By Jamal Mecklai, CEO, Mecklai Financial
I’ve just returned from a wonderful holiday in Thailand over the new year, and, my God, what a fabulous country. We hadn’t been there in over 10 years and it’s so much better than I remember—of course, I used to drink a lot, so that may have something to do with my memory.
The best thing, of course, is the people—sweet, smiling, friendly, helpful. Then there’s the food—one of the best chefs in Bombay had told me that Bangkok is the culinary capital of the world today, and he was right in spades, and at every price point. And, of course, there’s the infrastructure—not quite Chinese, but leaves us way behind. And, finally, and best of all, clean air and water—I saw a skyful of stars after what felt like decades.
A hotelier friend of mine from Goa had told me that tourism in India will never take off—Thailand provides much higher quality, and it’s cheaper to boot. No wonder they get 30-plus million international tourists a year (more than 40% of their population), while we struggle with 10 million. True, we have a huge number of domestic tourists, but wouldn’t it be great if we could provide them real value not just in terms of price but also quality of experience? Our approach needs to be more holistic—I’m not sure our tourism department even recognises the value of clean air and water in terms of achieving its mandate. I love Goa and will never stop going there but I know I’ll be going to Thailand much more than ever before.
Another very interesting learning from my trip was the fact that the Thais are very happy with China; the two countries have a long history, first with Thais providing support to the then-much-poorer Chinese and, more recently, with China supporting Thailand across the board. And despite running a huge deficit on trade with China, the Thai baht is quite strong, as a result of which prices are well contained. A Grab driver who collected us in a fantastic BYD vehicle told us that the car cost him just under 1 million baht (that’s less than INR 30 lakh), which is far less than a far inferior Toyota Camry in India!
Judging from conversations with some Thai friends, all of Southeast Asia seems to be happy with China, which appears to have an intrinsic sense of how to build meaningful bridges with its neighbours, despite being a very big brother—again, something that we need to learn, particularly right now, when we appear to have poor relations with virtually every neighbouring country.
Indeed, over the past few months, I have been thinking more and more about how we need to completely change our attitude and approach to China. Perhaps this was triggered by a debate I attended some months ago, titled, “Should India and China be friends?” To me, the subject was nuts—of course, you should be friends with everybody, more so with a large and extremely powerful neighbour. This is even more important since there has been so much negative rhetoric about the Chinese—I don’t dispute the border problems over the years and the ongoing problems with Chinese dumping, but unless we are able to build a sound relationship with China, we will be forever hampered in our dreams to enable the poorest Indians to have a better life.
My wife has an old Thai friend who has been a peripatetic “fixer” of sorts, travelling all over Asia for decades. We had dinner with him and he had a very interesting take. He told us, “I go to China a lot and every time I go there, I see Buddha—an Indian man—everywhere; I see (and feel) the presence of Indian culture constantly in daily life. But when I come to India, China is nowhere to be found, other than a few Chinese restaurants. India needs to learn about China, starting with the language and culture. You need to be less arrogant about who you are. You do have a wonderful ancient culture that all of Asia—indeed, the world—respects, but respect is a two-way street. Your young people need to start learning Mandarin; you need to acknowledge that over 50 years the Chinese have lifted their GDP per capita to USD 13,500—nearly five times yours; you need to see their technology to believe it. And, you need to make friends. If India and China could get together, the world would be a much more amazing place.”
Amen.