| There is the Rs 100 crore provided to the Indian Institute of Science so that it can match the best universities in the world; the promise of a public telephone in every revenue village; the intention to develop Mumbai as a regional financial centre; the desire to see an Indian bank ranked among the top 20 in the world; and so on. |
| Some of these goals are easier than others""the telecom objective certainly looks eminently achievable in the next one year. But the budget of Harvard, one of the universities that the finance minister mentioned when talking of the IIS, is many multiples of the Rs 100 crore that Mr Chidambaram has provided for IIS. Harvard hopes to raise $5 billion (Rs 22,000 crore) as additional money to fund its own reform programme, and already has an endowment of $22.6 billion (Rs 100,000 crore!). |
| This is not to argue that all costs are comparable, they are not, and the rupee will go much further than the dollar""else the IITs and IIMs would not have achieved what they have. But the gap remains vast. And the non-financial elements of institution-building are often even more important than money. Still, it is good to benchmark against the best in the world, like India's best companies now do. |
| The goal that will give the India story an altogether new dimension is that of making Mumbai a regional financial centre, by exploiting the fact that it lies in a time zone that is midway between Tokyo and London. This is an even more complex task than raising the standards at one research institute. |
| There are some starting credits available, of course. India's two leading stock exchanges can now compare with the best in the world in terms of system reliability, and have a trading volume (in terms of the number of scrips) that puts them next only to the New York and Nasdaq exchanges. |
| Some new commodity exchanges are now beginning to make their mark, and India seems headed to become a leading centre for trading in agro-commodities and bullion (after all, India is among the largest producers of a range of agro-products like sugar, cotton, and tobacco, not to mention tea and coffee). |
| Then, the financial system has got more varied, and both better and stronger, with some quality players emerging on the scene. The telecommunications system is no longer something to be embarrassed about. Many of the leading international players are active in Mumbai, and are familiar with the environment. Most of these are the achievements of the last decade, post the Harshad Mehta scam of 1992. |
| But even if you develop these assets manifold, it won't make Mumbai a regional financial centre. For that, you need capital account convertibility""and India is at least five years away from that. You also need rules for international banks that take you forward to what the RBI has promised at the end of its latest road map. |
| And of course, you need to make the city infinitely more livable than it is today, so that players from any country will be willing to shift to Mumbai without a second thought, just as they do now to Singapore and Hong Kong. |
| For starters, therefore, you need an international airport and flights to all points on the globe through the day and night (another five-year time table). You need a plentiful supply of hotel rooms, and easy housing accommodation""not the extreme scarcity of quality flats, which is today's reality. |
| You also need good schools and hospitals where you can get admission without having to pull wires""and this may take even longer. And finally, you need to be assured that there will not be street politics of the kind that the Shiv Sena specialises in, or communal riots of the 1993 variety. |
| Simply setting the goal therefore tells us how much distance has to be travelled. The result is a humbling feeling, but it is also good to be conscious of how much we have to improve on an infinite variety of fronts before we can hope to become a serious global player. |
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