A speculation of the future of businesses in India....

Recently i posted something about shivsena and ended up pissing off one of my friends badly. Well i have learnt that, in politics, different people have different perceptions. Every individual regard his own perception as true. Those i posted were mine and one should respect everybody's thoughts. I should tell SAM that even i agree with the statement that Mrs. Indira Gandhi is not the sort of politician whom this nation needs.

Well....as we are done with apologising and cajolings....i'd move on to tell you what my next post is going to be...

The first time when i entered into MANIT, one of the best institute in the country for engineering or atleast what one expects it to be , i was sure of one thing at least. I certainly did not want to get an engineering job. But then, i saw there were hundereds of them thinking just as i was. I was not alone. And almost each one of them wanted to pursue it for they wish to have their own business. But are they going to get those?? Can so many businesses co-exist?? Does india has the capacity to accomadate that number of businesses??

Well this is just what India desperately needs. A huge force of audacious entrepreneurs working for the mutual benifits of themselves and the country as a whole. Our country had been a victim of the so called "socialist" mindset. Developing businesses in India did not happen to be so easy as it used to be in U.S.A. Well, am not an out and out supporter of capitalism for that matter. The greed which capitalism engenders inside corporates can be regretful, as it happened to be in the sub-prime loan crisis which engulfed the world economy and tried to eat it away. But then, nor pure socialism can generate enough jobs to provide employment to the whole population. Budding entrepreneurs are the need of any country if its population has to come out of poverty.

So, the question now is, how can businesses be encouraged to develop?? First of all there is a need for changing the whole bureaucratic set-up which disincentivises our businesses to open and close. In India opening and closing businesses is not so easy. One has to bribe officials for acquiring permits and for getting all paper work done for that matter. Then when a businees go bankrupt it has to go through taxing lawsuits which are expected to last for almost an eternity.

That is not the only problem in India. EDUCATION. A population which is hugely illiterate can easily be digressed by political elements in a hugely corrupt democracy. For that the govt. has to take decent steps towards educating our population. Policies like "education guarantee act" are always welcome in a country with such illiteracy. But they have to be applied properly and with a determination to get over with the irrefutable bureaucratic corruption in our country. And our businesses have to create some sort of interaction with the people to make them aware of the mutual benefits. Businesses have to inculcate CSR activities in their core policymaking. This way they can work for the betterment of the whole society without compromising their own profits.

That's it for now....i may have bored you.....but still....budding entrepreneurs are the need of our country..and we have them....now it is on our leaders to provide them the required environment...

Marathi or Indian???

Recently newspapers and newschannels have been inundated with Shiv Sena's marathi manus rhetoric recently. A desperate, lost and battling sena is searching for its own identity and place in the indian polity. Everyone of us remember the 1993 riots and what role did Bal Thackrey had in those riots. Being recognized everywhere for his extremism Bal Thackrey is expected to be out and out Marathi and "so-called" Hindu.

Today i was watching NDTV where pictures were shown of Bal Thackrey sitting with former pakistani cricketer Javed Miadad. Now if you may not knw, Javed Miadad has been known for his anti india statements and he is too closely related to Dawood Ibrahim. Yes, you read it correctly. It is indeed Dawood Ibrahim, the man himself, the person behind the mumbai underworld, the guy himself responsible for the mumbai bombings of 1993. Now what does one construe of that???

A person calling himself an outright hindu and the sole bearer of the claims of marathi manus sharing the same room with the person who is so closely related to the person responsible for the bombings of a city of whom he claims to be sole tutelary to??? This is politics at its terribly parochial limits for you. And guess what?? They say that Shahruk Khan should go and live in Pakistan because he has guts enough to say that he would have bought those Pakistani names in the auction who were neglected by each team in the competition on god-knows-what grounds. Is this what our democracy has to offer for our country?? Politicians fighting on provincial claims when they themselves are seen carousing with people like Miadad??

On NDTV a singer Abhijeet was seen blasting at every Pakistani, favouring Sena. Pakistan this Pakistan that. They are given songs to sing which we would have sung in the first place....they come to our country on tourist visas...they are given employment...they are given fame...they snatch our bread...blah blah blah blah....
That was nothing but the frustration of an out of work singer and his envy and rage to his Pakistani counterparts who tend to be getting more jobs than him in India. I didn't see any other singer or anybody so much desperate may be because they were not out of job or were open to bigger competition.

Now the question is that is India still ready to buy this crap?? Well.. the answer is no...the recent defeat of communal forces in general and state elections establish that fact. Infact even the hitherto extremist party BJP seem to realise that and has come to the party flouting the "marathi manus" talk. I welcome this move from the BJP.

Is agriculture the engine for growth???

A few people reading this may find it boring. But as i have no other thoughts in my mind to share with you i have to do with this post. This is one topic which we got in a GD class in TIME. When i heard this topic from our faculty the first person who i was thought of was ....... . Well those knowing him would have guessed the name. Yes Yes it is jarda ( alias Shivanshu Tamolia my classmate and one of my best buddies) . I am not saying that he is a farmer of sorts, but he owns land and is likely to pursue farming in the occurence of another recession.

Actually i didn't get a chance to speak in that GD so i thought that may be i can share my thoughts with everyone here.

So.. jokes apart...let's get back to the topic...

Agriculture...hmmm...
Well...i think that Agriculture in itself cannot be the engine of growth for any economy. Well i do not say that it's not important. Its importance in an economy and self sufficiency in it cannot be overstated for any country. But in my views it cannot make any country an economic superpower. To become one a country has to be leading in other sectors such as industry, services n others. But, as we shift to industries and services as they unarguably are the more dignified of the jobs, does that mean that we would have no farmers???

Well..may be what m saying may seem terribly incongruous in the present scenario but that is what i feel that the scene is going to be. If not in a few years then may be 100 years down the line. yes, u get that right. The agriculture AUTOMATED. What i am saying may seem awfully far fetched to a few. But, don't u think that as our civilization develops even more we may have robots ploughing the soil, sowing seeds, cutting the harvest and then packing them to be sold in the market?? And as more and more people get knowledge and erudition don't you think that human race may engage themselves in jobs other than labour??

Like you know, there are more questions to be asked in this world than have been answered. From the universe to the human brain, there is a lot to be known in everything. And insted of labouring in a field a human will have enough "better" jobs to do. Every human has a right to white collor jobs. Doesn't mean that a farmer today would stay a farmer forever. And in the long run (which may be too long but still) i see farming being automated. Atleast the manpower engrossed in that will be reduced to bits. (Good news for jarda)

Just a thought...may seem hypothetical....comments invited...