Emphasizing Unity among Diversity

I believe that the Indians (the people who lived in Indian Territory) starting from Stone Age to today's Information Age were never united against enemy even for independence. As we all know only a small fraction of Indians were freedom fighters against British. 

After independence, maturing population in India gave the rising power of middle class in most of the sectors. India is a cheapest man power country and biggest market for global companies. Globalization gives too much power to World Bank, IMF, Wall Street and US diplomats by means of centralization. If it continues, it will be very difficult to decentralize the feudal behaviour of these institutions after some years. Even a small mistake in these institutions will hit hugely in many parts of the world.

The government of India did a good job to increase the employment opportunities through free trade agreement by relaxing license raj rules in 1993. Otherwise the huge unemployment would create the biggest threat to our society by means of terrorism and other issues.

Now most of the Indians are already involved in retail sector after agriculture. Today's small shop owners in retail sector will become the employees of MNCs like Walmart tomorrow. Now-a-days we (IT professionals) are thinking who should be the president of US (than thinking about Indian Prime Minister), because most of IT projects are outsourced and we want to save our jobs. Similarly tomorrow's retail store employees in MNC will think who the US president should be (in favour of India). The same thing will happen in all the sectors where ever we depend on external sources.

As consumers, we will be happy to get the cheapest groceries. The brokers between farmers and wholesalers have gained much profit so far. So MNCs will take care of these brokers’ position. In today's globalized market, huge spending is going into advertising alone for creating awareness about brand which is an intangible asset. For example, a cool drink's MRP is Rs 10 in which production cost is Rs 1.50, distribution cost is Rs 2.00 but the remaining Rs 6.50 goes for sponsoring celebrities in the name of brand development. The same thing will happen in retail sector as well. Tomorrow government will watch MNC's to say that due to global recession, these many retail shop employees (who are the owners of the shops now) will be laid off. The planning commission will say that the below poverty line is Rs 32 for urban and Rs 26 for rural in a country where inflation touches double digit at least once in a month. It will be nice to hear that  many of India's wealthiest persons' names are listed among world top ten. At the same time around 10 laksh framers committed suicide since 1995. One day in future a cabinet minister will say delightfully that retail shoppers suicide in addition to farmers reduce population.    

   

Instead of that, the government of India can encourage retail shoppers to form co-operatives (for example, Amul for milk production) and can help to create global (at least India level) brands. But most of Indians are divided by means of religion, caste, language and states. Our current leaders are not trying to create unity among diversity. They are adding fuel to the fire which is in favor of foreign sources to influence in Indian policies. In coming years, it is obvious that most of the state parties will have more power against national parties.

We should have superior science and technology and also we should develop global brands. But our education systems just follow the developed countries' education. A recent survey says that there is no single Indian university among top 200 all over the world. And also most of the IIT students who studied with Indian scholarship want to settle in foreign countries which provide all the necessary facilities for their innovation. 

It is true that the earlier businessmen in India had high moral values. In the first half of the nineties many of Indian companies had a good run as the original promoter rose from humble beginnings and, with an iron hand and plenty of hard work, established the foundations of a substantial business. As he grew old and wealthy, the promoter became a chairman and the next generation (often schooled abroad) took on the CEO Mantle. These privileged “young CEOs” look good on TV and on front pages of newspapers, but often don’t have the steel needed to run the business in India. The attempts to fast track their business activities leave less space for their moral behaviours which cause inconvenience to the major people of India which is a world largest democracy. Thats why all these scams and corruptions are exposed in all kind of resource allocations for private companies. The government of India should encourage a transparent as well as a competitive market economy in public private partnership (PPP) activities. It should take safeguard measures for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) otherwise the already well established global companies will try to crush the new comers in various ways.

Finally most of us are less confident (foreign dependent mindset), less honest (bypassing laws and rules), lazy (much time spending on entertainment) and talk-more-do-less people. We need to develop many skills (particularly entrepreneurial skill) to survive among global level competition. Otherwise we should be ready to become slaves of another country if we spend much time in watching games and movies which are being celebrated by media corporate. And we will be forced to fight for freedom again after some years. Remember the reasons behind why we became poor if we were once rich!!!

The above is just my view. This is not against anyone.

Regards,

Mani.