The Indian victory in the Twenty20 World Cup at Johannesburg on Monday added to the Incredible India@60 frisson that is currently being created in New York. It was interesting how quickly news of the victory travelled within the Indian diaspora—numbering about 2.5 million—in a country as clueless about the game as America.

It was the diaspora again that was turning out in the largest numbers for the events around the Incredible India@ 60 extravaganza here on Monday, which continued to unfold its delights at various locations in the city, ranging from the showcasing of Indian food and beverages on the old yacht, Peking, anchored at South Street Seaport with the Brooklyn Bridge as backdrop, to a Ritu Kumar fashion show for special invitees, which included Minister of Trade Kamal Nath and Singapore’s Foreign Minister George Yeo, at the Cipriani on 42nd street.

But between the hype and the reality or, to put in another way, beyond the hyped up reality of cultural festivals of this kind, some tough questions about India’s growth trajectory presented themselves. A discussion presented jointly by Yale University and the Confederation of Indian Industry, with the rather wound-up title, India 2050: A Grand Strategy for India Rising, attempted some tentative answers. The panelists included historian Ramachandra Guha, columnist Thomas Friedman, Infosys co-chairman Nandan Nilekani, economists T.N. Srinivasan and Roopa Purushothaman and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.

They could very easily, if a trifle facilely, be divided into the two camps: the optimists and the sceptics. Nandan Nilekani belonged to the first group. He argued that there are many signs that bode well for India’s future: it has created space for entrepreneurs, leveraged technology effectively—whether in electronic voting machines, stock markets or railway reservations. It has, besides, a demographic advantage and ordinary people are increasingly realising the value of globalisation.

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