David Kuo and Nick Kapur debate which country has the best prospects.
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David:
This is Money Talk, the weekly investing podcast from the Motley Fool. I am David Kuo, and there are few things in life more captivating than watching two titans going at it toe-to-toe in public. Think of Nadal versus Federer; Manchester United versus Barcelona, and, of course, Ali versus Frazier. Currently there are two economic powerhouses in the East that are slugging it out in full view of global investors. In the blue corner, we have India, the world's largest democracy; and in the red corner, we have China, the largest economy in the East.
But which is the better bet for investors? – before you decide, listen to the arguments, and then vote for one or the other, and I'll tell you how to do so at the end of this podcast. To make it even more interesting, we are giving away five – yes, five – free subscriptions to Champion Shares PRO, our premium share-tipping service, and the winners will be drawn randomly from all those who vote, so please don't miss out.
Now, representing India is Motley Fool analyst, Nick Kapur, who joins me all the way from Mumbai in India. Welcome to Money Talk, Nick.
Nick:
Thank you, David. Thanks for having me.
David:
And how are things in Mumbai at the moment, Nick?
Nick:
As Thomas Friedman said, it's hot, flat and crowded here.
David:
And have you started entering the monsoon season yet?
Nick:
Not quite yet, but we're hoping in the next two or three weeks, we're about to get metres of rain on a daily basis now.
David:
So are you looking forward to the monsoons then, Nick?
Nick:
Oh yes, absolutely – anything to bring down the heat just one degree would be totally welcome right now.
David:
Yeah, they say beer is quite good for that as well.
Nick:
Yeah, well you can only drink so much beer here before you start to get questioned by the authorities.
David:
[laughs] Now, Nick will be representing India, and representing China will be little old me, so let battle commence. Can we start, Nick, by having a look at which country, India or China, has the better political system? So, just to kick off, can you explain why India's democratically-elected parliament is better than China's unelected central government?
Nick:
Sure, well just to give a little background here. My dad's from India, I grew up in the States, so I have very kind of Western inclinations in terms of what I prefer from a government, how I like economies to be operated, and certainly I have a lot of family bias back towards India. I think the answer to your question, and that kind of classic, business school answer to any question is, it depends; it's complicated. I think, if you're an individual, and certainly a Western one, I think you'd look at India's government, and you would prefer it versus China for simply the rights that are given out to individuals: free speech, free enterprise, free media. These things are very attractive to an individual, and in India you have that. So I would say, personally speaking, and from a biased standpoint, that what's I would prefer.
Now, if you're an investor, I think it totally depends on your viewpoint, and it kind of goes to the very fundamental nature of how you like an economy to be run. I think on the one side you have a very elaborate, very sophisticated chemistry experiment, so to speak, going on in China, and on the other side you have what I kind of like to call a Darwinian biology, and more than than, chaos in India. I think, in one sense, you have a country that is succeeding very quickly, and is accelerating in its success in China, and then you have India, which is succeeding, albeit slower.
David:
I'm not going to pretend that China is a democracy. It certainly is not a democracy, which means that China on the one hand is vilified by people outside of China, but within the country, it means that China can pass laws and legislations that are good for the country unopposed. If China wants to build a dam, or it wants to build a hydro-electric plant, or if it wants to relocate an entire town, it can do so. If it wants to impose draconian measures to reduce population growth, it can do that also. As far as I'm concerned, one of the best things that China ever did, because it is not a democracy, is to say that we want to impose a standard Chinese dialect, Putonghua, across the whole of the country. Now, if you tried that in any other country, people would be up in arms, but in China they just accepted it, that everybody in China would then speak one common language, and it is great for verbal communications across the country. I can't see India, for instance, adopting a single Indian language unopposed by the various dialect groups?
Nick:
No, and certainly not. You look across India, and there are dozens of dialects. There are two official languages: English and Hindi, and I would say fewer than 10% of the daily workers that are on the streets, and even Bombay or Mumbai, can speak either of those two languages. There are a lot of local dialects swimming around, and hybrids of those local dialects. Certainly, if the government even thought about introducing such a measure, there would be huge uproar from various special interest groups, various unions, various other entities that are very well represented within the government here. But I think, in doing so, what you have, you have a population that's very well represented.
You have a population that has a voice, and because they have a voice, what you see are people who, despite immense amounts of poverty, huge inequality in terms of income and consumer spending power, even despite those very large problems you have a sense of collectivism in terms of a national identity, and you also have relative peace, and this goes across ethnic and religious divisions, which are very strong in India, and I think that's an advantage that you can't look over; plus, when you have a government that has very effective autocrats that are kind of determining the best possible policy and the most effective policy for the country and then implementing it without any kind of negotiation, I think what you create and have been creating in China is a kind of state-sponsored favouritism, and that goes down to the individual company level.
So China has essentially, within their favoured industries, has picked the companies that they want to win, the two or three companies that they want to win. In doing so, what you do is, one, you obviously accelerate the success and the returns of those specific companies, but what you tend to also do along with that, and this is a very much unintended consequence, is you start to crush dynamism, within industries, within entire sectors, and that is an advantage that I think India's building on its own. Certainly there are companies within India that have maybe favoured status from a government standpoint, and certainly some companies are very close with the government in a very nefarious way.
But generally speaking, you have industries and sectors that are allowed to compete, and in doing so you have a kind of sense of evolution in terms of advancement. It's slower, and it's not quite as obvious, and there are a lot of hiccups along the way, but I think on a longer term basis, over the next ten, twenty, thirty years, you're going to step back from India and you're going to step back from China, and you're going to see competitive, mature industries in India, and in China what you may see are overly top-heavy industries that generally tend to not innovate, because they have favoured status; they don't need to. All the spoils of war that tend to come with monopoly status or oligarchy status will hit these companies in the long term. I think that's a bad thing, so India may have the advantage in this department.
David:
But surely one of the issues is that, if you have an unelected central government, you can plan for the next twenty, thirty, fifty years, because you know you're going to be in power for that length of time. One of the problems with having a democracy, and I'm not pooh-poohing the idea of the democracy, but one of the issues with democracy is that you only have a fixed term of five years. So it therefore means that, within that five year period, you have to ensure that you get whatever you want to do done.
If you don't do it in the five years, there is a high chance that there will be a shift in power to your opposition; they will come in, undo everything that you do, and then effectively you're just almost like trying to run up an up escalator downwards, and you're not really getting anywhere, whereas with China, you know where you are now, you know where you want to be in twenty, thirty, forty years' time, and you can just travel on that escalator and you know you will get there. So surely, as far as investors are concerned, they would much prefer an unelected central government than one that is democratically elected, but unfortunately it is going to change every few years?
Nick:
Yeah, there's no doubt about that. I would not argue with you about the fact that central planning and central government has its benefits – no doubt about it. Let's not forget the fact that, in a democratically-elected government, you often get people with great frequency in fact who don't appeal to your kind of political leanings, who are in fact unsavoury characters to begin with. I think it was the Washington Post a few years back identified the fact that 25% of members of Congress have been convicted, or will be convicted, of a major crime during their tenure in office.
Now, that is a shocking and equally depressing statistic. But along with that fact, you have a regular turnover of these people, and in fact you have the people determining their own fates. If they are wrong, if they are maligned, there is turnover. Now whereas, I think in China's case what I think you're seeing, you're seeing the beginnings of institutionalised corruption, and I think that's a very serious problem that won't be addressed; one, because there's no free media in the country; and two, because you can't turn over your bureaucrats who are running the government.
David:
Okay. Now let's turn our attention now, before the two of us get thrown in jail, Nick. Let's turn our attention now to India's free –
Nick:
Uh-oh!
David:
– to India's free market economy, and China's command economy. In some ways, this is quite closely linked to the political system. Why do you think that free market economics is good for India, because I'm going to say that a command economy is actually better for China?
Nick:
Sure, well from a stock markets return standpoint, I think at least in the short term over the past year or the past three years, India's had the upper hand. Over a longer timeframe, they're about equal. If you tend to focus how you rate an economy on a more granular level, on an individual level, certainly you have to admit that China's economy has been benefiting individuals at a greater rate and at a more intense rate. You look at life expectancy, you look at literacy rates, you look at per capita income – all of these metrics favour China. Now, that said, I think India's rates of change are increasing and accelerating, and more importantly, all the good things that happen to a country as they develop, those things are happening in India – they're just happening at a little bit of a slower rate, and they're happening in an authentic rate versus what I think is happening in China.
Now, I can give you a kind of quick anecdote on that. You look at the dynamism of the automotive industry in India. When I first started coming here about twenty years ago, virtually the only car in the road, with the exception of one or two Mercedes Benzes that belonged to kind of top bureaucrats or bankers, or what have you, the only car on the road was the legendary Ambassador, which kind of looks like a taxi cab from the early twentieth century in London. Now, that was the only car twenty years ago. In the last ten years, a few foreign car companies started to enter, and in the last one or two years I've seen explosive rates of new introductions of models, of new car companies delivering virtually new concepts here, and also companies integrating their assembly plants here. Now, India's a very protected economy from a foreign investment standpoint, but still what you're seeing is, you're seeing the necessary evolution of a specific industry happening, just at a slower rate than the rest of the world.
So all the good things are accruing in the country, plus you have a free market economy that I think is delivering the kind of economic know-how to the businesses that are building here to begin with, and I think the combination of those two things are, twenty years from now, India's a bright spot. That's kind of how I look at it.
David:
But surely you are looking at free market economics from the point of view of somebody who has lived in the West? – and just because free market economics works in the West doesn't mean it has to work in the East as well. No-one can argue that some of China's economic decisions are not draconian, but isn't the whole idea behind a command economy, one that is controlled by the state, is that it can allocate resources, very scarce resources in some instances, but you can't have everyone investing in the current flavour-of-the-month industry just because they want to?
It would be dangerous if everybody in China suddenly said, we're going to be pouring our money into pharmaceuticals and telecoms, and at the same time ignoring the dull-but-worthy industries such as shipbuilding, chemicals and fertilisers, which nobody really wants to invest in? So isn't the whole idea that, if you have a command economy, that what you will effectively have is the central state saying, we need some pharmaceuticals, but we also need some shipbuilding, which is very labour-intensive and not very good returns for investors, but the whole idea is that we then have an economy that is very well-balanced, rather than skewed in one direction, such as India, which tends to be skewed towards pharmaceuticals and telecoms?
Nick:
Certainly. I agree with your point in concept, but what I would kind of respond with is the fact that I think you're making a very bold assumption insofar as, in a free market economy, the market makes those decisions for you, right? In a centralised economy, the autocrats make those assumptions and those decisions for you. Now, what you're assuming is that those autocrats or those bureaucrats, or whatever you want to call them, know how to effectively make those decisions.
In the case of China, as you mentioned on your own show a few weeks back, I think what we're seeing is a very dangerously inflating property bubble in China, and you're assuming that the bureaucrats who are in charge there know how to handle that properly. Now, I think on a market level, clearly we see bubble behaviour in free markets, and I think that's typical. Everyone loves to jump on a bandwagon. But I think individuals are as equally prone to it as large groups are.
David:
But surely the litmus test for this must be whether or not foreign investors are prepared to invest in your country? So if we have a look at, say, foreign direct investment in India, currently it's around US$35 billion. In China, it is US$78 billion, so it's almost twice as much money is going into China as is going in India. So isn't that litmus test telling you that foreign investors prefer a command economy, rather than one that is run under free market economics?
Nick:
There's no doubt about that point – I think you're absolutely right about that. Foreign direct investment in India is relatively paltry compared to what it should be. I think you can kind of look at deals, like the large Korean steel manufacturer POSCO has just made in the Indian state of Orissa, which is a multi-billion dollar deal that just, literally just got finished this year, thanks to years of union and environmental laws, say that with quotation marks around of it, because it's really just how to do with the company navigating its way through various bureaucratic entities within the government here. But what you're seeing is, you're seeing larger-scale deals. I think you're seeing accelerated paces of deals being made here.
I think, speaking to your point, from what environment individual investors prefer, sure – I think the short term and the medium term investor prefers to see accelerated and quicker rates of entry in terms of getting your money in and out of an investment, and I think China presents that opportunity. But over the long term, if we're truly long term investors, what you probably prefer to see are individuals who are incentivised and to always do the right thing in terms of setting up a company, and you also want to give them the best possible environment to do that in. I think a freer market economy, with civil liberties accruing to the citizens and the employees of those companies, is a better way to go here, and it's an opinion that's very easily debated.
David:
If you're talking about long term, one of the biggest impacts on long term investing is how demographics will change in India and China, and how that will impact on the sociological changes in these two countries. Now, how do you think sociological changes will impact India, say over the next ten years or so?
Nick:
That's a great question. I'll make a deal with you – if I concede the prior point to you, in terms of how appealing foreign direct investment is in each of our respective countries right now, surely you have to concede the point to me in terms of which country is demographically set up to win over the long term.
David:
I'm not going to concede anything to you, Nick!
Nick:
Ah, come on! – you've got to give me something here?
David:
I'm not going to give you an inch, as far as this debate is concerned. But anyway, how do you think that sociological changes will impact India over the next ten years?
Nick:
Okay, well the points here are fairly indisputable. You look at what is a kind of age bulge in terms of China right now that's coming over the horizon. A large percentage of the country by 2020 will be over 65, and that's 12%. It's going to accelerate in years thereafter, and what you're going to see is the really lasting and damaging effects of the one child policy in the country. Your listeners may have heard a lot about this already, and essentially what's going to happen is, you already have a population that is anywhere from 20% to 305 more male than female. Now, in terms of natural biological distribution, that is extremely out of whack. So what you're going to see is, just from a pure biological standpoint, you're going to see a country that will not be able to refill its population levels in another thirty to forty years, but you also have the effects of civil unrest that come up, because men can't find their brides, and that's always a problem. Essentially, you've lost a natural balance in society.
Now, compare that to India. Half of the Indian population is under the age of thirty. For a country of 1.2, 1.3 billion people, that is just shocking. Now, you also look at how those demographics are moving up the kind of the ladder in terms of socio-economics, and you can see, according to McKinsey, that in the next fifteen years, the country is going to add about 500 million people to its middle-class. Now, China is about half that number by 2020, according to KPMG. So what you're seeing here is a country that has much more favourable demographics but also add in much more favourable socio-economics. I think the combination of those two, over the long term, and again I hope we're all thinking long term here, means that India is better suited to move into a golden age of an economy, and I think that's what we're looking at here. We're at the doorstep of a golden age.
David:
Now the thing is, China brought in the one-child policy, because it wanted to align population growth with available resources. It knew it didn't have a lot of resources, so therefore it had to cap population growth in some way, which was why it brought in the one-child policy. But again, if we go back to the political situation in China, it brought in the one-child policy which means that it can reverse the one-child policy whenever it wants to.
The other issue is, if it wants to bring in more women, it can do so, and again that is because China has a political system that would allow it to do so. If it wanted to open its doors and say, we want to now allow just women into the country, it can do so, and it will be able to reverse the fertility rate, which at the moment is standing at around 1.5%, which is not sustainable. That much I will concede to you, but then of course China can bring in workers whenever it wants to. So if it needs new young workers in China, all it has to do is to say, our visa offices are now open – anybody who wants to come in can do so, and it can bring in those people, even people from India if it wanted to, whenever it wants to.
Nick:
I think that's a good point, and I think your assumptions, however, are predicated on the fact that a country like China, which pretty much as zero experience integrating immigrants into its economy and into its culture itself, can do so. A lot of countries, a significant portion of western Europe included, have not had a lot of success doing exactly that, and certainly Japan, a country that has been very hesitant to introduce immigrants into its very unfavourable demographic profile, is now currently suffering the effects of that. So I think it's a guess. Can China do that effectively? – I don't know, but they've given me no reason to believe that they can, and in the meantime India doesn't need that help. They are already better off.
David:
Well, the thing is, if China wants to do something, it will do so, and people seem to forget that China isn't just all about the Han Chinese, which is the Chinese that you tend to see in America and also in Europe. Those are the people from southern China. China is also made up of Tibetans, Mongolians, Manchurians – these are people that are not ethnic Han Chinese people. So it has got a track record of integrating people from other parts of China itself, and if it wants to it can bring these people in. But I think that the more important issue is, yes – it is great to have a growing population, but the real issue here about how many people are living below the poverty line. In India, at the moment 35% of the population still live below the poverty line. In China, it is just 3%. So whilst it is great to say that you are going to be growing your population, if these people are going to be poor, and they're going to be unhappy, and they're going to remain below the property line, surely it is much better to have the Chinese system where people are wealthier, richer, and happier?
Nick:
You know, that's a great point, David. You look at the Indian poverty level, and poverty here is defined at about £8 per month of income per person per household, and that's just an extraordinarily low level, even for India, and I think poverty here is a huge problem. But at the same time, despite massive amounts of poverty, you also have a lack of unrest, unlike China, where I think unrest is swelling, particularly in those minority kind of ethnic groups that you've just mentioned, and also there is a lot of figures there, and a lot of those figures come from the Chinese government itself. In a country that does not have a free media, how are you supposed to believe in them? That's the only way I can respond to that.
David:
Okay, we've looked at politics, we've looked at the economy, we've looked at sociological changes. Let's have a look at another one, which is education. We all accept the fact that a well-educated workforce is the lifeblood of economic growth in any country. Now, how do you see the educational system in India compared to say China?
Nick:
Well, I think in this respect, I think both countries have very significant problems ahead of them, and I speak boldly about China, because I don't know as much here. But when I look at kind of day-to-day interactions with graduate students here in this country, and even the newly-employed, what I see are folks who have the credentials, who graduated from x university or x college, and who have x degree, but what I fail to see often is the readiness for those jobs.
India graduates allegedly 400 or so thousand new engineers every year, of which again, allegedly, and only 50,000 of those are actually ready for work on day one, and I think that's a very serious problem. In addition to that, the education system here in India, I've found a kind of a lack of creativity going on within the school halls themselves and then for workers afterwards, and I think that kind of lack of creativity extends to a lack of industriousness and entrepreneurialism afterward. I suspect the same problems are going on in China, but I really can't speak too educatedly about that. So perhaps China has the edge here.
David:
I will concede the point that higher education in India is as good as you can find anywhere in the world. I've even heard some people compare India's Institute of Technology, IIT, to MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and that goes to show just how good higher education is. But isn't one of the worrying problems with India is the literacy rate amongst the general population? I think only 74% of the adult population is literate in India, compared to 94% in China, and in the US and Europe it is over 97%. So China has a much higher literacy rate. So how is India going to be addressing that problem, to try and boost the literacy rate from 74 to over 90% in order to sustain that economic growth that the country needs?
Nick:
Yeah, I know – that's a fantastic question. I will first say, who reported that 94% literacy rate for China?
David:
Are you going to do this throughout the entire podcast, by questioning these figures that I've come up with?
Nick:
That's my prerogative. I'll bring my best armaments to the table. But beyond that, I will say that, one, the literacy rate in India is despicably low. I think it's particularly low amongst women, and that is something that the country really has to work on, and until the education system here is improved, I think the country's going to struggle with that as a kind of general anchor. If you want to improve the quality of life for everyone across the board, you have to make sure that they're receiving the necessary schooling that they can, and beyond that, I think the quality of the schooling is crucial. You mentioned the fact that IIT is often compared to MIT, and I've heard that's true. Although I've had limited interaction with the graduates from IIT here, I've heard very good things. But I mean, that is one school in a country of 1.2, 1.3 billion people that educates only a few thousand people every year.
Now I think, if you took the top 10% of graduate schools in this country, they would compare favourably to any graduate school across the world. But after that, there's a pretty steep drop off. So I think, in terms of quality of education, at the very top it may be comparable, but across the board it's certainly not. Then, as far as the literacy point goes, what you see are certain states within a country. I mean, India should not be one country.
India should really be thirteen or fourteen or fifteen even smaller countries. Within certain states within the country, certain states, especially in the south of the country, and Kerala in particular is one state where you see male and female literacy rates in the mid to high ninety percentiles, and you wonder why that is – where does that come from and what that has to do with the kind of culture of educating both daughters and sons collectively till they're eighteen, and not forcing them into a kind of agricultural business, or not forcing them into work at an early age. certain states within the country, certain states, especially in the south of the country, and Kerala in particular is one state where you see male and female literacy rates in the mid to high ninety percentiles, and you wonder why that is – where does that come from and what that has to do with the kind of culture of educating both daughters and sons collectively till they're eighteen, and not forcing them into a kind of agricultural business, or not forcing them into work at an early age.
I think those attitudes and those styles are being adopted elsewhere in the country, and they're kind of blossoming out, especially as those countries succeed, or those states succeed more unequally. I think what you'll see is those policies start to get adopted in other parts of the country where literacy rates are way below that 73, 74% rate, into the fifties for males and females. I think what you hope to see is, one day, those individual states pushing much more normal rates.
David:
Now the thing is, Nick, we've taken a very broad brush approach to having a look at India and China. Unfortunately that's the only way that we as foreign investors can, and that is to have a look at the general picture of these two countries. Now, we've had a look at the politics. We've had a look at the economics. We've had a look at the sociological impact, and we've also had a look at education and how that could affect technology in the future. So given what we know so far, what can you say about the economic growth in India following on from analysing these four crucial areas for our country? Will they be able to grow at, say, seven, eight or nine percent a year for the foreseeable future?
Nick:
I think again we have to go back to what you kind of fundamentally believe as a more effective system. Do you believe that a centrally-organised and centrally-planned modus operandi for an economy is the superior way, or do you believe that, over the long term, groups, disorganised groups, are capable of building up those institutions, those controls and those kind of entities that are best suited for them, over the long term?
I listened in on your show a few weeks ago, and you mentioned an Asian development bank report that stated that an imminent correction in real estate and perhaps an eventual collapse. The guest that you had on said, you know, that's not a problem, because everyone's buying with cash. Now, that may be true, but a 50% crash in the real estate market is going to crush any investor, not only in the short term, but kind of crush his risk tolerance in the future, and I think in China what you kind of are looking at is a country that has built itself up largely on speculation. Allegedly they have large numbers of false cities, of ghost towns. You have empty highways stretching out into inland cities, and the second and third-tier cities. That's something that is terrifying.
You look at India, that is years if not decades behind in terms of its own infrastructure, and you see a country that so desperately needs better planning, but in spite of this is still succeeding. I think that's something that's hard to ignore in terms of sustainability. I'd much rather have a country that is late to the party, but that comes with a kind of better dish, than one that arrives early and kind of presents all sorts of problems in doing so.
David:
Nick, I cannot believe that you could stoop so low as to pick up the bullets that I've left to one side, by analysing the podcasts that I've done previously, and used those bullets against me!
As far as I'm concerned, if I only had a pound to invest, and following on from the arguments that the two of us have put forward for India and China, if I only had one pound to invest, I would certainly put it in China, because I think on virtually every count, China is ahead of India. In other words, India is lagging China on every issue, whether you talk about politics, economics, sociological changes or technological changes. That really is the summation that I have, that unfortunately, for many investors, that is all they have. They haven't got two pounds to invest: one in India, one in China, and if they only had one horse to back, I would say China must be the one that people should be looking towards, rather than India, but I presume you're going to say otherwise, aren't you?
Nick:
No, I think certainly that is the case now, and that has been the case in the past ten to fifteen years, where you obviously see massive amounts of foreign direct investment and partnerships and joint ventures going into China, and you don't really see the same scale entering India. I think there's a lot of scepticism about India, and I think that is totally valid. But my question to you is, that all of what you said maybe true – where would you prefer to live over the next fifty years? I think that's the better question, is inland China, which is really the story of China over the next twenty or thirty years – it's not Beijing, or it's not Shanghai; or would you prefer to live in second and third-tier cities in India? Personally, all the benefits that are accrued to me right now is, as a citizen of the West, are accrued to me living in India. I can speak to that first-hand. I can say, do, and operate as I please, and that is something that is hard to put a cost on. I would ask the same question of you, of sub-China?
David:
I would certainly choose Shanghai over any other city in the world. I enjoyed my time when I was there, and I would certainly go back.
Nick:
Okay, well then I think we can agree to disagree.
David:
Yeah, because I think Shanghai is probably going to be the next Hong Kong, and I think over the next twenty or thirty years, it will probably become a financial hub for the East as well. I think it will overtake Tokyo; it will certainly overtake Singapore, and maybe even Hong Kong.
Nick:
All very good! I've no response to that.
David:
Okay, now please don't let me influence you, or Nick influence you – you have to make your own mind up, and you can vote for which country you think is the better place to invest. Now, we are giving away five free subscriptions to Champion Shares PRO, our premium share tipping service, to the five people drawn randomly from all of those who vote. So, to cast your vote for India, please go to voteindia.fool.co.uk; and to cast your vote for China, please go to votechina.fool.co.uk. So that's voteindia.fool.co.uk, or votechina.fool.co.uk. Good luck to everyone who votes, and I hope you are one of the lucky people to win one of these free Champion Shares PRO subscription services. So thank you very much, Nick, for joining me today all the way from Mumbai in India.
Nick:
Thank you, David – it's been fun.
David:
Do you still have the same problem as I have, in that I keep on calling it Bombay, rather than Mumbai?
Nick:
You know, I've made a lot of cultural mistakes here in India, just in my daily meetings with various businesspeople, but one of them is definitely not calling it Bombay. Bombay is the preferred nomenclature, and I would advise anyone visiting here, when they're talking to Indians or people who live in Bombay, to call it Bombay and not Mumbai.
David:
Okay, we'll certainly take that on board. Now, there just remains one more thing for me to do, Nick, and that is to find a quote to sum up today's podcast. Today's quote comes from a journalist and Pulitzer-Prize winner, George Will, who said: "The future has a way of arriving unannounced." I think what that really means is that we may argue for China, we may argue for India, but there could be a third country somewhere out there who could arrive unannounced.
Nick:
I'm ready, willing and able to move to Rio de Janeiro.
David:
Okay, that's fine. Now, this has been Money Talk, I have been David Kuo, and my guest has been Nick Kapur, analyst at the Motley Fool, and currently in Mumbai in India. If you have a comment about today's show, please post it on the Money Talk web page, which you can find at fool.co.uk.
