Dominic Nixon, PWC Asia’s financial services leader believes, while financial institutions in countries like Singapore offer higher value-add, such as risk management, financial analysis and control, and IT oversight functions to an institution, it is lower cost countries that attract processing and operational tasks.  Further, according to the report, most banks and financial institutions selected mainland China as the location they expect their next mergers and acquisitions to take place, followed by India, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

That, even as there is a breathtaking shift in US policy towards India – declaring it a strategic partner and making it the recipient of a bilateral deal to share nuclear know how, all because as explained by Time magazine, India is the un-China.  In its cover story India Inc. – Why the World’s Biggest Democracy is the Next Great Economic Superpower and what it means for America, Washington’s new approach to India and China is explained.

Author Michael Elliott believes USA is making friends with India to hedge its Asia bet, as it has learnt dealing with China is never easy, since it ‘bristles too much with old resentments at the hands of the West.’  While, India is no pushover either, its democrats are whole lot easier to talk to than China’s communist apparatchiks, he says.

The second reason USA loves India for being un-China is, though in terms of modernisation and infrastructure, China is far ahead as a result of economic reforms that started in late 1970s compared to India’s later start in early 1990s, but India is younger and much freer than China.

With many of its firms already innovative world beaters, India is playing catch-up with China, not only does it have the skills, people and the sort of hustle and dynamism that Americans respect, it will undoubtedly catch up, if not careen ahead of China in the not so distant future.  Certainly, it deserves the new notice it has gotten in the US of A.  “We are all about to discover, this elephant can dance,” says Elliott.

Illustrating the changing face of India with its cover photo of a classical Indian dancer wearing a telephone operator headset, Time says the world will never be the same, as fuelled by high-octane growth, the world’s largest democracy is on its way to becoming a global power.

Citing “pro-growth Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh” as saying, he dreams that someday Mumbai will make people ‘forget Shanghai’, China’s financial capital, whose gleaming modernity is a reminder of the gap between India and its eastern rival.  But, India, which virtually invented offshore / outsourcing has made it possible for Indians to dream of success and a lifestyle that competes, if not exceeds that in the west.  Indian firms, such as Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have grown into billion-dollar behemoths by tapping armies of quick coding, English-speaking, low-wage techies to do the software programming and back-office tasks, US companies performed in-house.

Off-shoring / outsourcing has helped millions of expectations to be satisfied, and India’s biggest city Mumbai is its great hope, despite embodying the staggering problems faced by the country on the whole i.e. poor infrastructure, inequality, corruption, etc.  But, for now Mumbai, the City of Dreams lives up to its name, notwithstanding a class divide, where million-dollar apartments overlook million-population slums,

In another piece entitled ‘Hooray for Bollywood’, Indian director Mira Nair who lives in New York City, notes today Bollywood is on as many screens in mid-town Manhattan as in an Indian neighbourhood in Queens, New York.  The literary world in the west has learnt to pronounce Vikram Seth and Amitav Ghosh and Jhumpa Lahiri, and an Amrita Sher-Gill can fetch as much as an Andy Warhol at art auctions in USA.  A click on the Internet instantly conveys the burgeoning scope of South Asian cultural confidence, yielding details of hundreds of art galleries, concerts, readings, plays and Indie films, she says, suggesting the key to every seesaw is balance.

Nair's latest film based on The Namesake, a Jhumpa Lahiri novel of migration and displacement; in itself a seesaw between two great cities, New York and Calcutta, is scheduled to premiere simultaneously in both cities in November, with a sophisticated marketing strategy and no horse carriages in sight.

As for her next film, Gangsta M.D., Hollywood will, for the first time, pay good money to buy rights from Bollywood, transplanting to Harlem the beloved story of a Mumbai gangster, Munnabhai, who pretends to be a doctor when his parents visit, Nair notes.

And, so while India and China may be competing tuff to become Numero Uno for off-shoring / outsourcing projects, it is India that USA loves for being so un-China!  A radical change from the anti-India stance and embargo slapping USA of the recent past, a USA at the beginning and height of its love affair with China!  No amount of convincing and cajoling would make it and others believe in the long term, it would be India that won!  Short sightedly, they only saw China as a huge market for western goods and a sweat shop for shoddily produced goods for western markets!

Theirs was a love affair doomed from the start, based as it was on instant attraction and little or no depth of feeling.  The instant attraction has died a natural death as the world finds that China’s perfect outward façade hides a myriad warts.  Whereas, in the case of India everything is out in the open, everything is exposed and the country has a ‘take me or leave me’ attitude, comfortable in its own skin, a country that has quietly and with fortitude withstood the savage onslaughts of invaders, refusing to give up its ancient culture and philosophy in exchange for that of its temporary rulers.  China on the other hand let the European missionaries erase everything Chinese, and what was left was completely annihilated during the years of China’s Cultural Revolution.

That alone should have revealed to the west, how shallow China was compared to the depth and sheer confidence that stiffened India’s spine.  But, shallow itself, the west so good at sweeping everything under the carpet, revealing only the perfect packaging fell for ‘like attracts like’ China.  Only, the love affair has run foul and though the two might still remain friends, rancour will run deep, leaving India to pick up the pieces!  Will both USA and China be rivals for India’s affections!  Possible, as both warm to India in direct contrast of their cold attitude in the past!