What gives India its edge?

I’ve just arrived in India this afternoon and was thinking about a comment I heard yesterday from my barber of all people!

He spent his early years living and working across various southern African countries and has spent the last 20+ years living in the UK.  When I got my haircut yesterday, he said he had just come back from a short one week trip in India, the first time he had visited the country.  His comment that struck me was “everyone is so industrious and hard working.”  In particular, he thought this was very different from most other countries he had lived in.  “Even the poorest are prepared to work hard and not just hold their hand out and expect to be given something”, he continued.

I can’t comment on his experiences of Africa and I am sure he is generalizing.  There are bound to be plenty of hardworking, industrious people in African countries as well as a fair number of people in India that do not work hard.  But, overall, I agree with his observation.  India’s hard work attitude, it’s culture of education and the young age and size of it’s population will mean that most other countries will find it hard to compete.

PS. I have just seen a news report from the G20 conference.  This probably won’t get reported in the western media but Manmohan Singh (Indian Prime Minister) view of the conference is that this is the first time the views of emerging countries were taken into account and he felt that power was beginning to shift to the larger emerging economies including a stronger say in the running of the IMF.  I wonder if this financial crisis is not just cyclical but the beginning of a permanent structural change in the balance of power?