Mumbai terror--striking at the symbols of Capitalism in India

Capitalism in India's oldest, brashest, and most powerful symbol is Mumbai. Since it was sold as the dowry of a Portugese princess to the time Asia's first stock exchange was set up to today, when its hotels and cafes there were businessmen, foreigners, movie stars, and ... people who served them, it has always been the Gateway ... to a rising prosperous and confident nation.

No wonder the Taj on the Gateway was the first target of those poor boys from a poor town in the poor Punjab province of the poor country of Pakistan. They, and their masters, knew that to really frighten India, they had to strike at its most potent symbol of capitalism--the Oberoi and the Taj--the two grand dames of Mumbai.

The geographical diversity of the death toll--from Manipur in the east to Delhi in the North; from Bangalore in the South to Porbander in the west--is to me, also, perversely a symbol of spreading capitalism. Energetic young men and women from all parts of our country are today choosing to work, to serve consumers, and to become wealthier by using the same capitalist, free-market system that their fathers had derided.

It is amazing to read that how young Indians--are seizing the opportunities that capitalism is providing to leave their homes and migrate to Mumbai for jobs (which in Mumbai's case is no news--people have been upping sticks and streaming through VT for almost as many generations as have immigrants to the USA passed through the Statue of Liberty on their way to New York).

I've just started reading Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani. His first chapter talks about how India needs to capitalize on its once-in-history demographic dividend by increasing access to education and jobs and to spread wealth, especially in North Indian states.

After the terror attacks in Mumbai, I believe that it's important that capitalism spreads fast not just in India, but also in benighted Pakistan, so that young men from that country have enough opportunities for wealth in their country and in their lifetime, rather than go to another country to seek martyrdom.