Sometimes culture change is startling. 24 hours ago I was in deep snow in the upper Connecticut valley in New Hampshire, -18c and the car stuck in a snow drift. Now I am in Mumbai and it's 28c, the sun is shining and business is booming. I was in the States for the funeral of my father-in-law. These are emotionally intense moments. But work must go on and I made my night connection in Heathrow yesterday and got to Mumbai.
And it is very energising to be here. Immediately the bustle, the smells, the vitality and the large heart of this country hit me. The extremes of wealth and poverty are here, of course, but so too is the sense of enormous potential and enormous talent. I always find India heartening and am always excited to be here.
The first thing I did this morning was sign a Memorandum of Understanding with ICICI Bank. I'm really excited about this as it's an opportunity to bring Indian SMEs to the UK and British SMEs to India. It is the first time we have had such an agreement with an overseas bank and it is great that ICICI is our chosen partner. They are a world class institution with a global mindset and the positive attitude needed to make the agreement a success.
Later I'm meeting the Reserve Bank of India where I'll discuss how we can achieve more liberalisation so British banks can operate more freely and bring their services to Indian consumers. I'm also meeting the Essar Group to discuss their investment plans in the UK and Wockhardt, the major Indian pharmaceutical company. I have meetings with Tata Realty & Infrastructure Co. Ltd too.
Then there will be a dinner at Vicki Treadell's residence with the crème de la crème of the Indian commercial establishment. Vicki has been a tremendous leader of the Mumbai Deputy High Commission and wholly committed to the UKTI agenda. She is going on to New Zealand to be High Commissioner there. The antipodeans' gain is India's loss. I always enjoy these dinners because you get to learn what is really going on in an economy.
The contrast between our economies is striking. My briefing says that India may overtake the USA in terms of GDP by 2050. Such predictions are of course meaningless. It will either happen more quickly or not at all. In a way, it is the wrong comparison. My late father-in-law was an American of the old school. In the US Army, he helped liberate Europe and open the concentration camps. He was an educator and a pillar of the Manhattan establishment. His world view was sophisticated and subtle but very much an American/European one. He knew European literature better than most Britons. But the world has changed. The perspective for now is an Indian perspective. The future certainly belongs here. This is the new frontier.