With the European Athletic Championships underway, I can not help but correlate last week’s State visit by David Cameron and his team, to India, to the sports arena. The delegation, representing the ‘best of Britain’ – from government, industry, academia, sports, media and culture – spent an intense 48 hours in an endeavour to lay the foundation for a new, stronger, wider, deeper partnership with India.
With a visit designed to generate a high impact across key sectors of engagement for the UK, Cameron and his band of merry men (and a few women) returned to the UK with a number of important messages. These messages, while not revelationary, are in many ways, eye-opening for an economy whose constituents have, traditionally, been largely content in domestic (and at best, regional) economic bliss.
What are these messages?
- British business needs to globalise its outlook if it wants to grow.
- The foreseeable future belongs to Asia.
- There is intent to put India at the centre of the UK’s foreign and economic policies.
- The new India is a different India requiring a new mindset and a new approach.
- There are tremendous long-term opportunities for British businesses – an ability to tap them will be key.
- The world is wooing India and India knows it.
- The past is important but the future is relevant.
Whether British business will heed the writing on the wall only time will tell. In the meantime, both Presidents Obama and Sarkozy are gearing up for their respective high-level visits to India later this year. The race is on. And, as Darwin so wisely predicted, it will be a case of survival of the fittest.
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