A tsunami that few expected

Mumbai started the week still reeling from Friday's statistical shocker. The news that India's industrial output fell in October for the first time in 15 years came as a nasty surprise: analysts were expecting growth in the low single digits. The smug "it ain't going to happen to us" attitude that had been lingering will now be be replaced by gnawing panic.

A string of indicators - car sales, exports, steel prices - have all recently shown sharp double-digit falls. The steepness of the slump has caught many industrialists unprepared. With only 22% of India's economy dependent on exports, they were expecting to be less exposed.

Vinod Mittal, Lakshmi Mittal's youngest brother, seemed shaken. "No one expected there would be this sudden collapse," he told me, looking over the Arabian Sea from his office sofa. "We've never seen such a thing. It's like a tsunami attack."

Ispat, the steel firm Mittal runs, was well aware there would be a slowdown, but it never expected to have to cut the price of its steel by half, which it did in October.

By contrast, Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Group, has long been sending memos to group managing directors, warning them how bad things might get. "He has incredible antennae," says Alan Rosling, Tata Sons executive director. "He's been saying for months this is will be really tough."

That explains why Tata Steel and Tata Motors were so swift to cut production and ready with clever schemes to temporarily cut staff numbers. But it makes the risk taken on with the deal to acquire Jaguar and Land Rover, which only completed in June, all the more mystifying.

* Interns on a two- or three-month stint in an Indian bank, law or accountancy firm used to be local. But recently I've come across two twentysomething Brits and one American who have taken jobs in Indian boutique banks and fund managers with the aim of staying three years and taking their professional exams. The attraction, for the two Brits at least, is that their Indian employers both plan to buy UK stockbrokers, giving them a smooth transition to the City when markets, hopefully, pick up. The Indian firm gets a handy go-between.

* The speed with which Mumbai is healing from last month's attacks is remarkable. Leopold Café, proudly leaving its bullet damage unrepaired, has been serving beer for a fortnight. And this Sunday, The Trident and the Taj Tower hotels — the least damaged wings of the two occupied hotels — both plan to reopen.