Patralekha Chatterjee | India's secret sauce and how it can be even better

How does India look from outside? What do foreigners see as its secret sauce? Beyond Bollywood, cricket, curry, yoga, the Indian diaspora and enthrallingly raucous diversity, what ingredients go into the making of India’s “soft power” in a globalising world? A chance conversation with a Thai lawyer sitting next to me during a recent Kolkata-Bangkok flight offered some useful insights into one of India’s unquestionable assets: fluency in the English language.

The lawyer was returning home, to Bangkok, after spending some time with his 10-year-old son, now studying in Class 5 in an international school in Siliguri, West Bengal. Known for four Ts -- tea, tourism, transport, and timber -- this town in the foothills of the Himalayas now has another claim to fame -- international residential schools catering to Indians and others. The Thai lawyer, who spoke English haltingly, wanted his son to have the “English advantage”, as he put it. It was the view of someone from outside the Anglosphere. In the world’s most populous country (1.4 billion), the English-speaking population may be a tiny minority, but India is still among the top 10 English-speaking countries in the world.

Three months in Siliguri, and his son was way more fluent in English than his parents, the lawyer said.

India’s international schools are beyond the reach of most Indians, but even the good ones cost far less than international schools elsewhere, including Thailand. More and more Thai parents are realising this. Aspirational Thailand has found its match in aspirational India.

And it started a while ago. A 2016 article in The Nation, an English-language newspaper in Thailand, pointed out that cheaper fees and English-language curriculum was making India a popular schooling choice for Thais. “Fees are also very reasonable -- about 30 per cent of those charged by international schools in Thailand and infinitely cheaper than the West -- and India is thus attracting an increasingly high number of Thai students, all of them eager to improve their English-language skills while remaining in easy travel distance from home,” the newspaper noted.

In 2023, the trend shows no signs of fading. Siliguri and Darjeeling in West Bengal are not the only cities tapping into India’s English language advantage. Thai students are also studying in boarding schools in Bengaluru, Kodaikanal, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Mussoorie, etc. According to one estimate, annually, around 2,500 Thai students get admitted to Indian residential schools offering international curriculum.

Ancient India’s cultural footprint in Thailand is hard to miss. The Bangkok Mass Transit System, commonly known as the BTS Skytrain, has a station (Asok) named after Emperor Ashoka, the legendary Mauryan emperor who sent Buddhist missionaries to Thailand in the 3rd century B.C. For years, Bangkok’s international Suvarnabhumi airport has had a magnificent installation of Samudra Manthan (Churning of the Ocean of Milk), one of the most famous episodes in the Puranas.

But in 2023, soft power and global appeal go beyond ancient legacies, whether it is the East or the West.

If Thais are tapping into India’s English language advantage, what can India learn from Thailand, one of the great development success stories in the world? Clearly, education is one area which holds immense potential for mutual collaboration. Currently, there are five India Studies Centres in Thailand, according to the website of the Indian embassy in Bangkok.

Another key area is healthcare. Thailand is widely seen as one of the most efficient and successful healthcare models in Southeast Asia. It is also recognised as a global destination for medical tourism. None of this would have been possible without a strong and sustained focus on creating a stable and sustainable public healthcare programme based on the Universal Coverage Scheme (UCS), once also called the 30-baht scheme offering universal health care to the country’s citizens. Thailand ranked fifth in the world in terms of countries with the strongest health security, according to the 2021 Global Security Index Report. It has also been lauded for its handling and management of Covid-19.

Bangkok is globally famous for its street food. But a street food success story is necessarily a sanitation and hygiene success story, especially in a hot and humid region. Recently, on a visit to Kolkata, I chanced upon a news item in a national daily which spoke about the city’s plans to get “food streets” modelled on the street food hubs in Bangkok. Having spent my formative years in Kolkata, I can unhesitatingly vouch for the appeal of the city’s street food -- the legendary phuchkas, kathi rolls and more. Kolkata Municipal Corporation will be providing infrastructure support -- uninterrupted water supply, lighting, maintenance of roads and pavements, and the Indian Institute of Hygiene and Public Health will help ensure hygiene is maintained, the report said. This is critical.

Street food in hot and humid Bangkok is so popular among locals and tourists not just because it tickles the taste buds but also because few fall sick after sampling it. This is a Thai takeaway that we must not ignore.

Since 1989, Thailand’s ministry of public health, in collaboration with Thailand’s Tourism Authority and the interior ministry, has had a project to ensure good sanitation in restaurants and street food outlets. The “Clean Food Good Taste” Project is meant to reassure Thais, as well as tourists, that food in Thailand is safe as well as tasty. There is a long list of do’s and don’ts which Thai street food vendors must follow. Here are a few randomly selected samples -- cooking/food preparation must be elevated to at least 60 cm above ground; ice must be kept in clean and closed containers, elevated to at least 60 cm above ground; any wound or cut on a food handler’s hand must be covered and protected with water-proof covering to prevent transmission of disease; food handlers must wear clean clothes and shirts must have sleeves; the cook must wear an apron and a hat or hair net. There are also specific instructions for washing utensils and tending to wounds on the food handler’s hand. There are many more directives in the Handbook of Clean Food Good Taste, a publicly available document. It tells you a lot of how seriously Thais take cleanliness, hygiene, and healthcare. Indian cities that wish to emulate Bangkok’s street food hubs must ensure their street food vendors strictly follow similar hygiene guidelines.

India had a Look East policy. It is now called Act East, focusing on the extended neighbourhood in the Asia-Pacific region. A key part of this must be capacity building through learning. There is a lot we can learn from each other.