Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower (41 page)

Rohini Dey

Rohini Dey is the owner of Vermilion restaurants in New York and Chicago.

Growing up in India, I was determined to save the world.

I still remember the dusty summer afternoon when, as a twelve-year-old, I crossed the street from school to the pristine air-conditioned environs of the UN and World Bank offices in New Delhi—an alien universe—to ask how I could one day get a job there. Incredulity gave way to derision on the faces of officials, who told me to “get a PhD in economics and come back.” Which is exactly what I did.

It seems to mystify people that, after struggling to get that PhD and successfully landing my dream World Bank job, I now find myself in my tenth year as a restaurateur. It’s a long way from feeding the world to upscale dining.

Why the restaurant business? Not for the glamour; trust me, I don’t spend evenings, resplendent in a sari, slinging back martinis or swirling wines with customers. Nor was it for fortune; I did my due diligence on the restaurant business: a 90 percent failure rate, meager profit margins, a dearth of bank financing, daunting labor and capital demands, and myriad legal and health liabilities. And it certainly wasn’t for the admiration of family and friends, who were horrified that I would abandon a perfectly respectable “brand-name” career to open a glorified
dhanda
(a favorite Hindi term for disparaging small businesses).

No, what possessed me to launch Vermilion, my Indian-Latin restaurants in Chicago and New York City, was a combination of rage, passion, and the firm conviction that I had discovered an unmet market niche.

What fueled my rage was the mélange of mediocrity we Indians passed off as our cuisine abroad: the $8.99 all-you-can-eat buffets; the predictable mushy overcooked fare, swimming in oil and nuclear food dyes; the clunky table settings amid faded visuals of camels and the Taj Mahal. I was mortified by the whole pathetic repertoire. None of it bore any resemblance to what we Indians ate at home, on our streets, or in our own restaurants back in India.

As for the passion, I have always been a foodie. As a young professional in the United States with an expense account, I was dismayed to realize that finding an Indian restaurant that escaped the formulaic vibes of Bombay Palace, India House, Jaipur Club, or Royal Taj was nearly impossible.

When non-Indians think of India, what do they imagine? Legions of IT engineers? Call centers? Teeming masses and mystical yogis? It is unlikely they picture a nation with the depth of cuisine that could foster an epicurean culture. Few know of the immersion in fine dining that was my childhood in India. In our family, meals were
meals
—meticulously planned and executed, eaten together, and savored at leisure. As an Air Force brat growing up in twelve different cities around the country and traversing many more in family road trips in our beat-up Standard Herald, I relished street fare from every region: the
chaat
hawkers,
pakora
and
samosa
vendors, kebab corners, frankie stands, and
paratha
gullies of Delhi and Mumbai;
kathi
rolls,
jhal muri
,
kochuri
, fish fry,
ghugni
,
momos
in the avenues of Kolkata;
dosa
,
idli
,
upma
,
biryani
on the roads of Hyderabad and Madras; and, of course, the ubiquitous Indian-Chinese vans doling out steaming soups and chow mein noodles.

Visits to “outside” restaurants were expensive and rare. But even then,
the infrequent trips to Kwality’s, Karim’s, Nizam’s, Trishna, and Swagats or the foray to five-star hotel restaurants were magical and exposed me to new worlds of sensory adventure. At home food was subtle, fresh, and whimsical. My mother loved to experiment. She was as adept at turning out spaghetti, scones, and shepherd’s pie as at Bengali fish curries, mutton curry, and
biryani.

I’ve now dined on a multitude of cuisines, from the temples of haute Michelin-starred restaurants to street fare the world over, but I have yet to find a cuisine with the range and complexity offered by India. The Mughal-influenced fare from the mountains of Kashmir couldn’t be more different from the hot-blooded food of tropical Bengal, or the seafood and vegetarian extravaganzas of Kerala’s spice coast from the hearty earthy dishes of Punjab—and that leaves only twenty-four more states, each remarkably distinct!

Ours is one of the earliest cultures and continuous urban civilizations, rooted in the ancient Indus Valley civilization (now in Pakistan). Our food has been influenced by waves of Central Asian, Arab, and Mughal invasions; British and Portuguese occupation; Syrian Christian and Jewish immigration. It is an integral part our social fabric. Our hospitality, festivals, entertainment, family time, and religious rites revolve around meals and food.

Over the last decade, India’s fine dining scene has experienced a transformation. India’s burgeoning middle class is now as cuisine obsessed as counterparts in the West or Japan. Celebrity chefs jockey for position in India’s largest cities; independent restaurateurs and chains compete across the country; and food TV shows, blogs, and magazines all vie for audiences. The tragedy is that, amid the global gastronomic revolution, outside India the stereotypes of Indian food remain: that it is a murky, spicy, mushy, overcooked, low-end cuisine lacking in finesse.

Progress has come at an incremental pace, with barely two dozen successful Indian restaurants in metropolitan hubs such as New York,
Hong Kong, Paris, and Tokyo. London is an anomaly because of the close ties between Britain and India; as the
New York Times
has observed, Indian food rescued the British from “bland boiled nursery yuck” by lending it a previously unknown component: flavor.

Indian restaurants rarely feature in top international rankings. In the San Pellegrino Top 100, only Bukhara in Delhi regularly makes the cut. Michelin includes barely a dozen establishments serving Indian fare in its rankings of more than four thousand restaurants, and none rates more than a single star. In the United States, no Indian restaurant or Indian chef has received a James Beard Award. At Western cooking schools, students dedicate two years or more to studying French techniques, while “Asian cuisines”—including Indian—tend to be lumped into one general course.

Granted, these are Western metrics. One can rationalize the near invisibility of Indian cuisine in such rankings by arguing that few food critics outside India can be expected to appreciate the nuances of our cuisine or the vastness of the regional differences within it, or distinguish the superlative from the pedestrian. And there, smug in our parochial supremacy, we could let matters rest—case closed.

Spices from India were the single most important food product of the Middle Ages. Insatiable demand for them drew Portuguese armadas and Spanish treasure fleets, and spawned exploration missions that led to the discovery of the Americas and the New World. And yet while we still produce over 80 percent of the world’s spices, the cuisine for which those spices were developed has failed to adapt to our new global age.

Can Indian cuisine ever succeed on a global level? I believe it can—and, indeed, have staked my career and financial solvency on that. But first, India and its chefs must accept the reality of our reputation today and be willing to adapt and evolve. We must rethink efforts to promote Indian cuisine and learn to market India as a preeminent culinary destination.
I see no reason Indian cuisine can’t achieve the popularity of French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, or Thai food among global diners. And why shouldn’t Indian food hold its own against Nordic, Scandinavian, Vietnamese, and Korean, which are all the rage in the West these days?

The twenty-five Michelin Red Guides on restaurant ratings cover at least thirty-five destinations around the world. I’ve often scorned the guides for their Francophile and Japanese bias and their penchant for rewarding old-style Stockholm syndrome dining: pretentious arenas of exorbitance that turn diners into obsequious captives. But like it or not, the Michelin guides lend a stamp of legitimacy not just to individual restaurants but also to entire cities. That was certainly the case for Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe, which Michelin has transformed into international gastronomic destinations.

Indians may scoff at the formulaic rigidity of Michelin ratings, safe in our insular cocoon. But if we do, we’ll remain irrelevant. Instead, leading restaurateurs, culinary associations, and India’s tourism industry could work together to woo the Red Guide to India. Winning over Michelin would put India on the culinary map and lure the tourism that inevitably follows food.

Michelin aside, there is much else India’s restaurateurs, their lobbying channels, and indeed the food industry can do to transform our culinary profile. They might join forces with the long-running multimillion-dollar “Incredible India” campaign or partner with key Western culinary institutions (such as the James Beard Foundation or San Pellegrino) to sponsor awards for Indian-influenced restaurants across continents. They also might work more closely with India’s tourism ministry to launch road shows, tasting festivals, and a network of celebrity chef exchanges to showcase our cuisine in strategic global cities.

India’s vast network of embassies and consulates can assist in this process. The Indian government might sponsor young Indian chefs for on-the-job training in the West to broaden their horizons. India’s food industry could develop its own global culinary awards—based on innovation,
revenue, or ratings—to encourage restaurateurs to raise their profiles overseas.

Above all, Indian cuisine and all those involved in the food business must learn to embrace change. Indian chefs and restaurateurs—and diners everywhere—could use a jolt of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction.” Only through Darwinian mutation and variation will we survive.

Adaptation for global survival could come in many forms: enhancing the nuances of our spices, not overcooking ingredients past the point of recognition, enhancing presentation beyond brown slop in a dish, and being innovative in the ambience of Indian eateries and formats. We could introduce ambitious ingredients, broaden menu repertoires, and even infuse other global cuisines to create something provocative.

Of course, those who embrace the idea of evolution are easily branded heretics or sellouts; inevitably critics will wail that we risk diluting India’s rich culinary legacy. But this is not about dumbing down flavors or restraining the vibrancy of our food. It is about drawing on the best of the traditional and the contemporary. It is about encouraging all involved in Indian food culture to develop a successful translation of our culinary traditions to relay abroad. It is about breaking free from the insular bubble in which we Indians share the glories of Indian cuisine only among ourselves.

Suhel Seth

Suhel Seth is a writer and consultant on marketing and management, and managing partner of Counselage India. His most recent book is
Get to the Top: The Ten Rules for Social Success.

India has a vibrant press with a proud history. By many measures, our nation boasts the most robust media industry in the world. India is home to 87,000 privately owned newspapers, which enjoy a combined daily circulation of 370 million—more newspapers in circulation than in any other country. Of the world’s top twenty newspapers ranked by 2011 circulation, nine are Indian. The
Times of India
is the world’s most widely circulated English-language daily; its circulation of more than four million is twice that of the
Wall Street Journal
and four times that of the
New York Times.
Our two largest Hindi newspapers, the
Dainik Jagran
and the
Dainik Bhaskar
, command an estimated sixteen million and fourteen million readers, respectively. India’s broadcast media, monopolized by the state until 1991, now include more than eight hundred privately owned satellite channels, of which more than one hundred specialize in news.

In stark contrast to most Western nations, where the rise of the Internet has undermined the economics of traditional media, in India old and new media alike are booming. Subscriptions and advertising revenue for newspapers and magazines, as well as television viewership, have risen steadily, alongside the vigorous expansion of blogs, web-based news services, and social media.

In the 1940s, Indian-owned newspapers and periodicals played a vital role in our struggle for independence from colonial rule. Many
newspapers aligned themselves with Mahatma Gandhi’s call for freedom and defied the British government of the day. That decision cost many editors and publishers dearly, both in prison terms and monetary penalties, but harsh consequences did not deter them from following their consciences. Again, in 1975, when Indira Gandhi imposed a state of emergency that threatened our democracy, many newspapers fought for that most basic of democratic rights: freedom of expression. Many defied censorship laws by running blank columns on their front pages rather than carry government propaganda or submit their articles to censorship.

Sadly, those brave times are now a distant memory. Over the past two decades, India’s press has become entangled in a corrupt nexus of politics and industry. Political pandering and commercial pressures have transformed our once-valiant fourth estate from watchdog for the public interest to lapdog of the rich and powerful.

Just how far India’s news media has fallen from its national pedestal was revealed in 2010 when two Indian newsmagazines,
Open
and
Outlook
, published transcripts of recorded telephone conversations that seemed to suggest that some of India’s most prominent editors and journalists had acted as lobbyists, wheeling and dealing behind the scenes on behalf of competing corporate and political interests keen on securing lucrative mobile-phone licenses. The alleged target of the recordings was Nira Radia, a high-powered corporate lobbyist who was head of Vaishnavi Communications, a public relations firm representing some of India’s largest companies. Between 2008 and 2009, according to the reports, government tax authorities tapped Radia’s phones in an effort to find evidence of money laundering and tax evasion. The recordings, excerpts of which were published in
Open
and
Outlook
, suggest what the surveillance effort mainly uncovered was an insidious web of political influence peddling that included some of India’s most prominent producers and editors.