4 Incredible India Today’s Fastest growing Free Economy

A uniquely spiritual country which one Indian leader called the wholesaler of spiritual goodness, where the rest of the world came to buy its goodness. After all the Beatles had gone to India to seek guidance from the Maharishi. The country suffered from such severe foreign exchange shortage that to go abroad you had to get a Form P approved by the government and you were allowed only £3 (4.4 euros; $6) in foreign exchange. To help pay for my first year’s university education in Britain my father had to buy sterling on the Mumbai black market and I smuggled £900 hidden in specially stitched underwear. Emerging class It was only as the Air India plane carrying me cleared Indian air space and I went to the loo to take my money out that I could breathe a huge sigh of relief and begun to believe that I would get to England. Ambassador car The Ambassador car was once one of two makes of car allowed in India Such was the scarcity in the country that there was a Guest Control Order which meant you could not invite more than fifty people for a meal – at weddings all you got was a thin slice of ice cream. Government newsreels exhorted people not to over eat or waste food. The India I have just been to could not be more different. Poverty is still there, 80% of the population live on 20 rupees (25p) a day, according to a survey, but a large well off group has also emerged. Some 250 million are reckoned to be very well off, many of them very rich. They have no reluctance to display …