Reading any financial daily is a pleasant experience in itself these days ! Look at the four headlines of Monday 12 Feb, Economic Times:- AV Birla group buys Novelis for $6 billion, Vodafone pips rivals, bids values Huthinson Essar at $19 bn, HDFC to buy out Chubb in insurance co, Yet another price cut in petrol and diesel likely. Now, this is what one should call true India shining campaign. And this is not the case with any particular day but almost daily pages are inked in praise of Indian entrepreneurs.

The reforms in 1991 are showing their colors now. Can one imagine that Indians who were once just having enough foreign exchange to support two weeks imports are now on roll out mission or according to BBC are buying out world. I recall an instance from ‘India Unbound’ by Gurcharan Das that quotes how Rahul Bajaj was once threatened to manufacture more scooters than he is licensed for. He reiterated saying that his grandfather has been to jail for country’s freedom and he’ll be for country’s spirits. Now those Indians don’t know where the limit is ! First Tata Corus deal, with India expanding in Latin America and with this Hindalco deal, Indians are sprawling in US too. LN Mittal (he is still having Indian passport) bench-marked all this by the biggest of all Arcelor deal. It was real case of test of Indian acumen. When everything was against, at odd, Mittal stood like a man of steel, what he manufactures himself. Previously in a no. of deals, Indians fail to give final blow like Dhoots buying for Daewoo electronics etc. The no. of deals of Indian companies acquiring foreign companies has outnumbered the opposite case.

There is everything green about Indian economy. India is the fastest and stable most growing  economy still last quarter of century. First at 5-6% in 1980-1990s to 7-8% in 1990s-2000s and now at almost 9% … whooping ! And it all seems to challenge all the prevailing laws of economy. Now riots in Gujarat or Tsunami doesn’t affect the economy. FDIs inflow is increasing more and more in comparison to FIIs, as the priorities of global companies are changing. They now don’t see India as a place of big middle class (more than US population) or as mere consumers but they now wish to be part of us. They are settling their bases here, look at any automobile major and they are planning to take India as their export base.  And better part is that this M&A air is equally distributed. Obviously manufacturing sector has an edge (or it seems owing to whooping sum of money involved) but other sectors are also showing their mettle. Pharma and Healthcare sector has 14% of stake in all this exercise.

Now whats the implication of all this? Is it that Indians are on a rolling ride… yaa they are but its a symptom and effect. The cause of this is the increasing faith of Indians in themselves. In this post, i haven’t mentioned about IT, Reliance and Infosys etc, which are being projected as pillars of Indians economy or dream. Now India as a whole is shining. Indians have become global, they are seeing sky as the limit. Indian students are increasing for MS admissions in leading universities, Indian celebrities (Shilpa melodrama) are snatching the headlines of Daily Mirror and Guardians, Indians directors are directing actor Johnny Depp and Italian prime minister is paying tribute to an old woman’s ashram in Calcutta. India is commanding respect. Long live the ride !!!