amazing how widely varying the european public's view is about india- it spans the entire range - the very few who look at india for its high tech high end computing skills to the majority who still conjure up cows on the non existent roads and poverty when they think of india..

i will never forget the german chappie who after speaking to me for 5 minutes, very proudly asks- are you from pakistan? it seems he had a couple of friends from there and he was proudly showing off that he knew about that part of the world- this reminds me of a gaffe i committed-on a flight in 2002 i asked a swiss german whether he would support germany in the worldcup finals against brazil - for the record, i got my head bitten off- it seems the swiss germans think the chaps who speak "hoch deutsch" are infra dig, and the very vocal swiss would always go ra-ra brazil. moral of the story- dont ask an indian if (s)he is from pakistan, atleast not if you want to win friends and influence people.

coming back to st Gallens, there was this rather quiet (and good looking, i might add!) german girl that i was trying to impress with my speech(obviously!)- and at the end of it all, she asks me- what would india do about its brain-drain problem- i.e, if every educated indian moved out of india, who would progress the country? guess that put paid to any ideas i may have had of impressing her- but my response was- the 20 million (compare that with the billion still left in the country) outside india were already contributing in terms of money, skills and brand ambassadoring the country's name.

then there are the "patronisers"- who sort of sidle upto you and commiserate with you abotu india, and say- it is our moral right as the first world to provide for the third world countries- thanks mate, they dont want any handouts, thank you- india is quite capable of creating her own wealth.

one very interesting view from france- the traditional english speaking worlds view of france is its intolerance to anything not french- my personal experiences in paris and in other parts of france has been quite interesting- they tend to appreciate that indians in general tend to hang onto their cultures rather than just blindly copy the cultures of the west, and that is something they feel strongly about.

however, the most interesting views emerge from the 2nd generation indians that live in europe- the ones that came in as children or were born here... they tend to carry a fairly deep chip on their shoulders about india and are not particualry sure as to how they view india- on the one hand, when they were growing up, indians and india was not particularly well regarded, and yet, given genetics, their association with india was inescapable, so many of them end up perpetually feeling that they need to prove a point, and hence tend to be quite sensitive to their indianness...

all this contrasts with the american view- after all, europeans tend to view americans as "not really having a culture" that is beyond 300 years old... but the interesting point is, it seems to make the americans more accomodating of multiple cultures as compared to most europeans.

my view- there are many indias- afterall this is a country that is almost 20 times the size of britain by population- and it reflects in the wide variety of cultures and subcultures that exist in the country.

on the one end (about 40 million households) live in relative poverty- with all their income being expended on basic living necessities- food, shelter clothing etc... , then there is the so called middleclass- about 70 million households which can afford a bit more, and who are sustaining the boom in india now, and at the top is about 1.2 million households, which think, earn and spend like a global community.