Importance of Indo-Romanian ties

[Jeff Lira]

Romania is a country situated in the south eastern Europe. The country acts as a gateway to Europe for Russia and vie versa. Just like India, Romania is also experiencing a boom in its IT industry. It is a part of EU and Nuclear Suppliers Group. Romania has been a communist country and was a member of Soviet's warsaw pact. In the year 1989 it went through a revolution which caused an end of a communist era. Since then Romania is on a right track of development which is again almost same as India as India wet through economical changes in 1990.

President of Romania Traian Basescu discusses how India can benefit from his country.
"What Romania can offer is a partnership that is not only political — we will be a friend of India inside the EU — but also economic. Like India, our economy has seen very dynamic developments in the past six years. Secondly, Romania has a flat tax [on corporate income] of 16 per cent and this is one of the lowest in Europe. The World Bank has assessed Romania's business environment as one of the best. For instance, we are seventh [in the world] in terms of how fast one can open a business. Our workforce has very good qualifications and the country needs investment. This means Indian investors can look forward with trust towards relations with Romania. I would only add that any product produced in Romania as of January 1, 2007, will have the label, "Made in EU." For investors, this means the great advantage of not having to deal with border problems and formalities in Europe. "

Further he said that he believes in reforming of UN security council and assured India that it can be a trusted nuclear supplier. Full Interview

A top management school in the capital bucharest, Academia de Studii Economice, Bucuresti is doing a research on comparing the leadership skills among Indians and Romanians. It is not judge who is better but to understand the behaviour of the public to accelerate business ties. For this it is conducting a survey jointly with The World Reporter. We can also participate in the survey and we will be given the results after economists will analyse.

Survey: http://www.theworldreporter.com/2011/05 ... kills.html

Not many people know but India is very close culturally to Romania. language, people and little bit of food, there are lots of similarities. In this case a better business ties between these countries can help development to accelerate. There are number of nations who wants to trade with India. Most of the countries in European Union praises India but still do not consider India equal to them. Romania, unlike other European countries is much similar to India and needs India a sincerely as India will need it.

[KrishG]

I think a first step towards better ties would be to stop discrimination against people of Indian origin in Romania (Romanis).

[vera_k]

Plenty of Romanians where I work. One thing I noted is a focus on academic performance similar to what you'd see in India.

[Neshant]

Aside from the Rroma (Gypsy) component, most Romanians are descendants of Germans if i'm not mistaken.

The Rroma are much disparaged in Romania & Hungary as being poor, thieves, unclean and are generally marginalized & living in squalor. Some of them claim affinity with India although I don't know if this is historical fact that they originated from India or fiction. Many do look like Indians.

The only other thing I know about Romania is that Dracula has his castle there. In fact Vlad-the-Impailer almost looks like an Indian Maharaja. Though far, far crueler. The guy impaled his victims on spikes to scare off all the Turkish invaders. There's a famous print of him doing just that.

[brihaspati]

Two queries : (a) what if any has been the impact of Mircea Eliade - if anyone even knows? (b) Any surviving elements of the old Dacians - whom the Romans apparently practically cleansed off - but parts survived outside the actual Roman colony?

[vera_k]

Some of them claim affinity with India although I don't know if this is historical fact that they originated from India or fiction. Many do look like Indians.

DNA evidence is that the Romas are what is called a Punjabi in modern day India and Pakistan. Romas though are a European issue these days, with even countries like France treating them shabbily. If India can do business with France with nary a protest, it certainly can do the same with Romania.

[UBanerjee]

Roma are of Indian descent, but that is over 700 years ago and they have a unique culture of their own. They are European more than anything else something the Europeans will try very hard not to acknowledge. Why aid them in this.

[CRamS]

I don't know if its a coincidence or what, but I have met many a Romanians who have great interest in Indian culture from classical music to dance to Sanskrit etc.

[Agnimitra]

Along with the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia), India should forge a greater cultural presence in Romania, too. Business ties also make sense.

I once asked a Romanian friend what his people' religion was before Christianity. I expected to hear about some brand of "paganism". But he promptly said "Zoroastrianism"!

[RajeshA]

Long time ago, I used to hear soft whispers in my ears of "Te u besc"! A long time ago! So, I have already done my part in contributing to better Indo-Romanian relations.

[Rudradev]

A very timely thread-- thanks for starting it, Jeff Lira.

Geopolitically, I think SE Europe is quite relevant to Indian interests, especially in the context of a rising Turkey.

Turkey has so far been India-neutral in a lot of ways; however, it is very definitely pro-Pakistan, and at least in the diplomatic arena it has subverted Indian interests in Afghanistan out of deference to Pakistan's wishes.

Turkey carries on regular military exercises with the TSPA, and their engineers were notably among the foreign nationalities represented at PNS Mehran (apart from the US and China.) Among the significant nations of the world, Turkey is notable for ardently pursuing friendly relations with Islamabad, even at a time when traditional Paki allies (even China) grow increasingly wary.

A Turkey gaining increasing influence over West and Central Asia, and growing in economic and military power, has the potential to become an addition to the 3.5 friends currently aiding and abetting the continued survival of TSP...with all that this implies for Indian interests. Of course Turkey will be abetting and enlisting Pakistan for its own ends; but given the likelihood of such a situation, we would be well advised to cultivate our own levers against Istanbul (we presently have none.)

The Balkans and Carpathian states of SE Europe, relegated to second-class status by the EU and NATO, are nations with whom India should establish and develop strong economic, diplomatic and even military ties. This includes Romania particularly, along with Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Greece. We should remember that these countries bravely contained the onslaught of Ottoman imperialism for centuries together... and suffered terribly under the Islamic yoke when they were overrun. In that, there is a shared sense of history to be invoked.

We had good relations with these states (or their predecessors) in the Warsaw Pact era; there followed a period of uncertainty with the collapse of the USSR, when it could not be predicted how they would chart their destinies in a unipolar world. Today these nations have reached a greater degree of equilibrium and are in the process of securing places for themselves in the international system. It is time to re-establish friendships that have stood us in good stead throughout the first four decades of our independence, transcending the Cold War context in which they were forged and re-casting them in terms of enduring national interest.

Also... while I see the Roma as a fundamentally Indic people and our lost brothers... we should be realistic about this. We cannot expect societal attitudes in any country to change overnight, and in young countries such as those of SE Europe bringing about such change is a bigger challenge. We should not act like Pakis re: Muzzlims, and hold our relations with Romania etc. hostage because of how Roma people may unfortunately be treated there right now. As bonds of economic cooperation, mutual political interest and people-to-people contact grow between ourselves and SE Europe, there will be plenty of time to engage in persuasive dialogue about social issues. Right now, let us not point the finger while shooting ourselves in the foot.

[shiv]

Romania had a fairly vigorous aerospace industry - being among the few nations that could boast of an indigenously designed aircraft four decades ago. Problem for Indians is that Romania's population is about that of Mumbai and little is known.

An additional problem for mango Indians is that our anglophone background throws non English speaking nations to the background.

For starters - here is Wiki for Romania
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania

Check the map

[Jeff Lira]

Romania is witnessing same kind of protest which India witnessed last year, Anti government, Anti corruption protests. It is said that Romanian elites, just to please themselves and west European countries sold all resources to them leaving nothing for the public of Romania.

A large number of Romanian protesters are demanding for early election and change in the government, the possibility of which has been rooted out by the government saying it would create dangerous precedent and economic instability. People of Romania seem unconvinced with this, as in 2011 the amount of foreign investments in Romania fell down by 36%, 18% of Romanian have fallen below the poverty line, a poor Romanian employee now earns 159 euros achieving the lowest minimum wage in EU countries, as compared to UK ~ 967 Euros, Bulgaria ~ 233 Euros, Poland ~ 326 Euros.

Source: Anti Government Protests in Romania against Healthcare Reforms Continues | The World Reporter: News Opinion and Analysis http://www.theworldreporter.com/2012/01 ... z1kA6AT57a

Anti Government Protests in Romania against Healthcare Reforms Continues

[Victor]

Guwahati Refinery was built by the Romanians in the early 60's. It was the 1st public sector refinery in India. There is a lot of goodwill among the locals, specially those who remember.

[svinayak]

One of my friends company has the entire software development team in Romania.
Seems to work out very well


Also Kudremukh Iron Ore plant was built by Romania

[Varoon Shekhar]

The Romanies/Gypsies are certainly originally from India. The most credible explanation for their presence in Europe is that they were the refugees and escaped slaves from the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni and other invaders from the Northwest. The historian D.P Singhal devotes an entire chapter to them and their unmistakable connection to India in his book, "India and World Civilisation"( 1969). A.L Basham also calls them one of the many gifts of India to the world, though does mention their sometimes pilfering activities!

The Gypsies suffered horribly during the holocaust in Europe, losing between 300,000-500,000 of their numbers.

[Varoon Shekhar]

My grand aunt was one of the people who fondly remember the Romanians and their help in building the oil refinery in Guwahati. I forget what her link to that was!- her husband's accounting work probably took her there. India and Romania have good ties, at the very least cordial. The problem with East Europeans in general is that they lack that liveliness, cheerfulness, funkiness and down-to-earthness that characterises the Filipinos, Caribbean folk, Africans and most Jews. Must have to do with their history of living in police states, and all the suspicions and deprivations that involved. There are many exceptions of course,at the individual level.

[Bhima]

I think it is worth understanding how the Roma Gypsy population as a group are perceived and treated by ethnic Romanians and Europeans in general.

I made a search for "gypsies" in the European section of stormfront.org the white racist forum. The Roma gypsies have Indian origin but are also a highly mixed travelling people associated with criminality.

"Gypsies"
Should we give the Gypsies a country?
Which European country has the worst Gypsy problem?

There was also a thread outlining the differences between Roma Gypsies and ethnic Romanians.

I appreciate that this was a racist forum and therefore any peoples with non white skin would be a target of abuse. However it is clear from these threads that the venom against Roma Gypsy people is unparalleled and I have added this to give some balance against what appears to be some positive memories and perceptions towards Romania.

If India was to try finding some commonality with Romania my opinion is avoiding use of Roma Gypsies.

[Yogi_G]

I had a colleague of mine who told me that Romania and Bulgaria produced the best computer programmers in the world. He was a white dude married to a Bulgarian lady.

[RajeshA]

I had a colleague of mine who told me that Romania and Bulgaria produced the best computer programmers in the world. He was a white dude married to a Bulgarian lady.

That is not so much off the mark. The best is questionable, but they are generally good and very active in software development.

[Singha]

I believe under the old USSR warsaw pack, certain countries were given 'areas' of excellence to work on. romania, hungary and bulgaria probably got involved into computers, cryptography etc in that parceling of work. hungary had a excellent system of schooling and sciences from the early decades of the last century anyway. czechoslovakia and GDR probably got the heavy industry and weapons plants.

[Lalmohan]

Czech and GDr were where the old Krupps etc., factories used to be before the war - hence the continuation post war. during the soviet grind down, hungary had the most open and diversified economy, whilst the others were more 'collectivised' - having started from a lower base and were more vulnerable to economic collapse. romania and bulgaria in particular were kicked around between Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Ottomans - and were not major power (and economic centres) per se...

[Yogi_G]

I believe under the old USSR warsaw pack, certain countries were given 'areas' of excellence to work on. romania, hungary and bulgaria probably got involved into computers, cryptography etc in that parceling of work. hungary had a excellent system of schooling and sciences from the early decades of the last century anyway. czechoslovakia and GDR probably got the heavy industry and weapons plants.

Up until the 70's the Soviets were neck to neck in the hardware aspects where in Soviet computers performed the computations required for the soyuz-apollo link up several times faster than their American counterparts and it was often that you heard that the BESM was the fastest computer in Europe in its time. But then the Soviet authorities decided that reverse engineering was the way to go. All sort of clones started cropping up and Djikstra the famous Soviet scientist went on to say that with this decision the Soviets lost the cold war. Duplication of effort was stopped and all western hardware designs copied. At a particular point the Soviets were not able to proceed beyond a particular point in miniaturizing their chips (nm limitation) and the programmers had to get super smart to work around the hardware limitations. It is said that many of the modern computer programming practices had their origin in the Easter bloc.

This probably explains why some of the programmers from this part of the world were so sharp.

[Vayutuvan]

...Djikstra the famous Soviet scientist went on to say that with this decision the Soviets lost the cold war.

If you are talking about (Computer Scientist) E. Djikstra, he is Dutch.

[KLNMurthy]

We may also be able to relate to the Romanian experience with the Ceacescus.