Alyssa Ayres
This paper was originally drafted for the January 2010 session of the Aspen Strategy Group’s US-India Strategic Dialogue. Please click on the link at the bottom to access the full article.

Finding a new Equilibrium

Twenty years ago I landed in Delhi for the first time, a young college student on a semester abroad.  India was a different place, far away, and we Americans knew little about it.  Back then you’d see khadi-clad Western tourists ambling around CP, Doordarshan was the only channel around (although Prannoy Roy offered a half-hour hint of the future with The World This Week), and talking with parents back home meant booking a trunk call and then waiting around for hours, or trudging to the PCO/STD/ISD booth.  Cows grazed on piles of trash in concrete bins outside our youth hostel (the Vishwa Yuvak Kendra) in the heart of the Diplomatic Enclave.  Today, the tourists in handspun have been replaced by bankers in Brioni; Prannoy Roy now runs a media empire and cuts deals with NBC/Universal and Time Warner; everyone has a mobile phone and the rates are the world’s lowest, shrinking the globe and pulling family instantly close; and there are a lot fewer cows, not to mention no more trash piles, outside the youth hostel, which now also houses India’s preeminent software industry association, NASSCOM.  These bookends of memory show how dramatic a transformation has taken place, and how much more deeply our countries are now intertwined. (more…)