My mum remembers Coca-Cola coming to the country for the first time.
The first time that bottled coke, in the sleek glass bottles with the elaborately painted logo, was sold out of crates and chillers by a vendor who would cycle from house to house, stacked crates in tow.
They'd seen them before, of course. Granddad was very well-travelled, his work took him across the country and occasionally overseas. It made him a knowledgeable, well-read and respected man. He'd been abroad: Malaysia, Germany, Indonesia, other places I wasn't told about. He'd seen Coca-Colas. He was an adventurer of sorts, which I suppose shouldn't seem too out of the ordinary for someone who had chosen a career of tinkering with chemicals professionally. Wherever he travelled, mum recounted, he'd bring back a little souvenir. Music from abroad, posters, books, branded sweets that weren't sold in protectionist India.
It wasn't an unreasonable decision. After 200 years of being leached dry and Indian industry being virtually nonexistent, it wasn't hard to see why post-colonial India had closed off its domestic industries to outsiders. The government took control of most local trade and incentivised the Indian economy to grow without competition from wealthier players (at that point, there were companies that were wealthier than the entire nation of India).
This did however mean that no international products were sold in India. Imports were limited to the most basic parts and things that could not be procured locally, often raw materials. Coca-Cola was limited to glimpses in foreign films, and of course, to those who travelled. (Nothing was banned, of course. It was about the economy, not access to international goods.)
This changed in 1991. Finance Minister Manmohan Singh's decision to deliberately devalue the rupee, open up the tightly-controlled Indian market for trade and usher in the age of globalisation introduced the world to India again, this time in its local paan shop (or cornershop, aware of the fact that like 3 people that follow me at best will know what that means). Mum remembers buying Coca Cola for the first time, in rupees, locally in 1991 as a girl. It sounds like a very small and trivial thing, but it was part of a decision that changed the Indian economy's fortunes forever.
From a country that had maybe two weeks' worth of forex reserves in tow, India evolved to become one of the fastest-growing GDPs in the world. It was once again Dr. Manmohan Singh's policies, this time as Prime Minister in 2008, that meant India escaped the worst of the global financial crisis. The economy didn't crash, didn't go into recession, fewer jobs were lost, and largely, India emerged unscathed compared to larger economies out west.
But I think about some of these little things, and how he changed the country forever, as the nation observes his passing today.
