I found this recent article over at India Knowledge @ Wharton on a ground-level view of India’s new opportunities and challenges to be quite interesting and quite humorous when it said that Wharton’s Cohen described the India as “the Wild West”.
What was the Wild West? It was a new frontier that was untamed, lawless, and fraught with as much danger as there was perceived opportunity. In comparison, India contains one of the oldest cultures on the planet, it has more laws at the country, state (& territory), district, and municipal level on the books than most other countries combined, and the biggest dangers are poverty and disease, which are much less of a risk for visitors than they are for the locals. In the Wild West, almost everyone carried a gun and many disagreements were settled by a dual. That’s certainly not the case in India.
While it is a land of opportunity, as it is projected to become the 3rd largest producer of GDP in the next 30 to 40 years, and currently loses 0.5% of its GDP due to logistics and supply chain inefficiencies alone, it’s certainly not wild. If anything, it’s the exact opposite.