Ever drive in India?

Autos of every size and shape fly down bumpy streets with horns blaring. The blue bus i take from the small town I live in to downtown Dehradun, packed with too many people, feels as if it’s going to fly apart when the driver hits the brakes too hard. Speed bumps are innefective. So are traffic cops.

When there’s a jam, Indian drivers just seem to find a way to unknot it and keep going.

That seems to be the Indian economy, a giant bus careening down the road and gathering momentum as it goes. Many economists believe that it will overtake the US economy in a decade and even pass mighty China though India may look as if it’s coming apart at the seams.

Though the recent Satyam Computer Service scandal may have been the biggest corporate fraud perpatrated in Indian history it may have no more effect on India’s economy than the speed bumps on Indian roads.

At a leadership conference held in Delhi last month, Indian Congress leader Sonia Gandhi stated that government regulation of Indian banks and corporations—part of her mother-in-law Indira’s political legacy—would keep India insulated from the financial meltdown hitting American institutions.

She was right as India’s inflation continues to decrease and her economy is predicted to grow at a robust seven percent for 2009.

Monday, Indian papers report that prime culprit, Satyam CEO Ramalinga Raju, in custody, was replaced by a government-chosen board of directors to handle the crisis and keep the giant company afloat.

Though there may be fall out from the scandal for months to come with other companies and politicians investigated for connections to the disgraced CEO, what of it? Scandal and corruption are nothing new in India. Some might even argue that corruption is an integral part of the country’s underground economy helping to keep a population of a billion-plus fed.

In a sense India is a global economy in and of itself, one that produces most if not all its own food, produces an enormous number of manufactured goods, is technologically advanced, and provides itself its own huge consumer market.

It also faces incredible problems such as several independence movements in the north—Gorkhaland, Nagaland, Assam and Kasmir—Maoist rebel movements in several other states, domestic and foreign terrorism, war with Pakistan and a potential border conflict with China, incredible poverty, the aformentioned endemic corruption, regional biases, ethnic, caste and religious biases. . .we could go on.

If India does become a global super power on par with the US and China in the coming decades, it’s going to do it in its own inimitable fashion and with all its problems in tow like an Indian bus rattling down the road.
—Mark Schurmann