His faith in India remains unshaken but steel magnate Lord Swraj Paul has little doubt that it will suffer badly in the current global economic meltdown, a view contrary to that of many economists who feel that the country's strong domestic economy will help it deal with the crisis.
Paul's engineering group, Caparo, has invested heavily in India where it has opened 22 plants in the last four years but he bluntly says that the country would suffer more than Britain because it was quite late in realising the gravity of the situation.
The 77-year-old NRI industrialist candidly admitted in a newspaper interview here that Caparo may have to lay off workers and that the group's profits will fall from the projected 80 to 90 million pounds this year.
Having weathered three previous recessions, Paul said Britain has dealt with the situation much better than any other country in the world because it has a 'great' Prime Minister in Gordon Brown. "There is no leader who has taken the bull by the horn," he said.
He acknowledges that Brown is his friend but adds, "we also have in him a prime minister who understands the problem and the situation and the difficulties faced by the people."
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