At Doha airport, lessons for integrating South Asia begin at Sterling Catering Services, which runs the fast food breakfast counter for a conveyor belt of hungry passengers.
First, the takeaway serves everything from idli-vada-sambar to almond croissants. Second, the waiters are clearly Nepali but speak a smattering of several tongues, including Arabic. Third, the man who runs the place is Malayali and has no problem accepting Indian rupees for the transaction in Qatari riyals.
The initiative that South Asians show in foreign countries, especially in the Persian Gulf, whose economies they form the backbone of, is in sharp contrast to the manner in which India very often treats its own, vast emigrating workforce. From time to time, this great army of illiterate and semi-literate people from the hinterland of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala disembark from India's various airports to disappear into the vast underbelly of the Gulf. Indian officialdom remains unable to streamline procedures for blue-collar workers seeking employment abroad and protect them from human sharks that sometimes enjoy the chew that emigrating Indians, both skilled and unskilled, often end up becoming.
Hold of inertia
At Mumbai airport, immigration officials point out that they have scores of times complained about the fact that disembarkation cards are only available in English, when most Indians who use these, especially our approximately eight-million workforce in the Gulf, cannot read, write or understand the language. In front of me, Pappu Kumar from Gorakhpur district in Uttar Pradesh was helped out by a kindly immigration official, R K Meena, who meticulously went through Pappu's papers and helped him through them. Immigration officials say they have been told that the security-enabled software for immigration and customs is only available in English. But if India is really a power in information technology, surely it can produce similar software in Hindi and other Indian languages in a heartbeat?
Apart from language, the disembarkation card also demands totally irrelevant information. In some other South Asian countries, Sri Lanka for example, you don't even need a card when you leave the country. When you enter, you answer three simple questions, instead of the inquisition that Indian immigration authorities subject you to.
As for Doha, it is well on its way to becoming the new Dubai after its amazing securing of the World Cup football in 2022, a fact reiterated by a new survey that calculates a variety of employment risk factors (demographics, access to education, talent and development, employment practices and government regulations) in 138 metropolises all over the world. Conducted by Aon Hewitt, the global human resource business of Aon Plc, associated with the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the Qatari capital ranked 27th on the scale, at par with Brussels, Denver and Sydney and higher than cities such as Paris (36th), Manchester (37th) and Frankfurt (also 37th). New York, Singapore and Toronto led the race, while no city from India, South Africa or Russia made it to the top 50.
Breaking the mould
One way Doha is competing for international fame is by showcasing itself to be a benevolent dictatorship, on the lines of Dubai. So if Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and the prime minister of the UAE received Bill Clinton the other day, Qatar hosted the Egyptian foreign minister, Hisham Kandil, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Ethiopian president Girma Wolde-Giorgis at the same time.
According to Qatar's prime minister, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor al-Thani, the country will offer the besieged Egyptian nation (also the most populous Arab nation) a purchase of $3 billion worth of bonds, over and above an outright aid package of $5 billion. This gives Cairo a big boost as it confronts the International Monetary Fund over difficult loan talks worth $4.8 billion for lifting its cash-strapped economy.
Qatar's lessons for South Asia are clear, although these might have to be postponed for some time, considering India's own mounting deficit. So far, India has worked on a unique development partnership model with its neighbours, from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka, helping build resources which can then be managed by the locals themselves.
On a recent visit to Sri Lanka, organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, a group of Indian MPs saw the enormous success of an Indian housing project in Eluthumadduval in Jaffna district. Here, the Indian government is sponsoring the building of 49,000 houses, about 550 sq feet each but what is remarkable about this project is that it is owner-driven, with families in constant touch with the donors, suggesting designs and monitoring implementation.
This $270-million project, the only housing help project abroad, is helping mend hearts and minds of the Tamil people in an area that has been traumatised by war for several decades. A second project that rebuilds the railway line from Medawachiya to Talaimannar, as well as from Omanthai to Kankesanthurai port, across the heart of Sri Lanka's Northern province and estimated to cost $800 mn, is also ready for take-off.
How to overtake
In Afghanistan and Myanmar, India is building or sponsoring private companies to build infrastructure such as roads, electricity lines, schools, dams, etc, in what has constituted a remarkable effort in sustaining grassroots economic change. If, in the second phase, this incredible development effort can be superimposed by a regional economic strategy in which trade and investment - from tourism in Sri Lanka to manufacturing in Bangladesh - is integrated with a creative lending programme, like Qatar is undertaking with Egypt, the several crises that emerge from time to time between India and its neighbours could be contained.
Clearly, such an ambitious strategy can only work if the private sector works with the government to become its lending arm. This has happened but fitfully.
One example is none other than the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking the Sri Lankan president for real estate, so Indian companies can build a hotel (it seems the land had been given to a Chinese company but Rajapakse got it back from them and gave it to ITC).
Across Sri Lanka, as well as the rest of South Asia, India has to make much more of a co-ordinated effort to impart a regional vision so that it becomes an economic engine, paving the way for the solution of political problems.
The time has come to articulate such a strategy to unleash South Asia's incredible, creative potential, that has the capacity to overwhelm the Gulf and leave it far behind.
