दृष्टिकोण – Indra's Viewpoint

Many expected historic outcome from the visit of the Chinese President Hu. But Indian Prime Minister didn’t go to the airport to receive him though he did for Nepal’s Prime Minister.

Ideally, India would have forgotten the war of 1962 and shameful defeat. But many things happened in last 44 years. The most spectacular was the economic development of China. It has made even US to do many things just to save its face. Today with balance of payment of US in the Chinese favour, China is almost on its own and it hardly depends on US to get any favour as India is asking for. China has also built stronger relations with its bordering countries, and particularly the archrival of India such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. China is militarily helping Pakistan, and sustaining Bangladesh economy by using its labour force and its low cost products. Even India failed to get closer to Nepal than the Chinese are to it. Bangladesh as well as Pakistan, because of its history and religion based hatred can never be nearer to India. What can be more revealing than the fact that Bangladesh, a part of Bengal of yesterday imports from China more than what it buys from neighbouring India?

With huge foreign exchange reserve, China can buy the relationships in Latin America as well Africa; and it is already doing that expediently. It is also nearer to Southeast Asia because of the influential Chinese presence over the year and some ethnic similarity. Unfortunately, India never tried that route seriously. It is only with the emerging strength of China as superpower of tomorrow that India hesitatingly decided to look towards US. It may help to improve the position of India on a short term. However, India will have to develop strength of its own as China did to get a respectful support from the developed western countries as well as from South Korea and Japan. It is to be closer with China as that may help in finding the market for India’s products and services that will provide employment to its billion strong population. But it requires a very shrewd diplomacy. You can’t go on declaring China as enemy number one and friend too.

As independent nation with many strength and cultural closeness, India must get the maximum advantages from Japanese and Koreans in furthering its high end manufacturing sector with all the possible concessions grated to them. If Japan extends ‘special economic partner status’ as announced by its ambassador, India must accept that. Perhaps for that reason, the Prime Minister’s visit to Tokyo next month is very important.
Tokyo had not extended such a status even to its neighbours like China and South Korea.

Let the politicians and particularly Leftists not meddle in foreign policy demanding unrestricted entry to the Chinese business houses, otherwise the shrewd Chinese ready to offer every thing to Indian unscrupulous traders will kill all incentives for new entrepreneurs to enter key sectors such as manufacturing.

And when many companies such as Tata Steel can produce the cheapest steel, why not the government supports the steel industry to become the largest producers in world and use its resources of iron ore instead of taking a pride as the largest exporter of iron ore to China? Similar is the story in cotton textiles and apparel manufacturing sector. If Indian manufacturers can prove themselves in these two sectors, India will not have to worry about China. India can do in every sector.

However, I feel in some soft qualities too, Indian people must learn from the Chinese and that is more important. As I hear one hardly find any unscrupulous taxi driver cheating foreigners. Can’t this be emulated? Can’t all babas, now in plenty, in India help?

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I had a dream that with education expanding to all sections of the society, the old system will die its natural death. Youngsters will demolish the barriers created by the caste system. There will be free inter-caste marriages. People will stop identifying themselves by the caste. There will be no complexes or hatred against the persons of other castes. There will be no reservations by at 2050, if not earlier. But a study of IT sector that comprises of educated class has morosed me. It appears it will take perhaps a century or more or it shall never come in this country. It appeared in ‘Outlook’.

The first-ever sociological study of the IT industry in India, conducted by the School of Social Sciences of the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, debunks some of these myths

MYTH: IT industry has unleashed a ‘network society’ and a ‘second modernity’.

FACT Indian IT workers seem to have preserved the conservative institution of endogamous marriage. As per the sample survey, South Indian Brahmins married South Indian Brahmins, while for North Indian Brahmins in-marriage was 100 per cent. Only one Brahmin in the sample was married to a non-Brahmin. For Vaishyas, endogamy was 100 per cent, as was the case for dominant agricultural castes and all other categories. All the Muslims and Christians also married within their communities. Of those surveyed, 62 per cent had arranged marriages, 28 per cent were self-arranged, while a small number were arranged through marriage bureaus, Internet chat and the like. Intra-regional marriage statistics is another factor supporting the conservative attitude of IT employees to marriage-among Hindi-speaking respondents, 88 per cent married those who speak Hindi. A similar pattern is found among Tamil speakers (88 per cent), Kannada speakers (83 per cent), Malayalam speakers (75 per cent) and Telugu speakers (71 per cent).

Perhaps, my perception of the younger generation was based on very few cases of young men with open mind that I met.

What do you think about it?

Chidanand Rajghatta in ‘Times of India’ has provided some statistics about the country of origin of US entrepreneurs of start-up companies. It is inspiring and exemplary too for those youngsters who still move to US for further studies and perhaps with a dream of settling down in US. Globalization is demolishing, perhaps very rightly, the emotional attachments and responsibility to the motherland too. Mittal would not have been the largest steel maker in the world and that successful if he would have persisted with his own country. And today, the clan is expanding fast.

Indian immigrants to the US account for 28% of all foreign-founded private start-up companies in a climate dominated by immigrant entrepreneurs, according to a new study on the hotbutton issue.

Over the past 15 years, immigrants have started 25% of the US venture-backed public companies with a market capitalization of more than $500 billion.

A survey of private, venture-backed startup companies in the US estimated that a staggering 47% of them have immigrant founders. “India was the most prevalent country of origin with 28% followed by the UK (11%), China (5%), Iran (4%), and France (4%).”
In public venture-backed firms too, “the most common countries of origin are India, Israel and Taiwan.”

Indians started years ago. Amar Bose’s Bose Corp in Massachusetts and Suhas Patil-founded Cirrus Logic in Utah are among those entrepreneurs. Moreover, the immigrant founders are responsible for building a high percentage of the most innovative American companies, with 87% operating in sectors such as high-tech manufacturing, information technology and life sciences.
Some highlights of the survey are:

  Nearly half the immigrant entrepreneurs (46%) arrived in the country as students.

  More than half the founders started their businesses within 12 years of entering the US.

  They hold an average of 14.5 patents.

  69% of the individual entrepreneurs have become American citizens.

Authors of the survey emphasize the need for the US to remain open for legal immigration and to issue higher work visa.

US must have huge lot of highly skilled Indians and immigrants from other countries, who are still working year after year waiting for their green cards. I feel a democratic country such as US must be very transparent about the criteria of getting the visa so that they can use their creativity in area of their interest.

For a long time I have not written on China vs. India, though I did refer to China for its unique statistics of its progress. Though I am of opinion that both the country would have worked together to get the best from their strengths and prevailed over the rest of the developed nations who looked down upon them for a long time.

I read TCA Srinivasa-Raghavan’s article, ‘Dealing with Chinese crudeness’ in Business Standard today and I got tempted to get my readers go through it.

The Chinese take the wives of new mayors on a trip to the prisons where the older, convicted mayors are held. The Chinese ambassador has just blown a very rude raspberry at India by claiming Arunachal of India as China’s. This is typical of China, which has become a very crude and uncouth country. Successful in some ways, yes; but by and large, by any civilised yardstick, a massive failure.

The Chinese, as everyone knows, have a very focused leadership, even though mostly it is focused only on how to stay on in power. One of the things that these un-elected gangsters-as opposed to our elected ones-are discovering is that corruption gives them a bad name. So they have decided to do something about it. This consists of holding show trials and then shooting the accused. Several mayors, it seems, have been shot in the last few years. The lucky ones have been sent down for 20 years.

But this is not all. To demonstrate that corruption is a bad idea, the Chinese have started another wheeze. Every now and then, when a gaggle of new mayors have been elected, they take their wives on a trip to the various prisons where convicted mayors are held. The idea is to get the wives to have a word with their husbands as to what may await them if they get too greedy. But a little greed is permitted. The limits are defined depending on how well you have done by the boss.

The Chinese government also doesn’t have a very high opinion of its rural folk, though around 70 per cent of Chinese still live in rural areas. They are abysmally poor. But they don’t vote and that makes all the difference. So China siphons off wealth from the rural areas to the urban areas. Every rural Chinese parts with around 45 per cent of his income in one form or the other. About half of this goes towards maintaining a bloated bureaucracy in the countryside, which exploits the peasantry. Nor are there Medha Patkars or Aruna Roys in China.

I met a very experienced and senior Australian journalist a couple of months ago. She said she had gone to interview some peasants who had been thrown off their land so that some factories could be built. Within a few minutes a couple of policemen arrived and asked her to leave and they placed her under virtual arrest and took away her passport and finally sent her off after a few hours. Can we do that?

China also doesn’t allow trade unions. There is no right to association and as my young colleague Govindraj Ethiraj pointed out last Tuesday, let alone trade unions, it takes a dim view of even trade associations. Only the ruling party has the right to gang up and coerce the rest. No trade unions, no employee rights, hire-and-fire, what a lovely place, daddy!

China under a separate bilateral deal signed away things to the US by allowing the latter extraordinary rights and freedoms. But the interesting point is that in spite of what all the US can do to reduce the flood of imports from China and in spite of trying, it has failed. Why? Because the agreement didn’t say anything about the exchange rate! So the yuan remains undervalued and China’s trade surplus swells. China’s exchange reserves crossed a trillion dollars two weeks ago. How clever is that? But I have looked and looked to see if any one in China is criticising the central bank and the government. Right, you guessed it: not a soul.

China also gets up to all sorts of low trickery in the international arena. It has two major challengers in Asia-India and Japan. So what does it do? It helps Pakistan go nuclear to check India and North Korea go nuclear to check Japan, while it leaves itself free to do what it likes-like offering Muslim nations nuclear deals (Bangladesh and Egypt, to name the two latest “initiatives”). But everyone has very high regard for this country. The capitalists admire it because it allows people to get rich at the expense of the poor. The Communists admire it merely because it has styled itself communist. The question is: do we want to be like China? If not, please stop swooning over it.

China can be used as benchmark for development, but can’t be copied. India must search and evolve its own model. With our strength in knowledge sector and with help of technologies, every one must help becoming efficient, transparent and accountable.

CHINDIA’S CENTURY
Read ‘Secrets, Lies, And Sweatshops ‘
Friend or foe… India assesses what China means

National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC) that has come to an inference that only with manufacturing growing 12% or more, India’s GDP can grow above 10% that is a necessity for eliminating poverty from the country in effective manner.

Manufacturing growth has averaged over 12% in the first six months of 2006-07. It picked up from 11.7% in the first quarter to 12.4% in the second. Historically, it happened before too. In the period 1993-96 India grew even faster pace of growth, even 15% in some months. And so some doubts the sustainability of the growth of manufacturing sector. What is the biggest difference between current developments and what had happened in nineties that can make the country feel comfortable now?

Perhaps all responsible for the development- Indian corporates, their financiers, the capital market, and also the regulators and policymakers have learnt from the necessity of competitiveness from on going globalisation of every sector.

Physical infrastructure still lacks the world class and scale, but it has improved to certain extent. The travel time between Mumbai and Delhi has halved. It can reduce further with some sincere approach to the execution speed of already sanctioned projects, be it port, airport or roads. For, the real problem seems to be a singular inability to execute decisions taken-whether completing a project (for instance, the overdue New Delhi-Gurgaon expressway or Golden Quadrilateral or NS-EW corridors) or fixing theft and loss in electricity distribution. How can rural India effectively participate in manufacturing without rural electrification, which is being implemented under the Rajiv Gandhi Gramin Vidyutikaran Yojna (RGGVY) programme, if states like UP, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Assam and Jharkhand have backlog to the extent of 90%?
The topmost priority for the government must be to work out changes in the organisational structures of the project execution so we can achieve objectives agreed upon and do so in time. If Delhi Metro Project can do it, so can the others too.

Many things are happening so far manufacturing sectors are concerned. According to the CII Manufacturing ASCON Survey, 65% of the 125 sectors tracked have reported production of high to excellent growth (10 to 20% and more than 20%) over the period April to September 2006. According to the survey, PVC, switchgears, power cables, circuit breakers, castings, fluid power and nitrogen have all shown a strong growth from the basic and intermediate goods sector. In the capital goods sector boilers, distribution transformers, power transformers, industrial furnace, textile machinery, tractors, transformer and transmission line towers among the capital goods industry have led the growth.

The manufacturing sector seems set to enhancing its share in the GDP to the targeted 30%. The export performance of the manufacturing sector has been better with some sectors shifting to the excellent growth category. The survey pointed out that 17 sectors recorded excellent growth in exports with seven sectors in the high growth category, 10 sectors recorded moderate growth. It is interesting that CII is also working to catalyze 100 manufacturing companies to innovate and move towards becoming global leaders.

MNCs of western countries are setting up manufacturing shops and expanding in India. Indian medium and big manufacturing companies are acquiring companies in developed countries to expand their market and obtain the latest technologies. Videocon’s acquisition of Daewoo Electronics is the example and perhaps a case to emulate. Progress of Tata Motor’s Rs 1-lakh car project that can create a capacity of about a million more cars, appears to be satisfactory as per the media report.

However, there are some disturbing reports too that must concern all. Some of our manufacturers are giving up the manufacturing easily and preferring the Chinese cheaper import. CII and the government must look into the reasons. India needs more and more new entrepreneurs in manufacturing too.

Manufacturing must spread up to the villages.

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IIM-L adopts a village
I am happy to find some of my suggestions rather dreams getting realized. Perhaps, there are many enthusiasts thinking alike about the ways of developing the rural India that requires effective means to improve its earnings. When I once asked prospective MBAs in a class of a Noida’s reputed business school if they would be interested in working on rural development, I got very hesitant affirmation. As a surprise change, <a href="IIM-L adopts a village“>IIM-L students decided to adopt ‘the village, Chakarpurva in UP’ and have already interacted with the village folks to assess Chakarpurva’s problems. Once in a month, they have meeting with the village panchayat along with the block development officer to set goals, as well as to assess the progress of the work initiated,

It has happened under the leadership of Professor D.S. Sengar, a Fulbright scholar and chairman, student affairs. And certainly it is easy for someone from IIM-L ‘to put a call to an officer and get things implemented, because of the weight of the brand. Chakarpurva is a typical UP village with 300 inhabitants with a dirt track for a road, no primary healthcare center, no power, and a primary school, still to be recognized by the state education board and literacy level below 50 per cent.

 IIM-L students under the banner of Bhavishya, have drawn up a plan for Chakarpurva, and identified five areas which required immediate focus: ‘infrastructural development to tackle the lack of transport network and power; environment overhauling necessitated by the lack of underground drainage system posing a health hazard; cultural rejuvenation needed to counter social evils like child marriage and dowry prevalent in the village; social development in the field of education; and economic self-sufficiency to ensure that unemployment levels stayed low and credit got available on time.’

 Microcredit assistance, self-help women group initiatives are starting in January 2007. IIM-L students have set themselves strict deadlines and phase-wise implementation. They wish to channelise some corporate social responsibility to the village by implementing a novel conceptualise-initiate-transfer model wherein project ownership is transferred to corporates after a phase-wise completion.

The students are also trying to convince the villagers to show a little initiative instead of seeking help. Education is another lacuna they find, and three days of the week, the students teach children who cannot afford a formal education.

Let us hope the students of IIM-L will achieve what they are doing successfully in corporate world.

Involute Technologies develops Rural Entrepreneurs

In another story, Involute Technologies, a gear manufacturing company has taken an initiative to turn more than 30 farmers of Dhanore, a small village 40 km from Pune into entrepreneurs in the auto component business. Involute’s plant at Alandi (a small town 10 km off Dhanore) manufactures over 12 lakh gear components a year for clients such as Tata Motors, John Deere and Bharat Forge with turnover above Rs 60 crore.

About 30 farmer-entrepreneurs supply parts to Involute Technologies worth Rs 3.71 crore every year. The farmers in all employ 346 employees in their small workshops. Many owning their own land have given up farming as they found it less lucrative, and turned to manufacturing.

In 1992, a strike at Involute Technologies (IT) forced it to switch over to this business model. While training farmers and unemployed youth to fill in the labour requirements, it found many of the farmers getting into entrepreneurship. Again, when the order book of IT increased substantially, outsourcing of parts it manufactured to farmers was an effective alternative. Involute trains the farmers on the machine shop for two years. It then assists a worker in setting up his own manufacturing unit, either by giving him free space on the company premises, or by setting him up in a shed near the plant.

The best part of the deal is that these entrepreneurs are not bound to IT only and are free to sell to other companies as well. IT arranges to buy steel and get forged parts from suppliers. Then the farmer-entrepreneur on his second-hand machines completes the rest of machining operations such as cutting, grinding, and shaping as per the original equipment manufacturer’s requirements. All parts from the farmer- entrepreneurs produced are sent to IT premises daily for inspection for quality. IT also manages the logistics to maintain the stock according to the client’s requirement.

Involute Technologies supplies second-hand grinding, shaping and cutting machines (Rs 25 lakh-30 lakh) and recovers the cost in the pricing of the supplies from the entrepreneurs. The investment on the farmers’ workshops is one-time, and the farmers maintain the machines themselves. ? The model has drastically changed the face of Dhanore’s economy. Is it not the model that many bigger manufacturers such as Tata Motors, Hindustan Motors, and for that matter many others would have followed?

Direct sourcing from farmers

Reliance Retail has already started with Reliance Fresh with vegetables and fruits in Hyderabad. Reliance Fresh is trying to hit at the right points to make the supply chain efficient, unlike the traditional Indian food supply chain that is grossly inefficient. There are several intermediaries. Each adds his profit margin to the cost. Besides, there is huge wastage in transit. Farmers are the worst hit by these intermediaries. Farmers get the minimum negotiated. Reliance Retail plans to buy always from the farmer, and not from the mandi. For example, the leafy vegetables, brinjals, tomatoes and green chillies in the Banjara Hills outlet were sourced directly from farmers in Vantimamdi, Chevella and nearby mandals in Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh. Already, a few hundred farmers have been hooked on to the Reliance Retail supply chain. In the next five years, that number will grow to millions. Even contract farming – by assisting farmers to procure high-quality seeds, fertilisers and other essential raw materials – is on the cards. By going to the farmer directly, Reliance Retail hopes to dis-intermediate the supply chain and eliminate waste. This means fresher products at lower cost. This is the model that can give the maximum price to the farmers, if Reliance doesn’t become unscrupulous to corner the maximum benefits at the cost of farmers. Other big business houses such as Birlas, Bharatis must keep this in mind.
Read
Leveling the Indian Playing Field?
PS: Read this column of Gurucharan Das ‘The price of potatoes’,who agrees with my views

Sudheendra Kulkarni, an IITian in an article ‘Ramcharitmanas and Hindu reform’ in Sunday Express’ has some interesting thing to say about the need of certain changes even in Holy Scriptures, if it serves certain purpose.

The following lines from Tulsi Ramayana: “Dhola gawanra sudra pasu naari, sakala taadan ke adhikari” (A drum, a rustic, a sudra, a beast and a woman – all these deserve to be beaten.) “Is this what Tulsidas says?” I said to myself in anger. “What kind of religion is this that denies dignity and justice to fellow human beings?” However, my subsequent reading of, and about, Tulsidas had convinced me that these lines were grossly misunderstood.

Since the lines appear in Sundarkand, I was eager to hear what Pathak (Guruji Ashwinikumar Pathak, brother of Harin Pathak, a BJP MP from Gujarat and famous for interpretations of Ramcharitmans) had to say about this most controversial aspect of Ramacharitmanas. Rather than evading it, he dealt with it elaborately by making three points. Firstly, the meaning imputed to the contentious lines is totally out of tune with the divine philosophy permeating Tulsidas’s Ramayana – that of God’s boundless love for all His creation, without distinction. Secondly, he emphasized that the word ‘taadan’, in the context in which it appears, means the very opposite of its popular meaning – namely, soft and careful treatment. But his third point was most important. “Ramcharitmanas was written in a different age. If some lines in it sound hurtful to any section of our society today, what’s wrong in simply changing them? Therefore, I have replaced the word ‘taadan’ with ‘laalan’ (loving treatment).”

Here was an exemplary case of textual revision of an important work in Hinduism. By rendering Valmiki’s Ramayana from Sanskrit in the language of the common man in his time, Tulsidas enshrined the epic in the hearts of millions of Hindus in the Hindi heartland. Gandhiji, for whom Ramanama was his “refuge in the darkest hour”, has written: “I derive the greatest consolation from my reading of the Tulsidas’s Ramayana. It takes a foremost place in the spiritual literature of the world.”

Yet, Gandhiji it was who said that even scriptures can, and should, be reinterpreted if they are found wanting. In the context of a debate on the Holy Quran, he wrote: “Every aspect of every religion has, in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal justice if it is to ask for universal assent. Error can claim no exemption even if it can be supported by the scriptures of the world.” (Young India, Feb 26, 1925) Therefore, the Mahatma would have been happy at the revision that has now been introduced in his favourite book.

I myself feel like deleting many words, particularly when Tulsidasji keeps on revering vipra (Brahmins). But I feel it will be unjustified to change the words in the text. It is for the people who misrepresent Tulsidas to be more flexible. They must not think of changing the contents of the books written hundreds and thousands years ago. Instead, they must take the good things from them and discard that are irrelevant in present situations. Words and sentences must not be used to malign our saints. We must understand the right meaning and context.