Impressions of India

[sasguru]

UK has an amazing amount going for it .

The UK has some of the best universities in the world and hence some of the best educated graduates.
It's world class at several industries: finance, life sciences, aerospace and marine engineering to a certain extent.
But it just shot itself in the foot with Brexit.

And those strengths are overridden by the high debt, personal and national, the large and rising twin deficits, the too-small manufacturing sector and overreliance on financial services, the low productivity and poor education of the bottom 75% of the population.

[sasguru]

I was told exactly that by an Indian guy last week.

Wow an Indian guy told you that? Must be right then

[SimonMac]

So back from my business trip to Mumbai (also took in a few days R&R at the Leela resort in Goa, very nice).
Well, India has changed massively from my previous trip more than 20 years ago.
The airport is brand new, the roads are all new, new and impressive buildings everywhere, large shopping malls with international brands, a building boom that puts even London's to shame.
But by taking a walk you can see the old India of poverty, dirt and squalor still exists under the surface, coexisting with the new India.
If you are a professional it seems you can exist totally in the air conditioned new India, only interacting with the old India in terms of the servants/help.
But I think the biggest change is the confidence that wasn't there 20 years ago. Many Indians have been educated abroad in the US and come back and they're brimming with get-up-and-go.
The "bobs" we get here on ICTs are definitely the 3rd raters.
With its GDP growing exponentially, it's all for India to lose really.
They still make some extraordinary blunders e.g. when I was there was diificult to get currency since they had removed some denominations of notes from circulation (demonetisation) which affected the economy.
But on the whole India's free-wheeling enterprise economy seems to be more robust in the long run than China's planned one, albeit with strong headwinds of corruption.
If they addressed the corruption, that 7% compound growth pa would rise to an astonishing 10%, I've no doubt.
Fascinating place and one to look to invest in somehow if you are canny.

How did the trip to Goa, erm go?!

Trying to weasle myself onto the India project at ClinetCo which would mean a trip to Pune, would like to spend a few days in Goa myself if the opportunity came up

[sasguru]

It's almost like we live in a very rich, prosperous first world country with incredible health care, education and quality of life isn't it

Shome mishtake, shirley.

[LondonManc]

Wow an Indian guy told you that? Must be right then

More chance of him being right than you to be fair, given you've just looked around and come to a conclusion as usual.

[sasguru]

How did the trip to Goa, erm go?!

Trying to weasle myself onto the India project at ClinetCo which would mean a trip to Pune, would like to spend a few days in Goa myself if the opportunity came up

Loved Goa, been there before. The Leela is probably the best resort there, so wasnt cheap.
Great beaches for sitting on but not swimming (dangerous currents in certain places) although I swam where the hotel lifeguards indicated it was safe. Excellent seafood washed down with lashings of Kingfisher beer which seems to taste better there than here, although that was probably the heat.
Problems in Goa are now the problems of prosperity, too much traffic, over construction, too many tourists etc., but you won't see these in an up-market resort.

[sasguru]

More chance of him being right than you to be fair, given you've just looked around and come to a conclusion as usual.

Well given that I was assessing costs, I can tell you for sure that the best Indian IT analytics workers (from the top IITs) are not cheap and are among the best paid Indian graduates in any industry.

[MrMarkyMark]

Loved Goa, been there before. The Leela is probably the best resort there, so wasnt cheap.
Great beaches for sitting on but not swimming (dangerous currents in certain places) although I swam where the hotel lifeguards indicated it was safe. Excellent seafood washed down with lashings of Kingfisher beer which seems to taste better there than here, although that was probably the heat.
Problems in Goa are now the problems of prosperity, too much traffic, over construction, too many tourists etc., but you won't see these in an up-market resort.

Better sea side fun to be had in the Andaman islands, off India.

Was what Goa was many years ago, with better fishing, diving and beaches, along with great food.
Spent 2 months there and loved it.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andaman_Islands

[sasguru]

Better sea side fun to be had in the Andaman islands, off India.

Was what Goa was many years ago, with better fishing, diving and beaches, along with great food.
Spent 2 months there and loved it.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andaman_Islands

Interesting, will place that on my bucket list.
South Goa is Ok though, still quite sleepy.
The North is ruined by the chav charter crowd.

[ChimpMaster]

Sorry but your attitude is wrong, I feel like the brexit, trump stuff has given the ok for people who are naturally pessimistic and even a bit depressive to now go around saying doom, gloom and more doom.

UK has an amazing amount going for it and the same can be said for the US.

I was talking from an everyday life and infrastructure point of view that one might see when comparing the relative changes between the 2 countries over the past 20 years. I think it's very clear that the UK has gone nowhere and in fact we have massive bills to bring our basic infrastructure back up to scratch (roads, NHS for example) as well as ever increasing debt to support a decreasing standard of living. It's like everything is falling apart and successive governments have held off from investing back to fix anything, further compounding problems - the cost of fixing potholes is what, £14bn now? Ridiculous.

The Indians have seen their country flourish and their standard of living improve drastically, westernising and modernising. Of course there are still huge disparities in wealth across their populace but I'm talking about the average middle-class person here who would have seen the evolution of their homes, businesses, shopping malls, availability of goods and services. And of course there is a long way to go in terms of working conditions etc but again the relative improvement in their lives overall compared to the UK is massive.

Going forward, I hope you're right that the UK has an amazing amount going for it. After all, we're all in it together....