Weekend Reading: 12 Apr, 2009
India’s Underground & Hinterland seem to be the topics du jour 
In the Wall Street Journal, Peter Wonacott says India Defies Slump, Powered by Growth in Poor Rural States.
Rama Lakshmi of the Washington Post said as much last month: Vast Rural India Sparkles As an Expanding Market
About 72 percent of India’s billion-plus people live in rural areas. For years, the poverty of rural India was seen as reining in the country’s economic growth. But today, analysts say, rural India is a critical audience for marketers because it has been relatively insulated from the crippling blow of the global slowdown.
India’s rural destiny still depends on good monsoon rains and robust agricultural production, but four years of bumper crops and heavy government investment in rural infrastructure have given birth to what some analysts call an emerging economy within India.
Last month, Patrick Barta of the Wall Street Journal called it The Rise of the Underground.
Given this, it’s not entirely coincidental that The American, the journal of the American Enterprise Institute wonders how Lalu Yadav managed to turn around the Indian Railways, the world’s 2nd largest employer (the Chinese Army is #1) and in doing so, morph from Huey Long to Jack Welch — The Indian Railway King