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Stopping To Think About India

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 23, 2007

The average resident of India knows much more about America than the typical U.S. citizen knows about India.

For example, did you know that India has three times as many people as America, in one-third the land size?

A lot more about India should make us stop and think.

India has more people younger than 15 than there are total people in the United States.

It has as many readers of English-language newspapers as does the United States.

An auto company in India, Tata Motors, is bidding to buy Jaguar and Land Rover. Of more importance to us is Tata's new $2,500 car. It plans to begin making about 500,000 of them a year.

When cars are more affordable, you can bet that oil won't be.

If you think of India as a backward farming country you should know it is on the brink of historic change. Today, 60 out of every 100 people in India have agricultural jobs. The mechanized future will require a fraction of that number. In the United States, less than one person in 100 works on farms.

In search of opportunity, Indians from the poor, rural areas are moving to cities. India has 32 cities larger than 1 million people. And they're moving to other countries, too.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 2.7 million people of Indian ancestry live in the United States, where they are doing remarkably well. Their mean household income is $76,172, which is $27,721 higher than the income of the typical U.S. household.

Some of them send money home, where relatives there have a new request: Please send rupees. They hold their value better than dollars.

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