Often indeterminate and even contradictory surveys corner attention by springing surprises. However, two recent surveys that turned the spotlight on India’s business optimism and reputation did reinforce an important tenet of development. We now know that Indian business owners are among the most optimistic people on earth. According to the Grant Thornton International Business Owners Survey (IBOS), which measured the percentage balance between optimists and pessimists based on the feedback received from a sample of 6,300 business owners across 24 countries, India has the highest optimism-pessimism balance for 2005 at 88 per cent, up 5 per cent from 2004.Thanks to another survey, the Global Reputation Study (GRS) 2005 — carried out by market information provider TNS — we also know that India ranks tenth in terms of its reputation as a business base among the 41 countries surveyed. This effort to gauge the perception of the top corporations and institutions of these countries involved nearly 37,000 respondents.The results aren’t surprising for a country with one of the world’s highest GDP surges in 2003 and is poised to achieve the projected GDP growth rate this fiscal. While the IBOS revelations hint at a link between business confidence and GDP growth, at least in the case of India, GRS underscores that public confidence and high reputation ratings for India are courtesy its strong development in the last five years, even as countries like France and Japan slumped because of dipping growth rates and soaring unemployment.However, there’s little real reason for India to rejoice because business confidence is distinct from mass concerns like unemployment, inequity or overburdened infrastructure. In fact GRS, which reflects participants’ opinion on their nations’ institutions such as healthcare, financial and banking outlets, telecommunications, political parties, business location, supermarkets and so on, ranks India below Malaysia and South Africa.There are no easy answers to what makes a country successful. Yet, not even the most positive findings can gloss over India’s poor performance on other scales like UNDP’s Human Development Index, where India (0.595) stands far below the likes of Mexico (0.802) and South Africa (0.666). Business confidence is as much a function of citizens’ trust and pride in their own institutions and infrastructure, as of how meaningfully are the benefits of economic growth reaching them. Unless India ensures improvements on these counts, it might only emulate the big league where development entails neither optimism nor reputation.
