Despite proclamations of economic recovery echoing from the Obama administration and sundry academic and media "experts," the global economy limped, rather than leaped, out of its quagmire in 2010. Prematurely constrained monetary policy and sporadic bursts in spending accompanied substantial but insufficient rises in employment. In the developed world, this meant slow and painful recovery, modest gains. China's growth continued despite the hits it took from sluggish American consumption of Chinese-manufactured goods. 2010 witnessed, however, important moments in the progress of India as a crucial -  not merely useful - trading partner with Italy. Despite India's slower rise, we have reason to believe the country has much potential as its erstwhile rival China to become an economic superpower, though.  While I'm not quite ready to echo the exuberant rhetoric of Nicolò  Tassoni's 2007 speech on Italian-Indian cooperation - his reference to "genetic" compatibility for trade overstates the (overall excellent) case he made - it is clear that the Italian chamber of commerce's recent outreaches towards India are paying off already.

            In surprisingly swift initial moves towards the plan publicized in December 2009, Italy increased trade with India, solidifying positive developments in the sluggish but still formidable growth of South Asian sectors. According to the WTO's 2008 estimate, Italy was respectively the world's 7th largest importer and 8th largest exporter of merchandise. Bilateral trade with India, predicted to increase substantially over the next five years, unexpectedly rose to near 10 billion Euros by  December  2010, out-pacing the predictions of the India-Italy Business Forum made in December 2009. Following a tradition established nearly a millennium past, Venice and its environs have again become a preferred port for direct trade with India, offering Indian manufacturers and shipping companies exclusive use of docks, storage facilities, and inland transportation services. India is poised to become in a short time Italy's leading supplier of raw clothing materials (from textiles to yarns to dyes).

          The situation of biotechnology industries for over three decades generally has been frustrated by exaggerated claims, unfulfilled promises, and insufficient funding from the private sector (despite the plethora of venture capital interests in the last fifth of the twentieth century). Changes in this situation  coming from the fast-growing Indian venture capital firms have been accelerated by Italian investment in Indian pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, offering increased incentives for the discovery of new drugs targeted toward developing nations. They are poised to offer first-world markets like Italy the competitive advantage of out-pricing the American pharmaceutical giants. While biotechnology R&D still lags behind in India, and most of the Italian investment so far has tilted toward conventional organic chemistry centered drug discovery, exchange programs with Italian universities and clinical centers are being added regularly. If these are coupled with greater financial assistance to Indian students and postdocs, the mild language barrier that often induces South Asians to prefer English-speaking research environments will slowly shift, and this will be reflected in drug and vaccine development as well.  Small steps, to be sure, but because of Italy's commercial investment in India, the latter's share of the world's pharmaceutical market alone increased to a modest 3.2 percent (effectively doubling it) in a year.

          Italian commerce offers a model for  Western economies concerned about China's undercutting of various markets, expansionism, and manufacturing quality concerns. Italy-India trade demonstrated the feasibility of a developing trade partner for the west to rival China. There are too many geopolitical, regional, humanitarian, and quality problems arising from the central accorded role China by its trade status with the U.S.A. and similar agreements with other Western powers to list. Given the extent of the United States' frequently ill-advised reliance upon the bottomless well of poor quality but cost-efficient Chinese production, the idea of Chinese as the greatest Asian (and developing) economy has come to seem like a near-permanent self-fulfilling prophecy. The aging workforce of skilled labor in Italy has yet to be replaced by its (often dedicated) migrant workers; outsourcing to China would be cost-efficient but raise significant and labor concerns. One imagines that greater collaboration with and training of Indian labor offers solutions to this dilemma. As with textile modernization drives carried out by Italians in India since the 1990s, and now fashion/design collaboration, we have many reasons to expect chemical, pharmaceutical, software, and medical technology R&D partnerships between Indian and Italian businesses will greatly expedite India's path to the most advanced standards of quality and efficiency. The path has already been suggested by the Fiat-Tata joint venture,  and is  enhanced by the similarities of style - if not scale - between Italy's family-run corporations and those in India. Indian publicly traded corporations are frequently dominated by their founding families who may own majority shares in the business; despite logistical and cultural differences, many Indian and Italian corporations share this fundamental organization.

        One may wonder whether harping on the theme of a small increase in bilateral trade and unilateral development  is worthwhile. It is significant because of the many similarities of social development and culture shared by many Italian and Indian firms. One could argue that the failure of heavy-industry to make Italy into a major world economy, and the subsequent success of light industry, manufacturing (especially clothing) and tourism in accomplishing this feat, has parallels with the differential importance of information technology and light industry in the growth of the Indian economy over the past two decades. Both nations prospered in spite of - and not because of - strategies of "controlled development." While these claims are certainly interesting, they are no more than vague observations without an appropriate amount of quantitative data to validate their premises.        

         This development casts a shadow over East Asian and Pacific Rim trade for the next century. A little investment in Indian infrastructure and a moderate one in training workers offers European (and other first-world) nations the opportunity to build a more equitable, though imperfect, partner in the developing world. The small steps of the past year suggest a plethora of paths for product   developments from raw fabric to gene therapies, all of which can be successfully incorporated into the existing bilateral trade planning between Italy and India. Over time, as we've seen already to some extent, India may begin outsourcing more and more of its unskilled labor to Southeast Asian trade partners, strengthening these countries and relieving some of their mass urban, potentially even rural, poverty.  Preferred transport transport arrangements promised to India have brought great windfalls to the Port of Venice, through which much Indian shipping bound for Europe has been imported. The shipping incentives offered to Indian transports already have already increased the commercial traffic in Porto Marghera, whence the bulk of Indian products have arrived in Italy.

         Of course, everything I've written above may not happen with celerity; indeed, it could simply fail to develop at all despite the ocean of possible economic currents. Yet the nearly twenty years of economic deregulation in India, despite the setbacks, inefficiencies, corruption, incompetence,and disorder, have breathed meaning into the nearly dead notion of (material) progress.  The country is - to quote the title of Gucharan Das' excellent book India Unbound. Even if growth should stagnate, India's consumer (middle) class is roughly the same size as the population of the U.S. presently. Thus these hundreds of millions of consumers represent a very important export market for Italy, and for the rest of the European Economic Community should they choose to follow Italy's relative lead.