Sunday, May 21, 2006

Anti Reservation, Rang De Basanti, and Gandhi*, The Tipping Point, and the whole hoopla………

How come all these words go into a single sentence? Well let’s see.

Many News Channels are drawing parallel the scenes of the Anti Reservation (live and Media) which we see daily and from the block buster movie Rang De Basanti. We read it everywhere that Rang De Basanti has motivated the students. What influence movies have on kids these days (and we were thinking not to ban smoking in cinema, ;)).

My point is that, it is not RDB that created this mass hysteria all of a sudden, like Mahatma Gandhi did once.

All that Gandhi and RDB did is, become a catalyst. These protests are not against Reservation. They are against the Indian Government, their State government and even the local governance (Be it any political party) or any democratic organization. The so called democratic organizations do nothing or very little for the countries development and sometimes things which will hamper our growth.

Slowly it’s a builds up. How much will we tolerate this non-governance? How long will we keep quite?

Ultimately until when will the average middle class, who is concerned more about his family tolerate the nonsensical attitude of the government. ?

There has to be a limit, a Tipping Point (A good book by Malcom Gladwell, read it). Beyond this tipping point things are totally different as opposed to what was before it. Before the Tipping Point we tolerated to Government, did not bother about anything (or at least so it seemed). Once the Tipping Point is reached, we change completely .We come out on the streets, start protesting.

The Tipping Point was the tyrannical British Rule in 1920.

The Increase in the Reservation Quota was that Tipping Point in 2006.

That’s why the protests started in Delhi first and much later in Chennai. Obviously people are more dissatisfied in the Capital.

Now obviously when the Tipping Point was reached, we need to given direction. We are not like some of the parties, where we pickup stones, bricks etc and start breaking anything and everything in our way.

This is where RDB or Gandhi came into the picture and fix the jigsaw puzzle. They gave us the direction. They have given us the right path, where we can vent our dissatisfaction and the agitation within us. Both showed us the ill consequences of violence.

What is the path?

Peaceful protests!! .

This is quite Anti of what we expect. But come on we are students, regular people coming from regular families. What can we do? We are not some kind of superheroes.

So spreading the message, motivating people to get involved, organizing peaceful protests makes us none other than superheroes.

We needed another Gandhi for the Gen Next. What better medium than the cinema to give us one. We all know that Average Indian’s G K about Hindi Cinemas is more than about the country. Hats off to those guys who came up with RDB and also to the guy with the original idea, none other than Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

RDB and Gandhi have brought out this heroism in us, which we never knew existed. And these heroic acts are going to make India a great Nation some day.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

entrepreneurial India

Entrepreneurship in India



Indian Stock Markets are rising. IT and ITES (BPOs d’oh) are bringing money into India. Foreign Institutes are investing heavily. Is it a sign that our economy is on the rise? Is it a sign that we are going to catch China one day?

Firstly, the main question to ask is, whether India is self employed or not?
We have our Nation’s youth working BPOs which provide services to citizens of foreign nationals. We change our names from sameer to Sam, worse we even change our accent, so that those dumb witted Americans can understand we are saying. Not only do we work at odd hours but also have suffered racial abuse more often than not.
People say fine, if the money is good we should be able to tolerate all such nonsense.
Moving on to the IT industry. Very few Companies actually are setting up research labs in India. Most of the companies again are just expanding into India to hire cheap labour (read: so called software professionals).
Labour sounds so demeaning doesn’t it??
Well, we are not quite the architects. We just do, what we are told!!
The design part is done by the Main Office in US; we are just required as masons who follow the plan.
Most of the people, I have met quite frankly don’t even care. They are just happy to work in those “posh” offices and carry a payload back home(which is at least twice /thrice more than what they would have earned , had they continued pursuing their actual career read: mechanical, civil etc).

Obviously, being slaves cannot be that bad can it?? It took 150 years, a half naked guy and a dozen of revolutionaries to awaken people and realize the need of freedom.
Now we have lost that “awakening”. We only see it in movies. Watching movies like “Rang de Basanti” is not an awakening!!!

Enough of lecturing one will say. What is the worse that can happen?
We already have seen it. Any guesses?
What was the main agenda when Dubya visited India? Nuclear Deal right.
We want nuclear sanctions to be removed. Who the fuck is US, to decide whether we can generate nuclear power or not? Tomorrow, if we don’t cooperate with the US on anything, instantly the US Congress may ban all BPOs. Then what will we do?
Once the BPOs go, so does the “posh” offices, so does those “swanky” cars and then we will see which direction the economy goes.


The need of the hour is to empower ourselves. We need to go from being the slaves to being the master.
We need to create an entrepreneurial India. India claim to fame is that, we produce world class software developers. We don’t need these guys to go and work in the back offices of Microsoft to prove that. What we need is to make these guys entrepreneurs.
Look at countries like China, South Korea and Taiwan. They are leaders in the semiconductor industry. In the magazine I read, it stated the “if you throw a brick and it hits somebody in S.Korea that person is bound to be manager of his own firm”. People there say, government did not support them; they were self motivated and competition among themselves made them rise.
E.g. look at Hyundai, it started only 10 years back and now has a market worldwide. Other examples are Samsung, LG etc.
Even Tatas and Ambanis don’t have a global market. The work done by Mittal and Narayan Murthi is very commendable. Where are we lacking .We are smart, hard working and have all that it takes. We need to wake up before India becomes a puppet to US. Although the government is asleep, and it may never wake. It is time to take to India’s destiny into our hands.
Look at the marvadis , they are so good at doing business, may be even better than MBA guys . They should stop their kirana stores and start thinking big . I am sure they will succeed.
IIT have already started something known as “incubators”. Here IITians are provided support (finance, technical as well as infrastructure) within the IIT campus itself . Once the company starts taking shape, they move out of IIT and pay IIT back. I loved the concept a lot.
According to a report, in the next 20 years India is the country that is going to have the maximum population within the range of 20-40 years. We should take advantage of the situation.

The future is bright for India ………entrepreneurial India