Thanks to the civil aviation boom in India, I am spending a lot of
time at airports. Not because I am flying more, but because the flights
are always late. Despite an unbroken record of being delayed by
anything from half an hour to ten hours over the past two years, and on
a variety of carriers, I find I am unable to shake off my early phobia
about landing up an hour early for check-in.
Last week was no different. My flight had been delayed by a couple
of hours and my repeated enquiries with the airline’s staff had only
produced assurances that my flight to Mumbai would be “announced soon.”
So, when the usual incomprehensible squawking over the public address
system came, and I saw the usual contingent of business-suited men with
those handy laptop bag-cum-overnighter pull-alongs head for the
boarding gate, I rushed to join them. Only to discover, much to my
surprise, that the flight was going to Mangalore, not Mumbai!
Surprised, because the line of impatient travellers jostling at the
boarding gate could have walked straight out of your regular
Delhi-Mumbai shuttle. Like I said, lots of business suits and laptops,
many chic young men and women in fashionable casuals, the usual
sprinkling of safari suits and ‘political’ handloom silk.
The last time I had looked, Mangalore was a small, sleepy town, with
lovely houses and quiet streets winding up and down the hills. The last
time I had gone there, it was by bus. The major airlines did not have
daily flights to Mangalore, and Deccan & co were yet to happen.
Sometime between reforms and India Shining, the landscape of small
town India had clearly changed. After all, the suits were clearly
travelling on business. And the young people had not come on shopping
trips. So what is the business which is happening there? Where are
these kids getting their spending money, and smart clothes, from?
Right where they live, clearly. No wonder players in every sector
from agribusiness to education to information technology to retail are
making a beeline for what was once dismissed as ‘small town’ India.
In fact, I think late movers will have to drive deeper into the
countryside to gain ‘first mover’ advantage. Barista’s outlets in Pune
or Ahmedabad are doing roaring business, despite charging exactly the
same for a cappuccino as they do in Mumbai or Delhi. NIIT has a
training centre on an island in the middle of the Brahmaputra river,
which is accessible only by ferry, that too in non-monsoon months.
According to Reserve Bank of India data, business centres like
Mangalore and Rajkot, and just small towns like Dibrugarh, Dehradun or
Rourkela are registering a faster growth (in per centage terms) in
credit offtake than major metros.
In 2003, the US office of Management and Budget introduced a new
term to the business lexicon: ‘micropolitan’. It was designed to plug
the gap between ‘metro’ and ‘rural’. Companies soon discovered that
these ‘micros’ — 577 at last count — were hot business destinations. US
retailers, for instance, search ‘micros’ first to locate the
4,000-6,000 new stores they open every year.
As for me, I’m seriously thinking of getting into the suit business — in a ‘micro’!
Source by hindustantimes.com
Indian Rupee Converter
