Hope lies in the third India
The chairman of Deccan Logistics says the spirit of adventure and entrepreneurial energy will drive growth and create wealth - a new market, a new customer need.Looking back at years2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999
Though the idea of 'India' is still a puzzle and though most agree that there are myriad Indias, I venture to suggest there are broadly three Indias today: the India of vast teeming multitudes mired in poverty, filth and living in sub-human conditions; the India of scams, scamsters, politicians, fixers, middlemen, and oligarchs; and the new entrepreneurial India.
I wish to speak on the third, the entrepreneurial India, which, in my opinion, will propel India in spite of the first two. This new entrepreneurial energy will probably solve and remove the problems and impediments of the first two Indias. But a few words on the first two. Ramachandra Guha, in his book India After Gandhi, begins with a poem by Ghalib written in 1827: Said I one night to a pristine seer/ (who knew the secrets of whirling Time)/ 'Sir, you well perceive/That goodness and faith, fidelity and love/Have all departed from the sorry land./ Father and son are at each other's throat;/ Brother fights brother. /Unity and federation are undermined./Despite these ominous signs/ Why has doomsday not come?/ Why does the Last Trumpet not sound?/ Who holds the reins of the Final Catastrophe?'
At around Ghalib's time, the American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about America: "The young man, on entering life, finds the way to lucrative employments blocked with abuses. The ways of trade and politics are grown selfish to the borders of theft…and fraud…. The sins of our trade belong to no class, to no individual. One plucks, one distributes, one eats. Every body partakes, every body confesses…yet none feels himself accountable…. He did not create the abuse; he cannot alter it….Each requires of the practitioner a certain shutting of the eyes…a certain compliance…"
He goes on to narrate the sheer helplessness and despair of a young man trying to find and follow his true calling. So this degeneration is not new to India alone, in the historical context.
There is this pervading sense of helplessness and despair in India today among the young, who feel cheated and robbed of their dreams when they embark on seeking a job or building a new future. It is the spirit of adventure, continued optimism and entrepreneurial energy that can create an India whose golden age is not behind but ahead of us. It was an entrepreneurial economy that built America and many countries in Europe and destroyed feudalism. The reforms set in motion by Rajiv Gandhi 25 years ago and given an impetus by P.V. Narasimha Rao spawned a new, resurgent India. The old aristocracy was dismantled and a new economy came up on its ruins. It is true that some of the old aristocrats have been replaced by a few powerful business houses. But entrepreneurial drive and innovation have turned India into an enviable economic powerhouse in varied sectors - information technology, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, engineering, design, mobile telephony, banking and financial services, automobiles and health care.
Entrepreneurs challenge the status quo. They create wealth - a new market, a new customer need. They change or transmute values. A simple set of ideas - a reforming India creating demand, absence of a private helicopter company, defence pilots without jobs - gave birth to Deccan Aviation in 1995. Again, the simple idea that "every Indian must and can fly" led me to set up Air Deccan, which pioneered low-cost civil aviation in India. Then there is Dr Prathap C. Reddy and Apollo Hospitals, Deepak Parekh of Housing Development Finance Corp and N.R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys Technologies. It was their vision and enterprise that spawned new ventures for others to follow.
Though the great companies born out of the reforms and the poster boys of enterprise have come to stand for modern India, it is the less glamorous industries, the millions of small-scale enterprises, which are the real wealth creators and transformers. As management guru Peter Drucker noted in the American context, they are all examples of "new technology"- entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial management.
Entrepreneurs have vision, or the "art of seeing the invisible". Generally, bureaucrats running public sector enterprises have opaque vision and do not even realise it. Dreams, optimism, energy, zeal and speed are the mainstay of the entrepreneur and more important than capital.
The challenge is how to create jobs in the 'other India'. If the 'new India' - with speed, greed and manipulation of the system - creates a dual economy of islands of prosperity in a sea of poverty, illiteracy and malnutrition, then we cannot have a stable and socially cohesive society.
India has unbounded resources. Here in India are all the wealth of soil, of rivers and of mines and a billion-strong people with a common heartbeat and aspirations. How can we have poverty and illiteracy in India? Where there is want, hunger and unemployment, the entrepreneur can be the king. India has all the raw materials available for his enterprise.
Instead of complaining and being sceptical, the young entrepreneur must put his shoulder to the plough and engage the politicians and the bureaucrats to create the policies needed for equitable growth. We have to have the courage to take a stand and call for policies that encourage entrepreneurship, and allow privatisation but not cartelisation. As Mahatma Gandhi said, we must become the change we want to see in the world.
Our young men must obey their heart, follow their dreams and beat their own trail - a path of general justice, honesty and integrity. Who should lead the 'leaders' but the young Indians, the new entrepreneurs, to deliver us from greed, nepotism, corruption and violence? 'Hope' is the mother of all reforms and the new entrepreneurs of India, with hope, courage, honesty and hard work can not only lead India to widespread prosperity but represent the aspirations and future of the world.
Buy the Business Today January 9 edition for more such columns by business leaders like Subash Chandra, Azim Premji and Nandan Nilekani.
I wish to speak on the third, the entrepreneurial India, which, in my opinion, will propel India in spite of the first two. This new entrepreneurial energy will probably solve and remove the problems and impediments of the first two Indias. But a few words on the first two. Ramachandra Guha, in his book India After Gandhi, begins with a poem by Ghalib written in 1827: Said I one night to a pristine seer/ (who knew the secrets of whirling Time)/ 'Sir, you well perceive/That goodness and faith, fidelity and love/Have all departed from the sorry land./ Father and son are at each other's throat;/ Brother fights brother. /Unity and federation are undermined./Despite these ominous signs/ Why has doomsday not come?/ Why does the Last Trumpet not sound?/ Who holds the reins of the Final Catastrophe?'
 Where there is want, hunger and unemployment, the entrepreneur can be king. India has all the raw materials for his enterprise |
He goes on to narrate the sheer helplessness and despair of a young man trying to find and follow his true calling. So this degeneration is not new to India alone, in the historical context.
There is this pervading sense of helplessness and despair in India today among the young, who feel cheated and robbed of their dreams when they embark on seeking a job or building a new future. It is the spirit of adventure, continued optimism and entrepreneurial energy that can create an India whose golden age is not behind but ahead of us. It was an entrepreneurial economy that built America and many countries in Europe and destroyed feudalism. The reforms set in motion by Rajiv Gandhi 25 years ago and given an impetus by P.V. Narasimha Rao spawned a new, resurgent India. The old aristocracy was dismantled and a new economy came up on its ruins. It is true that some of the old aristocrats have been replaced by a few powerful business houses. But entrepreneurial drive and innovation have turned India into an enviable economic powerhouse in varied sectors - information technology, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, engineering, design, mobile telephony, banking and financial services, automobiles and health care.
Entrepreneurs challenge the status quo. They create wealth - a new market, a new customer need. They change or transmute values. A simple set of ideas - a reforming India creating demand, absence of a private helicopter company, defence pilots without jobs - gave birth to Deccan Aviation in 1995. Again, the simple idea that "every Indian must and can fly" led me to set up Air Deccan, which pioneered low-cost civil aviation in India. Then there is Dr Prathap C. Reddy and Apollo Hospitals, Deepak Parekh of Housing Development Finance Corp and N.R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys Technologies. It was their vision and enterprise that spawned new ventures for others to follow.
Though the great companies born out of the reforms and the poster boys of enterprise have come to stand for modern India, it is the less glamorous industries, the millions of small-scale enterprises, which are the real wealth creators and transformers. As management guru Peter Drucker noted in the American context, they are all examples of "new technology"- entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial management.
Entrepreneurs have vision, or the "art of seeing the invisible". Generally, bureaucrats running public sector enterprises have opaque vision and do not even realise it. Dreams, optimism, energy, zeal and speed are the mainstay of the entrepreneur and more important than capital.
The challenge is how to create jobs in the 'other India'. If the 'new India' - with speed, greed and manipulation of the system - creates a dual economy of islands of prosperity in a sea of poverty, illiteracy and malnutrition, then we cannot have a stable and socially cohesive society.
India has unbounded resources. Here in India are all the wealth of soil, of rivers and of mines and a billion-strong people with a common heartbeat and aspirations. How can we have poverty and illiteracy in India? Where there is want, hunger and unemployment, the entrepreneur can be the king. India has all the raw materials available for his enterprise.
Instead of complaining and being sceptical, the young entrepreneur must put his shoulder to the plough and engage the politicians and the bureaucrats to create the policies needed for equitable growth. We have to have the courage to take a stand and call for policies that encourage entrepreneurship, and allow privatisation but not cartelisation. As Mahatma Gandhi said, we must become the change we want to see in the world.
Our young men must obey their heart, follow their dreams and beat their own trail - a path of general justice, honesty and integrity. Who should lead the 'leaders' but the young Indians, the new entrepreneurs, to deliver us from greed, nepotism, corruption and violence? 'Hope' is the mother of all reforms and the new entrepreneurs of India, with hope, courage, honesty and hard work can not only lead India to widespread prosperity but represent the aspirations and future of the world.
Buy the Business Today January 9 edition for more such columns by business leaders like Subash Chandra, Azim Premji and Nandan Nilekani.
