An merican's Guide to Doing Business in India

Eugene M Makar

• Publisher: Adams Media
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781440514401
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce international

A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.

Part I
Introduction to India

Chapter 1

India in the Twenty-First Century

Every day another article, newsflash, television report, or blog about India appears in the media. Some of these are insightful, others are useful, a few are misleading, but most offer only a peek into a world that is truly foreign to most Americans. India is a land of enormous opportunities. Plan your strategy well, and you will be able to share in the miracle. Rush in hastily, and you are likely to miss out, or worse. India also is a land of enormous differences. It is rapidly changing and yet staying the same—a land of contrasts that can keep you baffled. I am not the first person to say this, nor will I be the last. Here are some facts to get started:

• An Indian is near the top of the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires, and six of the top 125 on the list are Indians, yet 800 million of their countrymen live on less than $2 a day.

• Much of Indian culture is rooted in events reaching back as far as 3,500 years, yet the country’s modernization is being driven by half a billion people under the age of twenty-five.

• India has nuclear power and the atomic bomb, yet residents suffer from HIV/AIDS at a rate second only to the Republic of South Africa.

Over $25 million U.S. dollars flow into India every day. A Reuters survey placed India at the top of the heap for long-term strategic investment due to the nation’s continued efforts to reform its economic systems. A.T. Kearney has India second on its list of most attractive countries for foreign investment. Speaking about foreign-company operations in India, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) points out the following:

• 70 percent are making profits.

• 84 percent are planning expansions.

• 91 percent foresee opportunities in sectors other than their own.

High-profile Indians all around the world publish articles and newsletters encouraging social and political reforms on the home front so that the benefits of the country’s emergence diffuse down to all the people. Seemingly unafraid to step on anyone’s toes, the Central Government repeatedly commits resources and rupees to policies and practices intended to jump-start change. The wheels are in motion and India is headed in the right direction.

Can she sustain her momentum? I believe so, provided the government continues to exercise proper management and all levels and sectors in the economy are fully committed to stay the course and tighten their belts, if necessary. The biggest and most critical tasks before India’s Union Government (also called the Central Government or Government of India) is effecting the country’s change from a mostly agrarian economy to a balanced economy with a significant job-producing manufacturing sector. To be successful, this must be sustainably done without leaving millions of people behind and the environment in ruins. The consequences of failure would be felt throughout the world.

I believe that the best long-term opportunities for most American businesses in India are in manufacturing for export. This is the sector where India is putting the most muscle. It takes advantage of her vastly underutilized human resources and dovetails best with the U.S. economy. It also is the most complicated sector to get started in, largely due to a number of institutional, governmental, and cultural factors that are discussed throughout this book. Here’s a brief list of the biggest challenges:

• Political stability: For the most part, India’s Central Government is stable. Political leadership comes from a relatively heterogeneous parliament run by a coalition of political parties. These players come from many different political arenas and have learned over the past two decades to put their differences aside and work toward common goals. Even the worst of scenarios doesn’t see India falling apart, but the country could slide back far enough to hinder the pace of economic development and foreign investment interest.

• Corruption and government interference: India is working hard to rid itself of archaic economic and cultural policies. In the early 1990s, classic corruption and government interference had brought the nation to the brink of bankruptcy. Feudal laws and bureaucracies that paralyzed the middle class while rewarding the politically connected are now largely off the books, but many of the same unionized government bureaucrats are still punching the time clock. The state governments are not immune from criticism, either. For example, charging truckers import tariffs on the goods they carry into one state from another does little to encourage economic growth.

• Social strife fueled by socioeconomic inequality: The economic gap between India’s poor and emerging middle class is wide. Many of India’s elites are concerned that if it’s not closed quickly enough, all the country’s efforts at improvement will be for naught. Small pockets of anarchic rebellion in the poorest areas have been held in check, but the spread of dissention is on every leader’s mind. India’s growing private sector is stepping up to the plate with job opportunities, but there’s still a long way to go.

• Functional illiteracy: India’s ultimate ability to mobilize its people and create a manufacturing economy hinges on two unrelated factors: language differences among areas of the country and inadequate education systems for the poorer people. The language differences are real and are not going away anytime soon. Much of the real effort is in teaching English at the elementary school level. However, India’s educational systems have historically served the wealthy and elite of the Hindu population. Schooling in rural India is one of the Central Government’s top priorities, but inefficiencies with local and state governments are hindering the implementation of education reforms.

• Infrastructure inadequacies: The lack of an adequate, integrated infrastructure has plagued India for many years, especially in terms of how it holds back economic growth and condemns hundreds of millions of people to a third-world existence. India recently committed huge resources to constructing the backbone of a national highway system, the Golden Quadrilateral, to complement its aging railroad network. Roads, railways, and waterways infusing the country’s urban areas are now the government’s top priority, and $175 billion has been budgeted through 2010 for this.

• Inefficient banking and financial institutions: A few U.S. and foreign commercial banks have been operating in India for several years. Foreign banks have played an important role in the banking reforms of developing country economies by providing capital to underpin the weak domestic bank sector until it can stand on its own, and to show the way toward modernization of the industry. Ideally, India would like to capitalize on this while maintaining control of its own economic destiny. After decades of protection for the banking industry, many banks are in dire straits, but the pace of reform could be much faster. The constraints on foreign investment remind many people of the old License Raj that crippled the economy for over thirty years.

• Shifting momentum from the Central Government to the State and Union Territory Governments: India’s Central Government speaks for the nation in world affairs and provides for the national defense. At home, it knows that many of its reforms need the financial and political cooperation of the state and local governments. For example, the Central Government has moved to eliminate fiscal inefficiency by directing twenty of the largest state governments to implement a value-added tax (VAT) while it slowly eliminates the Central Sales Tax that it collects. Like all newer things in India, there are disagreements between the central and state governments on the timing and conditions of the phase-out. These could have adverse effects on economic development, such as in service taxes on some intra-state items, VAT on imports, and continued federal subsidies. Always keep in mind that succeeding in India will require you to deftly balance competing interests and seemingly contradictory requirements.

Much of the India we see today has its roots in the distant past. The subcontinent’s civilization had already been waxing and waning for 3,000 years when Europeans came calling in the late fifteenth century. The Dutch and then the British established trading bases, and the latter’s occupation lasted a little more than 200 years. The British replaced the Princely States, which in turn had filled the gaps left after the decline of the Mughal Empire—and so on—back in time to a thousand years before the Buddha. Today this is just a drop in the bucket for a culture as colorful and complex as that of India. Don’t let blue suits and neckties fool you: Much of India has remained relatively unchanged for millennia. Her people are very good at absorbing any who come to conquer without allowing themselves to be extinguished.

Legacies of Early Empires

Anthropologists and genetic scientists place modern man in India at least 70,000 years ago, as part of the eastward migration from Africa to Australasia. Archaeologists have uncovered widespread evidence dating as early as 2500 b.c.e. of a trading network of agrarian villages along the Indus River (from which India draws its name) in what today is Pakistan.

The seeds of modern India were sown around 1500 b.c.e., when waves of foreign invaders known as Aryans entered the subcontinent through northwestern mountain passes between modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan and spread throughout northern India. These invading civilizations brought with them a new language, Sanskrit, which evolved into Hindi, and a nature-focused religion we call Brahmanism that evolved into Hinduism. Their conquest of the north and their difference from the natives in the south created social and cultural systems that still exist today. The most notable of these are the caste and the north-south divide of languages. Gautama Buddha, who lived around 500 b.c.e., would probably recognize many things in rural Indian society today.

Ashoka and the Golden Age

The first recorded Indian imperial dynasty is that of the Maurya, who came to power in the north around 300 b.c.e. Over the next 140 years, they pushed their empire far to the south and nearly to modern Chennai and Bangalore. Although their reign lasted only a few generations, it greatly influenced the founders of today’s Republic of India. India’s national emblem, the Lion Capital, is a sculpture of four lions standing back-to-back atop a pillar. This symbol is attributed to Ashoka, the greatest Mauryan king and one of the ancient world’s most enduring figures. Ashoka also used the ancient Buddhist symbol of the (dharma) chakra, or twenty-four-spoke wheel of law, in many of his monuments. The Ashoka chakra is prominently depicted in the center of the Indian flag.

The Maurya Empire collapsed around 185 b.c.e., and the country settled back into disjointed kingdoms until 320 a.d., when the Gupta Empire was founded in the north. Called the Golden Age of India, the Gupta Empire was culturally one of the most important in Indian history. Gupta artists, scientists, musicians, and authors made wonderful advances in medicine, astronomy, mathematics, architecture, the arts, and literature. Gupta scientists are credited with several major discoveries that changed the world: the invention of the number zero, which formed the basis for counting by tens; knowledge that the earth was round; and the development of a 365-day calendar. They also practiced the Hindu faith and established that language and culture at India’s core, where it still remains today.

The Coming of Islam

The next great change in India started in the seventh century a.d. with little fanfare. Muslim scholars, traders, and missionaries came into northern India from the Middle East and Asia in successive migrations. A few small Arab invasions took place, but for the most part the conquerors melted into oblivion. Yet over the next 300 years, they managed to fill the power vacuum left in the wake of the Gupta Empire in the Indus Valley.

During the same period, the rest of northern India saw a general decline in Indian unity among the fragmented kingdoms. This left the now-disjointed civilization unprepared for the Turkish onslaught that began in 977 a.d. Triggered by religious fervor or greed for India’s rumored riches, a succession of Turkish rulers led raids into northwestern India bringing Islam with them.

By 1200 a.d., the entire north of India was under Turkish control and was being administered from the capital in Delhi. The sword of Islam had made Buddhism “extinct,” and the parallel cultures of Islam and Hindu were galvanized into the villages, towns, and cities throughout India in such a way that we can still see it today. Persian literature and culture spread throughout Muslim India. Islam’s intolerance of Hinduism’s many gods and caste fomented religious splinter groups, the most famous of which is Sikhism.

The next great Muslim invasion to profoundly alter the subcontinent swept into India from modern Afghanistan. From 1526 through 1529, Babur defeated Indian and then Afghan leaders. He laid claim to the northern subcontinent and thus established the roots of the Mughal Empire. By the way, Mughal refers to the Mongols, as Babur is said to have descended ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PART I: Introduction to India
• PART II: Strategic Business Choices and Decisions
• APPENDIX A: Information Sources and Web Sites
• APPENDIX B: Best Prospects for U.S. Exports and Investments
• APPENDIX C: Map of India