The Garuda Vs The Elephant

India successfully launched its first spacecraft. Did they really need to?

There was a Microfinance Summit in Bali last year, attended by many hi-rank people from 65 countries, including noble-prize winner Mohamed Yunus, and Indonesian President, and of course me, hehe… Well, I am not gonna talk about the summit though, I’d only like to emphasize on so many Indian nationals I met there. I managed to have reasonably a long chat with some of them, including one bank director in India. He said something I would never forget, and it fueled me to “work” harder for GNFI. I asked him, “Sir, how do you find India and Indonesia in the future“. He swiftly replied, “Indonesia will win over us“. Woops!

It is very much common to find good articles and outlooks about India in the future, considering the convincing economic growth, achievement in technology, and west media always positions India as a balancing towards China’s gigantic rise. But somehow, noting those things, the bank director still said like that. What happened?

I handed my Blackberry to him and let him open and “review” the GNFI entries. He said, “You are a very good forecaster, young man“. He continued with famous Mahatma Ghandi remark decades ago after he visited England “To become a wealthy nation, England needed to colonize the world for so long. How many worlds India should colonize to make it a wealthy nation?”

India is indeed a unique country, where massive poverty lives side by side with wealth. We cannot argue that India’s economic growth has been convincing in the last decade, but it is also undeniably true that India’s poverty is still way too big. The political spats, Kashmir, and its continuous friction with Pakistan make India’s future seem lagging behind Indonesia’s. That’s what he said.

Indonesia, he continued, has laid a very strong foundation for continuous positive growth, in addition to abundance natural richness. He added, Indonesia need to strengthen its position to become regional power, by doubling its economy, trough Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), exports, and bringing in more money from outside. Only by those Indonesia will become a major power in Asia,which he said it is irresistibly on the way.

Thank you, Mr. Director!