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New
warmth in arctic winter
Norway
has supported India’s candidature for permanent membership
of Security Council
A search
for the world’s sexiest leader would, without a shadow of a
doubt, end at the Prime Minister’s office in Oslo. You will
have occasion to check it out yourself when the 41 year old premier
arrives in New Delhi in the coming months with a plane-load of businessmen,
$ 60 billion petroleum revenue surplus in his pocket, and armed
with legislation for the most lenient visa regime for technology
graduates. To generate greater goodwill, he has already had the
Norwegian cabinet endorse unambiguous support for India’s candidature
as a permanent member of the Security Council.
Jens
Stoltenberg is well above six feet in height, Grecian features and
dark hair — all of which adds to his extraordinary success
as a politician. He is about the only person with sufficient charisma
to be able to tell the Norwegian people that they will be given
no access to the 400 billion kroner petroleum fund. “History
teaches us that nations squandered wealth that came to them suddenly,”
he says. “We do not intend to make that mistake.” His
argument is that the economy is already doing well enough. Unemployment
is down to one per cent.
Any
further injection of money into this economy will overheat it and
inflation will be the obvious consequence. So the petroleum fund
wealth is being invested in thousands of extremely low risk ventures.
Stoltenberg’s evaluation of India as a superpower in the current
millennium is shared by other countries in the region.
Just imagine sub-zero arctic temperatures in the Finnish Lapland.
The main highway from the Lapp town of Rovaniemi swerves right onto
the narrow path lined with snow-clad ferns and pines, and leads
inevitably to a sauna hut on the edge of a frozen lake. Near the
hut the ice has been broken, exposing a chilling pond, six feet
in diameter, surrounded by thick ice topped with flakes of snow.
I cannot think of a more disturbing image of arctic winter.
Suddenly,
an old woman in a scanty swimsuit runs out of the sauna hut and
dives into the pond. As she walks back into the hut after a brisk
swim, I ask her if I will survive the cold should I follow her lead.
“You people have so much science and philosophy that you think
too much — just dive in”. I did not, of course, but the
lady’s words left me in a state of reflection. Here I was in
the Arctic north, talking to an elderly lady who associates India
with science and philosophy.
All
of this is a recent phenomenon, fuelled largely by the Indian success
in information technology. There is, as Shakespeare said, a tide
in the affairs of men which, taken at a flood, leads onto fortune.
Just
imagine the whiz-kid Prime Minister of Norway, navigating legislation
that will make the qualified Indian’s travel to these parts
as easy as buying an SAS ticket.
Nokia
headquarters in Helsinki have already reached out to attract “qualified”
Indians. As you stand in the space-age lobby at Nokia, young Indian
executives walk past you in a business-like tread. More Indians
are likely to join the global cellular phone flagship in the coming
months. The new “qualified” Indian arrivals in these parts
will have to cope with the image the earlier Indian arrivals have
etched on the local sensibility.
In
the Silicon Valley, for instance, Indians started with a positive
image. They had studied in the finest institutes of technology in
India, had undergone further intellectual refinement in universities
like Stanford, and written an undeniable chapter in the saga of
Indian success abroad. Over 28,000 Indian millionaires in a handful
of districts like Cupertino, Santa Clara and San Jose is no mean
achievement.
The
story of the Indians in Scandinavia is not quite yet a golden chapter
in the annals of the Indian diaspora worldwide. And yet, it cannot
be belittled either. Take the story of Naresh Paul and Manjit Singh
in Helsinki. They joined as labour on Greek merchant ships. For
a variety of reasons, they jumped the ships and ended up in Helsinki
marrying Finnish women. It is true marrying Finns to obtain citizenship
rights was a common stratagem among Indians.
Once
they obtained citizenship, the real bride from the Punjab would
materialise. None of this enhanced the Indian image here. And yet,
there are the likes of Naresh Paul and Manjit Singh who married
locally, set up a chain of restaurants, bars, nightclubs in which
their Finnish wives were equal partners and helpers. For instance
Paul’s wife even today is a bartender — in the bar, one
of the many — her husband owns. Manjit Singh’s mother
from Punjab and his Finnish wife are the best of friends. Manjit’s
75 year old mother speaks to her daughter-in-law in Finnish and
her son in Punjabi.
But
all of this is a different culture from what the new “qualified”
Indians are bringing to the region and for which regional leaders
like Stoltenberg are planning to open the gates in graduated measure.
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