India safe place to invest: Lord Paul

Batting for India, leading NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul has said that doing business in the country was a safe bet as its democracy assures that business environment will not be held hostage to "unanticipated upheavals".

Batting for India, leading NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul has said that doing business in the country was a safe bet as its democracy assures that business environment will not be held hostage to "unanticipated upheavals".

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"At a time when guerrilla wars, insurrections, drug wars, kidnapping of businessmen and like happenings are so frequent, there are advantages in the stability of relatively lower violence societies. When ethnic tensions are worsening in many important countries, India has managed religious and ethnic issues rather well," Lord Paul said in London on Tuesday night.

"Our company, Caparo, has built 32 plants in India in the last eight years and we employ almost 9,000 people. We strongly believe there is long term potential in India and we want to be part of that Growth," Lord Paul, chairman of the Caparo Group, said.

Speaking at the Anglo-Indian summit on Investing In India, he said every foreign investment decision was a comparative judgement - an evaluation of geo-risk.

"By these yardsticks I think India holds up pretty well," he said, adding "We live in a world of violence and tension - and business is often the first victim of these forces."

"India's democracy, slow and cumbersome as it is, provides an assurance that business environment will not be held hostage to unanticipated upheavals," he said.

Lord Paul also made four observations which he said might be helpful in the larger context of evaluating business opportunities in India.