Bombay, India 5/15/1995 India Is Waiting For Monsoon To Start

(BOMBAY, INDIA, May 15, 1995)

by Bob Van Leer

This morning, our last full day in India, started with a drive to the Bombay office of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

There are quite a number of beggars in Bombay and they tap on the cab window every time we stop for a light. We did not find as many in Delhi. We were hassled a little there, but not much more than you get in San Francisco. And in Bangalore there were hardly any beggars. They look pitiful, but we were told to ignore them completely.

Bombay, with a population of 13 million, is the largest city in India and the center of Indian business. It is much like New York City. It is the banking capital and was a manufacturing center, but factories are moving out and being replaced by service industries.

The local CII office handles business affairs for the state of Maharashtra, of which Bombay is the capital, the smaller-populated Gujarat to the north and the old Portuguese enclave of Goa to the south.

Goa is small (1.2 million) but the most prosperous in India according to Ashok V. Chowgule, managing director of the Narmada Cement Company, and a native of Goa. He said Goa depends on iron ore shipped to Japan and 300-400 charter flights of tourists every year.

Radha Kannan, deputy director of CII, said Bombay is positioning itself to be a Hong Kong, but will not be able to do this without the infrastructure. Bombay has had several power outages in the short time we have been here, but no extended ones.

Chowgule said India will need much capital to expand but said much of it will be generated internally. He said India has a savings rate of 23-24%, one of the highest in the world.

His own industry, cement, to keep up, needs to build four new cement plants every year at a cost of $100 million each.

In the afternoon we visited the Stock Exchange, the largest and oldest of three exchanges, opened in 1875. A. D. Kale, director, said 5000 stocks are listed of which 93 are “blue chips”. The exchange is adding 100 new stocks a month.

The country is now waiting for the monsoons to begin. Typically, June through September are the monsoon months with 75-80 inches of rain falling at Bombay in 10-12 weeks. We were told the rest of the year is dry.

Indian agriculture depends on the monsoons and this year’s is predicted to be in the normal range. The country has had good monsoon seasons for the past several years and this has helped India become a grain-exporting nation.

ARRANGED MARRIAGES
Arranged marriages are a fact of life in India and classified ads in newspapers are used to make connections. Sometimes the large dailies have pages of such ads. They are for both men and women. A typical ad reads, “Alliance invited for attractive charming Andhra girl, 27/155 M. Sc. Computer literate from well settled boys. Cast no bar. Write Box x, Times of India, Bombay”.

We finished our day, and our tour, visiting the offices of Business India, a magazine similar to Business Week in the U.S. N. Radhakrishnan, deputy editor, said business reporting is a glamour job today in India with reporters being paid twice as much as political reporters.

The pay is low by our standards, but price levels are also low here. At his magazine, a beginning reporter would make $200 per month and an experienced reporter would be paid $10,000-15,000 per year. For comparison, he said a medical doctor, after 10 years of practice, would make $20,000-25,000 per year. The top age of his reporters is 35.

As a sidelight, he said, politically, there is no way the Kashmir problem can be settled by either the Indian or Pakistani government. But he also said Kashmir is not important economically to India.

Radhakrishnan expects business to continue at a rapid growth for years to come.

News production is the same the world over. Newsrooms look cluttered no matter where they are. And equipment is also getting universal. We have at the Curry County Reporter some of the same Macintosh computers his magazine is using.

HEAD FOR HOME
Our tour is now complete and it is time to head home. Our party is shrinking. Ken Rhoades, from Nebraska, had to leave us at Delhi to get home for a commitment. Jim Kelly, Hood River, OR., is going on to Nepal for some back packing in the Himalayas before returning home. I and Sam Kennedy, Tennessee, will be the only two leaving in the morning for home. We are to leave the hotel at 3:45 a.m. to catch an Air India flight to New York with a stop at London. From New York, my route is to San Francisco and then Medford. But the New York connection is close and I might wind up having to spend the night. (I did have to spend the night.)

If all goes well, I’ll leave Bombay Tuesday, May 16, at 6:25 a.m. local time and arrive at Medford still on Tuesday at 10:29 p.m. However, I gain back the 12.5 hours I lost coming over, so it will be a very long day.

We’ve all learned a lot in the last 10 days. India is less elephants and snake charmers than we had imagined and more some real industrious people who are moving ahead rather rapidly.