A BOOK ABOUT THE "INDIAN ECONOMIC MIRACLE" AND MORE
This book is called " The Mouse brings Money. Indian reportage" (Author V. A. Skosyrev. M., FEORIA, 2012, 284 p.). The first thing that comes to mind is an unusual, memorable title. Apparently, it is inspired by some old Indian fairy tale about a small magic mouse that miraculously helps poor people in this poor country. That's right. The mouse is indeed invisibly present on many pages of the book. But not live, but electronic - an indispensable part of most computers. This topic, as well as the analysis of the reasons why India has made great progress in the field of information technology and computer systems in recent years, is often addressed by the author throughout the entire work.
It is the computer mouse, and by and large those very modern information technologies, that are the symbol of modern India, a rapidly developing giant state that has not yet finally got out of centuries of poverty and backwardness, but has already overtaken other countries in many advanced areas of technology and science. It would not be an exaggeration to say, somewhat changing the well-known saying: in India, it was not the mountain that gave birth to the mouse, but the mouse that gave birth to the mountain. This country, its leaders, its scientists and engineers have wisely and accurately chosen the most relevant and most popular areas of scientific and technological progress. Thanks to huge achievements on this path, success has also been achieved in other areas, including space exploration and nuclear energy, and access to world markets. As a result, the country was able to get a lot of resources and, of course, money, which, according to the author, brought a computer mouse.
However, the book is not only about modern India and its achievements. This work is one of those that are called "final" - it is the result of a close study of India by a well-known Soviet and Russian journalist for several decades. The author, as a correspondent of Izvestia, lived in this country for a long time, and then repeatedly, including quite recently, came to India, met and talked with almost all its first leaders, as well as with many public, political and cultural figures, and probably with hundreds of ordinary Hindus. In addition, he thoroughly and clearly studied the country's centuries - old history from primary sources-excursions into its past, without which, as is well known, it is impossible to understand the present, make up a significant part of the work. The author prefaced his work with a modest subtitle - "Indian Reportage", although-it is not an exaggeration to say -this is a kind of "Encyclopedia of Indian Life" written in a lively literary language, because the most important moments in the life of this country and this people were thoroughly covered in the work.
This primarily concerns Russian-Indian relations, both economic and political. Oddly enough, relatively little is known about them in our country. For many years, Soviet leaders were very reserved about India, seeing it as a state entirely dependent on the "leader of imperialism" - Great Britain. Even during the Khrushchev era, when there was an exchange of visits at the highest level and on the radio, in newspapers, and among the common people, "Hindi-Rus, bhai-bhai!" was heard with might and main, a "secret war"was going on between the diplomatic departments of the two countries, invisible to the world. The author has witnessed many of its episodes, and only now was able to tell about it in a fascinating and interesting way.
The processes that are taking place in modern India, I hope, will eventually take place in our country. For example, "reverse brain drain" - the gradual return of specialists who once left the country and successfully worked abroad (although the movement "in the opposite direction" has not completely stopped). And what is interesting is that they return without gaining any significant material advantages in their homeland. Incentives - more interesting work, more clear and significant professional prospects.-
and-sorry for the banality - the very patriotism that many of us are ashamed of. Both the government and companies are doing little to bring specialists back home. And here - come on-they're coming back...
The largest section of the book is dedicated to Indira Gandhi's India. And it is no coincidence: it was a period of active political and public life, filled with many different events, the period of the beginning of reforms, which eventually - not soon and not immediately-began to lead the country to the vanguard position in the world. True, the author did not work in this country at that time, but often came to India as a special correspondent. Market reforms there developed according to a scenario similar to the Russian one - with galloping inflation, anti-government protests, etc. We must pay tribute to the government - it brought order quite harshly, and most importantly - quickly. And his subsequent steps, such as the development of mass housing construction, significantly smoothed out popular discontent. Indeed, in this section our politicians would find much instructive for themselves, and most importantly-for Russia "sample of 2012".
Even in the most difficult years in the great country, the most interesting cultural life did not subside, and to the author's credit, he often attended colorful folk festivals, theatrical performances, as well as the premieres of bright and original national films - he gave them a fairly large place in his work.
And India is also a country of many religious beliefs, traditions and rituals that live for centuries. And some of them, unfortunately, are gradually disappearing. For example, the value of the chapter on the Zoroastrians (Parsis) is that the size of this peculiar community is steadily decreasing, and it is not known whether the next generation of journalists will find adherents of the ancient religion in India. Therefore, readers should be grateful to the author for telling us in detail and with obvious sympathy about this disappearing piece of Indian civilization, as well as about some other ancient traditions and rituals.
It is interesting that during his travels in India, V. Skosyrev repeatedly encountered the traces that Russian people left in the cultural life of the country. It seems that we only know about one of them-Afanasy Nikitin, and there were others, for example, Gerasim Lebedev, who almost two centuries ago organized the first European-type theater in Calcutta, whose performances were, according to contemporaries, an unprecedented success. The theater, under pressure from British officials, soon, unfortunately, ceased to exist, and other theaters of this type appeared in the country only decades later. The author made many similar discoveries of "Russian footprints" in India. And now such "traces" can be specifically not to look for-they are found literally at every step.
The author, for example, was shown the factory for assembling the Russian-Indian cruise missile "Brahmos". This product was created by joint efforts of engineers and scientists of the two countries. The Hyderabad rocket factory is the fruit of cooperation between state-owned enterprises of India and Russia. But private Russian business-the author of the book admits with obvious annoyance-is still poorly represented in the Indian market.
In general, economic relations between our countries, according to the author, have developed extremely unevenly. Although the Soviet Union was among the first to recognize India's independence in 1947, rapprochement with Moscow was difficult. Many obstacles were put in the way of the work of Indian ambassadors in Moscow. Many difficulties were created by the poor relations that developed between the Indian Communists and the country's leadership. In fact, large-scale economic cooperation between our countries began in the 1960s and 1970s with the construction of two large plants with the participation of the USSR-a metallurgical plant in Bhilai and a power equipment plant in Hardwar. But by the mid-1980s, about 70 enterprises of various industries were built in the country with the support of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, economic relations were often overshadowed by the poor quality of Soviet equipment.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent not entirely successful reforms have complicated and overshadowed relations between the two countries. But the foundation of good relations between our people and the Indian people, laid in previous years, turned out to be quite strong. In India, Russia is still considered a friend, largely contributing to ensuring its security. And there is a lot of evidence for this - the author cites them at the end of his work.
The book "Money brings a mouse" is not the first written by journalist Vladimir Aleksandrovich Skosyrev. Like his previous works, it reads easily and quickly, "in one breath." As, we note, his frequent publications in Nezavisimaya Gazeta and, unfortunately, much more rare-in our magazine.
I would like to mention one of the shortcomings of the work: the printing quality of photos is extremely low and their distribution in the book is uneven. So, on the first hundred pages there are 22 images, and on the next hundred pages-half as many-only And. But this, of course, is the problem of the publisher, and by no means of the author, who gave us all a fascinating read and enriched with knowledge all those who are interested in the great Asian country and its relations with Russia.
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