This feeling of being lost has begun to get to me . Pre-dawn dashing from the taxi to the airport counters in Mumbai is beginning to cost me a packet . Last time , I parted ways with Woody Allen and today it was China !
445am in Mumbai , guess , is not the best of times for me . On my way to Lucknow the other day , I hurried out of the taxi only to find that I had left Woody Allen’s brilliant book Side Effects in the trolley , realizing a minute afterwards only to find that the trolley had vanished .
Last week , I decided to understand the Chinese and how they are faring in the race with India to become the next superpower . Picked up this book called China Inc. Written by a journalist with an American newspaper , it described how the Made in China tags with the China Price are going to rule the world in the next 10 years . They say that instead of disincentivising urbanization , they actually thrive on it . They have over 160 towns with a population more than one million , each of which is being converted into a huge manufacturing base . The US has 9 towns with one million plus poluation , the whole of Europe has twenty six. India has twenty two . China one hundred and sixty and counting . The strict displinarian society also makes it easier to implement things . At Taiwan airport boarding area , there’s this sign that reads ‘ Please switch off phones else six months prison ’. Compare that with requests that polite announcers in India make , ‘since it interferes with airline communication , please refrain from using your cell phones during the flight ’. Six months prison , I guess , says it better .
The soldiers of the US army posted in Baghdad are not worried of Taliban’s revenge or a civil war in Iraq . They are more worried that they will lose their jobs back home to some Chinese low cost manufacturer if they stay in Iraq too long . Thousands of jobs are moving weekly to China .
Chinese are quite some people . They quote Karl Marx and the stock price of Mitsubishi in the same breadth . Tianammen Square co-exists with Shanghai Loots . On my flight to Amsterdam , my co-passenger was a Dutch who mined granite in a quarry miles off Bangalore , shipped it to China for polishing and sold it in Amsterdam and Europe for a three hundred percent margin . The Netherlands is called the flower basket of the world . They export Tulips around the world. This Dutchman explained to me how thousands of Chinese descend onto Amsterdam during peak summer flower-seasons and are trying to decode the code – climate , seasoning , care needed to produce tulips in large quantity and export from …China !
The shower curtains in the Radisson hotel in Warwick , Philadelphia are made in China . The ticket counter stub of all my Jet Airways tickets are printed in China . The wonderful five dollar watches that I bought from manhattan sidewalks are all made in China . Half of Wal-Mart is made in China – from skateboards to shoes . There are more goods in Linking road in Mumbai from China than are in Chinatown in New York . The machine tool manufacturer in Rajkot I met ten years back was very worried that Chinese lathe machines would ruin him one day . The bicycle parts manufacturer in Ludhiana had Chinese visitors five years back. Today , he doesn’t have a factory . Infosys , the bellweather of the Indian software industry last year started outsourcing to China . Millions are learning English in China , even getting their tongues operated upon to be able to get an American accent .
Everthing now has a China Price .
Seeking to understand these changes in the new global economy , I bought the book , China Inc. And left it in the taxi today morning in the rush to catch my early morning flight to Indore . It was an instant . My moving to retrieve my travelbag from the taxi , lugging it onto the trolley , paying off the fellow and a split second concentration on avoiding the taxi which drove into the airport taxi bay . The book and the taxi was gone . As I called out over the din , the taxi guy couldn’t care less .
I am very possessive about my books . All two thousand of them .Hate to lend , hate to lose , hate to share . Now have managed to lose two of them in the last six months .
Damn !
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