Yesterday, i went to a popular bookstore to ask for Tarun Khanna’s book - Billions of entrepreneurs - How India and China are reshaping their futures and yours - it was totally sold out! The man at the counter said that there had been a massive demand for the book. I gave him a wry smile, the huge demand for the book and India’s huge interest in what lies behind the bamboo curtain meant to me that it was going to be an India and China century and not an India Vs China century. It also meant that my move from India to China 2 years ago to understand how the two economies together can complement eachother, thereby adding more to the world at large was a wise decision. The world was headed in the right direction.
Authored by the Harvard Business School professor of Indian origin, reviews of the book say that it talks of tales of how global companies have navigated their wares successfully into India and China. Through real life examples it gives impetetus to other companies in how to weave their way into these two very different markets. Khanna contrasts the two economies in the areas of technology, healthcare, movie making, oil, banking and agriculture, all the way comparing not contrasting one against the other, showing how the two actually complement one another - representing a balanced picture. He explains to the world, who have until now looked at India and China through the same lens, how different the two economies, cultures, governments and managers in each country are.

A review by the India Today says - He gives the reader fascinating accounts of how cities can be built virtually overnight in China, but Mumbai can neither transform the Machchi village near Cuffe Parade nor overhaul Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum; how India’s capital markets became world class by the turn of the century, whereas the states heavy hand in China kept its financial markets backward; how software boomed in India, but not in China; why China attracted more foreign Direct Investment than India; how China and India had dramatically different startegies towards their diasporas, with equally dramatic results as overseas Chinese simply poured in money into China but NRI (non-resident Indians) funds came in slowly; how China’s reforms started with the villages, whereas India’s has yet to transform its monstrously controlled agaricultural mandis; how India’s ’soft’ power in the form of Bollywood, intellectuals and guru’s continues to grow but China only speacialises in ‘hard’ power……..

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 2:34 pm and is filed under Recommended Reading, Letters from Bombay. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.