Arriving at the new international airport here last month, I felt like I had gotten on the wrong connecting flight and ended up in Shanghai. Instead of the smelly and decaying terminal I remembered from the four years I spent here as a news correspondent, the building was sparkling. The walkway to the immigration counter doubled as a museum filled with paintings, sculptures and handmade crafts from around the country.
But the old familiar India soon returned when my cousin drove me out of the parking garage and past the slums near the airport that were made famous by Katherine Boo’s book, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers.” Stunning wealth and wrenching poverty have always coexisted here. And it still does — despite the unbridled optimism of politicians, business executives and middle-class Indians about the kind of economic transformation symbolized by Mumbai’s airport. I spent a week listening to such talk. Everybody was sure things would change for the rest of India just as they had for the airport because the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a technocrat with a controversial past, had captured a landslide election victory last year.
The rest of the world is also hopeful about India. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are projecting that India will become the world’s fastest-growing major economy in the next several years, surpassing China. The Indian government said this week that its economy may already be growing as fast or faster than China’s.
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