If one was to follow the regular daily news and columns, one can't help but feel very despondent. Strange and irrelevant topics seem to dominate the Indian landscape along with a couple of natural disasters and a daily quota of rapes, accidents and sundry violence. Columnists tend to focus sharply on the negatives and it's easy to let the pessimism engulf you.
But look beyond the news and I think there is a vibrancy in India - despite governments - that is visible even if it isn't palpable to many of us.
Let me narrate three stories of three people I happened to meet recently. The first was Phee Teik Yeoh, the CEO of Vistara airline. Yeoh moved to India in December 2013 and started the new airline in early 2015. When Vistara first set up its office in March 2015 on Golf Course Road, he got a direct view of the golf course from his office. Now, his view of the green course is obstructed by a tall new tower that has come up in the last couple of years.
In jest, he added that he should perhaps ask for a discount from his landlord, DLF, for having lost the view over the short period. He says living in Gurgaon and commuting even the short distance that he must isn't a cakewalk but the positive side of it is that - unlike in large parts of the world - things are happening. Change is in the air and you can feel it.
The second person was a Chinese American I met in Mumbai. Bryan Lee runs a relatively unknown company called Krishi Star in Mumbai, but what struck me was his incredible background and story so far. Lee is 39 but he is living more like a teenager in Mumbai in a shared apartment with friends - but it's more out of choice than any compulsion. He has an engineering degree from Cornell, worked as a consultant with Accenture for three years and moved into the music industry in New York for eight years. At 28, Lee went on to get an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. His studies there gave him the chance to work with cocoa bean farmers in Ecuador and against HIV in Africa.
A three-month summer programme brought him to Gurgaon to work with a social enterprise (in 2011). He ended up interviewing small farmers in north India through the time. He says he remembers feeling very touched being around people who were looking for hope. The scale of India also impressed him.
That summer convinced him that he needed to come back to India to help small farmers attain scale so that they are not marginalised and in 2012-13, he started Krishi Star in Mumbai.
Lee is aware he could have chosen a far easier life back home in the US (like his brother who lives the American suburban dream) but for a social enterprise like his, India is the place to be. He says there is no country in the world where he can see this combination: maximum problems with maximum intellectual capital and maximum business opportunity. Here, he didn't take a salary for three years (after his savings ran out, he has taken up odd consulting jobs with companies back in the US to survive), lives a very basic, simple life but at 39 is full of hope and imbued with the excitement of India.
The third person I met was also in Mumbai - the CEO of GoAir, Wolfgang Prock-Schaeur, someone I have known for over a decade. WPS - as he is known in aviation circles in India - left India in 2009 to head British Midland (he worked with BMI for three years followed by Air Berlin for another three years) and came back to head GoAir in 2015.
In the course of our conversation on how India has changed while he was away, Prock-Schauer felt that unlike most countries in Europe where stagnation is evident and visible, there's energy in India that can't be found elsewhere. It may be chaotic and not always perfectly directed but it's there.
The thread that joins these people from three different continents is simply this: all of them choose to stay, live and earn a living outside their own environments in circumstances that can best be described as quite adverse. It may be partly lack of opportunities back home, but the lure and excitement of India is enough to hold their attention for now. More of us need to be aware and acknowledge this. To use a phrase uttered by the outgoing RBI governor, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
