Thursday, May 4, 2017

India : A Continent masquerading as a country

India is a continent masquerading as a country. We are a de facto continent though we are de jure only a country.

Most of the world world has not figured this out or at least pretend so. Our population is more than that of Europe. It has as much arable land if not more than Europe. It has more languages than Europe. Its variety of lands and landforms make it one of the geographical diverse "country". The people and their natures, the cuisines are so varied that most foreigners who want to simplify things dont understand India much.

Even if the whole  world is fooled or refuses to see India is a continent we should not be fooled and should base our geopolitical ad economic strategy of the de facto position of continent and negotiate with  the world on these terms.

When we begin to thinking  that we are de facto a country we begin to get many things seriously  wrong.

Let me give an example.

When we compare tourist arrivals into a country  say Spain which with a population of 46.4 million gets 75 millions tourists an year and then compare with  India  which gets about 10 million tourists a year we think Indian tourism is miniscule. But look closer and you will find this



Most of the tourists to Spain are from within Europe. The traffic count into Spain is like adding Tamilians and Kannadigas  going to Tirupati as Tourist arrivals.  If you consider for a moment  Europe as country then arrivals from UK, France , Germany, Italy , Nederlands etc wouldn't count and would substantially reduce tourist arrivals into Spain to about 5-6 million a 90% + reduction if computed on a like to like basis.
 
Thus  comparing foreign tourist arrivals into India  is the most absurd comparison and making comments about state of Indian tourism on that basis is way off the mark. Indian tourism has many challenges and we need to work on them but we should not think our situation is abysmal. It is very healthy.

Now contrast Spain with Tirupati a small temple town  with just one old temple which gets 30-40 million tourist arrivals a year. If Tirupati were a separate country, by the standards of the numerical illiterate elites it would rank very high on the list of tourist countries in the world. There are at least ten temples like this. If one temple can get ranked so high you can imagine how  the rankings would be if we added Katra town - Vaishnodevi, Madurai etc as separate countries in this list.

Singapore gets 16m tourists a year.  So we can safely say that Tirupati town is a bigger tourist attraction than Singapore.

Let me give one more explanation. Lets say the Eurocrats having a wet dream of Europe as a single nation get their dream fulfilled. Now they are one nation and so FIFA asks them to send one team  to the World Cup and gives them money reserved for one team like say Argentina with a population of 43 million. Would it be fair way to share the revenue when Europe brings in say 800 million + audience.  If FIFA share of TV rights was main source of revenue to nurture the game in Europe will a country share be enough to maintain the game in a continent ? When asked this way it is obvious that it isn't.

We should not forget this when BCCI negotiates its fair share of fees with ICC. Even if we are a de jure country we have to nurture the game on a continent basis because thats exactly what we are. Needless to say the TV rights have such high value only because we bring continent size audiences and continent sized value of TV audiences. Our share of ICC revenues thus cannot be country sized. If ICC indeed wants to take continent size audiences and pay us country sized amounts of TV rights then we should send them a team from a country sized area like say Mumbai which is bigger than Australia.




The Great Swimmers of Cooumville

I am going to tell you an interesting story about a town called Cooumville, its river and its folks.

There was a clean river flowing through the city. They had an annual swimming contest in the river. Everyone from the world wanted to contest and the local swimmers could not win the races due to competition. So a few cunning locals who had a special skill of swimmimg in sewage quietly found a pliant  mayor and brough him to their side and requested him to start letting sewage water into the river. While these few locals swimming ability was not the best no one could beat them in swimming in sewage charged water. Over time the mayor realized that letting sewage into the river also saved a lot of money for the city and  he duly pocketed all the sewage plant money and let the entire sewage into the river. The net result was that the chosen locals who were the only ones could swim in sewage began winning all the Cooumville races.

As the population and economy of Cooumville expanded the races became prestigious. The winners of the races were now global superstars. The locals came to dominate and win the races.  The swimmers started buying cricket teams, actresses vied to marry them and  their opinion was sought by media on all issues. Ivy league management schools came to study the utter dominance of the few local families in these races. Case studies and books came to be written about the Cooumville technique, the unique approach and the philosophy of swimming. 

Many professors built careers on specializing in giving gyan about the Cooumville way and why these few Cooumville swimmers won all races in Cooumville.

A lot of time had passed and the next generation of swimmers from these families came in to the field. They enjoyed the stardom and fruits of victory but since they had seen better having been trained abroad etc they wondered why the river had to have sewage water mixed in it. They developed an aversion to the old Mayor who did not want to improve the river. So in the next election the backed this unknown tea seller who lived on the banks of the river who had taken a vow to clean the river. These scions thought that if they could clean the river they could continue to win and have a good life instead of swimming in the stench. The good life they had seen in their overseas education and travels had opened their eyes to better life.

The elections came and the tea seller won the elections. The public anger at the old Mayor and the old gen of Cooumville swimmers who had defiled the river played not an insignificant part in carrying the tea seller comfortably to the Mayor seat.

The new mayor set about his work briskly and began cleaning the river in right earnest.  As the sewage started going to waste treatment plants the river began to clean up and slowly swimming in sewage no longer was enough to win the races. Locals who could swim started doing well too. The word started getting  around that this was going to be no longer about swimming in sewage. The few families of Cooumville swimmers now began to have some serious doubts on the wisom of cleaning the river but it was too late. The public loved the new Mayor who soon cleaned the river thus ending the era of the Cooumville sewage swimmers who forgot that their real skill was swimming in sewage ...

Sounds familiar ? :)