Slumdog Millionaire is introducing Americans, and probably much of the world, to modern India. The rich portrait of Mumbai shows some of the chaos and vibrancy of this astonishing country. Less noticed were that two Oscar nominees for documentary shorts – Smile Puki and The Final Inch – which also showed other sides of India. Both were about public health care, for cleft palate and polio respectively, but they show how progress is being made on many fronts. That all three of these films were made by foreigners, even though Bollywood is known as the world’s largest film producer, is part of the conundrum of modern India.

However, less obvious is the dynamism of this amazing nation with its economy growing at over 7 percent annually. Two recent news stories talk about how India is resisting the global downturn better than most countries. There are varying theories about the cause, but what’s undeniable is that India is becoming a global player.

This from today’s New York Times:

India’s trillion-dollar economy remains a relative bright spot, some say, in part because the country’s bureaucracy and its protectionist polices have kept it insulated from the fallout of the global downturn…

The market capitalization of the State Bank of India recently surpassed that of Citigroup, a fact heralded by the local media….

India added 15.4 million cellphone users in January, a record….

And this from the Feb 23 issue of Newsweek:

Though it may not look it on the ground at times, India is one of the few bright spots in a global economy with decidedly dim prospects in 2009. It is forecast to grow at 5 to 6 percent this year-which is more than it averaged in the 1990s. Yes, its stock market has crashed, unemployment is spiking, swaths of the real-estate market have more than a passing resemblance to Miami Beach and it now turns out that Satyam Computer Services-one of the country’s top five IT companies-has been cooking its books. But a one-off incident of fraud in the flagship IT sector won’t knock the country off the rails. India boasts an unlikely growth driver all its own: legions of poor whose incomes have risen just enough in recent years to create powerful demands for basic goods and services.

The rise of India’s aspiring middle-a group that lives above the poverty line but hasn’t yet attained true membership in modern consumer society-is hardly a new story. But what’s surprising is the resilience of this cohort, and the extent to which it has counterbalanced the global credit crisis and the slump in the global export economy of which India is a key player…

India and China, the world’s two most populace nations, are racing for first-world status. In the long run, I think China will fall behind, not because of their very different political and economic models, but because China’s “one child” policy has put it on the same downward demographic path as Europe and Japan. In the next half century, China will grow old as its population plunges and ages. In fact, India and the U.S. may be the only major nations to not be projecting population declines.

Watching Slumdog, one gets a sense of the sensual and social chaos of India. As a friend once observed, “Whatever you see that is true about India, the opposite is also true.”
Consider:

• It is the world’s largest democracy, with a bewildering array of parties. Like America, its democracy is messy and paradoxical. This Hindu nation has the world’s second-largest Muslim population (after Indonesia).
• India is the most culturally, linguistically, and genetically diverse geographical entity after the African continent. (Wikipedia)
• There are 24 officially recognized languages, including English (all are on the currency). These are divided into two major indigenous language groups – Indo-Aryan and Dravidian (about as alike as French and Swahili), and over 1,600 dialects. When I marveled to an Indian engineer that the country could function with two dozen languages, he replied, “Oh no, there are hundreds!”

As Richard notes in another post (Flight of the Creative Class), thousands of educated Indian professionals are leaving the U.S. and going back to opportunities in their homeland. Is this brain drain a good or bad thing? What is the effect of having a large number of entrepreneurs in a growing market with connections and familiarity with America?

What do you think about India’s future? And does this look different from Canada?

While I planned to work my way down the body in as unisex a way as possible, there’s a proverb somewhere that says something about looking a gift-horse in the mouth. In this case we’ll forgo the mouth to look slightly above the lip toward what I’m observing as a re-emergence of the mustache in North America.

I started seeing it a while ago at TimeKode – since about May or June of ‘08, ’stache after ’stache began to pop up in the party. While in Toronto over the holidays I kept my eyes open, and indeed there were more mustaches on the street than ever – on younger men too. I thought it was strange, but I was sure that after being ostracized by all of the respectable women in their lives that these guys would realize the obvious: we live in a post-Tom Selleck world – mustache’s are a no-no.

But at the ripe old age of 26 I was showing my age. These guys experienced no loss of attention or affection from the fairer sex – in fact it probably increased. And this confused me. In the months to come the trend would seem to trickle up to Hollywood, with star after star throwing caution to the wind and challenging the abiding anti-mustache coalition of the late 80’s and 90’s. Eventually Brad Pitt would confirm that the ’stache, love-it-or-lump-it, had fully arrived in North America - again.

While in India, they seemed to be experiencing the reverse as this article investigates:

The famous beards and moustaches of India – seen as representing a huge tradition to the outside world – are under threat, a new book says.

It says that the country’s famous facial hairs are disappearing as India enters the clean-shaven digital age.

“Hair India – A Guide to the Bizarre Beards and Magnificent Moustaches of Hindustan” says that India’s extravagant beards and moustaches – proudly sported by generations of Indian men – are being trimmed as the country becomes more clean-shaven and urban.

In reality there are only so many trends in facial hair that are even possible, so I guess it shouldn’t be so surprising that the re-emergence cycle of lip-hair is so short in North America. It’s more the apparent spikiness of the phenomenon that’s interesting.

How could it be that while we’re bringing them back in North America, over in the east they’re shaving them off? How does place delimit style conventions in an increasingly globalized world? Is the world spiky not only in terms of economic prosperity, productivity, and innovation, but in terms of styles as well?

And now, as always, some music.