A year ago a seemingly unstoppable global juggernaut, the once-confident India is now reeling from a perfect storm of a corporate IT scandal, the Mumbai attacks and economic slowdown.
Suddenly the talk is not of easy returns, unending high growth, or "India arrives". The chatter is increasingly of risk.
All these events have added to a sense of more risk in India.There is a squirrel attitude. The winter could be long and cold.
Satyam Computer Chairman Ramalinga Raju quit on Wednesday in India's biggest corporate scandal in memory, after revealing profits had been falsely inflated for years. It has been called India's "Enron", raising suspicion there could be other skeletons in the closet of India's corporate boom.It all came at the wrong moment for India, a combination of problems that punched a hole in the self-confidence -- some say cockiness -- of executives, politicians and middle-classes.
Only in 2007, India wallowed in success. Tata Steel made a $13 billion bid for Corus, the country's biggest foreign buy. A trillion-dollar economy grew at nearly 9 percent. India won its first major international cricket cup in 25 years.i am too bullish about India in the long term.
But these new insecurities may impact on the economy, where there are signs investors are reeling back from ambitious plans, to politics, where growing insecurity among voters could add to the unpredictability of general elections due by early May.
Take politics. The Congress-led coalition government is battling the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. The insecurity bodes badly for Congress in its hopes to retain power.
But that insecurity could push voters to a "third front", smaller regional parties with charismatic but controversial leaders - like "Queen of Dalits" Mayawati - that send shivers down many investors.
Anyone in power in India has to be worried because Indians walk on very thin ice.There is no social security, job security. A third force may be able to take advantage of this insecurity.The decision of Tata Motors to pull out of West Bengal state in October after farmer protests against a factory for its low cost Nano, billed the world's cheapest car, also shocked India.
For all of India's optimism, it was a reminder that the country of sprouting shopping malls still must deal with the more than two-thirds of Indians who live on less than a dollar a day.
