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However, to the tolerant, India has become the largest English-speaking country on the globe, with no fewer than 320 million people speaking their own forms of the language. Once an English-speaking tourist has managed to decipher local accents (a task no more difficult than in parts of the United States or Australia) it would be nearly impossible to find a corner of India where this international language is not understood.
In six years, thanks to an expansion of English teaching in government schools, more than 500 million Indians are expected to speak the language, way ahead of that wannabe English-speaking nation, China. Add to this a Westminster-style legislative system, a British-inspired justice system and wide-open access to cable and the Internet, and it will be seen that the people of India are becoming acculturated into the globalized world at a clip almost as fast as the expansion of the economy.
Sixty years after freedom from the British Raj, several parts of the country -- notably the south and west -- have internalized the moderate, law-respecting chemistry required to remain in sync with the needs of a modern economy. Given the size and population of India, it is not surprising that there remain regions within the country where the dynamics and chemistry more closely mimic the American Wild West than the present law-abiding climate in much of Europe.
An analysis of India's 500-plus districts would match higher penetration of the English language (now the signature "chop" of the Indian middle class) with areas that are more stable in terms of law and order and have faster rates of development than others. This is not surprising, given the link between the effective use of English-style institutions and knowledge of the language.
What does this increase in Indians conversant in the language and social imperatives of Western civilization mean to Europe, faced with declining populations? Rather than Romania, Albania or Bulgaria, it is from India that the continent can find human resources to fuel continued expansion in output and services. An immigrant from the southern Indian cities of Chennai, Hyderabad or Bangalore would be far more likely to make a high net contribution to the country of transfer than an individual who has been resident in Bucharest, Tirana or Sofia.
This is not simply because of knowledge of English, but acclimatization in the institutions and practices of the Anglo-Saxon world, which has remained not simply the hub of economic progress, but the core of the knowledge economy. Rather than stick to a Mugabist policy of discriminating in favor of one's own ethnic group, countries within the European Union should trawl in India to meet their human resource needs for the coming decades.
A start has already been made, with negotiations now on between the newly formed Ministry of Overseas Indians Affairs with the governments of France, Sweden, Poland and Belgium to facilitate procedures for the entry of trained personnel from India, a country that trains 1 million engineers and 200,000 doctors and nurses each year, almost entirely in the English language.
Two countries outside the EU that could benefit from the rising numbers of trained professionals in India are Russia and Brazil, both of which have immense personnel needs. Were the two governments to set up clinics in India that could identify and train prospective migrants in Russian and Portuguese, they would get an economic boost, apart from doing away with hospitals without doctors and schools without teachers. Psychological tests could be given to ensure that those selected had the ability and willingness to adapt to the socio-cultural environment in their new homes. The countries of the Middle East have long used India as a base for sourcing personnel, and other regions could do worse than follow their example.
Although the Bangalore brothers Kafeel and Sabeel Ahmed, by falling prey to the blandishments of those engaged in a jihad against the West, may -- if guilty -- have blotted the clean copybook of the Muslims of India, yet the difference between the world's largest democracy and the Middle East (or even Muslim enclaves in Europe) is that the action of the two has generated revulsion rather than admiration among their own people, including the Muslim community. Far from celebrating the "martyrs" -- as happens in the West Bank and Gaza -- the luckless parents of the two have publicly expressed their shock and shame at the incident, as has the community at large.
What some have called their "timidity" or "lack of backbone" makes Indians far more likely to accept the constraints of law in an adopted home than many other nationalities. The absence of a breakdown of law and order following the country's natural catastrophes is another indication of this, an attitude of mind perhaps rooted in the ancient belief in "karma."
Whatever the causes, the fact remains that India, with its young and professionally trained population, is ideally suited to filling a good share of the deficit in human resources is other corners of the globe.
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(Professor M.D. Nalapat is vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. ©Copyright M.D. Nalapat)
