India Ahead

It's been a week since I came back to Bangalore and started logging in. Already I can see the differences. There is so much chaos for everything - the roads, in the office everywhere. I am just wondering when do people live here. We end up spending so much time in just doing the daily things that we have no time for anything else. There is just work, career, loans, bills, petrol prices. I am sure this is quite similar in other societies too but I think we are really up there in terms of paranoia. Not that things dont work here but it is a world away from Europe.

Actually we are becoming very similar to the US society. I think Europe is so much more laid back. They at least consider enjoying their life seriously and spend valuable time on that. We on the other hand take our work and job as the number 1 priority. Of course, the fact is that Europe is probably the one region in the world which is in real danger of being overtaken by the 'Asia' powers.

The US for example, has been going through this consumer frenzy for quite some time now which in some sense is actually causing the 8-9% growths in the Asian economies. Because of this consumerism, the Americans are all neck-deep in credit and therefore they have to put in even more hours to just pay their credit card bills. I fear that, we in India, are going towards that direction. The only thing that is different is that we do not have a social security net from the Government protecting us. Hence if the IT market just tanks one day, I wonder how a lot of us will be able to maintain this lifestyle.

A difficult proposition, indeed. If we want to do better as a economy, we need to spend as consumers. If we spend, we are in debt. If we are in debt, we are not happy anymore. We have to work harder. But then we get the comforts of life by doing all of this. We get more choice as consumers. We can travel to the Alps or to Sydney for holidays. No wonder, governance is so tough!!!