Make in India May have a nice brand sounding name to it,but to honestly accept that it is true or likely to be,would be a big lie. The current darling with the investors is the 7.2 billion dollar flipkart,essentially a Ctrl C Ctrl V of A successful business model of the US. Now being dressed up beautifully by its parents(founders) and relatives(vc) for the imminent Baap of the Great Fat Indian wedding with Amazon. We dont invent,discover or innovate only ape.Any attempt at innovation for example even my teams personal innovation in the form of trying to leverage the internet to take classical music to patrons across the globe is only met with raw cynicism or a spectacular job offer to work with a multinational,making one look foolish for the loss of opportunity cost. The last significant invention of our society was,0 yes Zero.(even on which I actually have my doubt since till date I have actually not encountered an authentic historical reference) The last big decent idea of ours in farming was thanks to an American called Norman Borlaug the green revolution and if you wish to include diary in it then Anands Operation Flood.Even yoga is something that only came back to us as a recent re export,I distinctly got reminded after I read an article recently,that in my PT period of Gnanashekaran we were doing only the World War II,allies count 7 Drill to the sound of the drum. Why has not a single bright student from our world famous IITs,AIIMS and IIMs come up with a single world beating idea?(A word about them here our IITs rank below 225 in world technical institutes,our IIMs below 250 in global management schools.So the top 1% who cracked CAT and feel top of the world are actually behind at-least 200 institutes in the world. Says Satish Padmanabhan in his recent column No Country For Makers,in the Outlook Magazine. And before some one jumps in NO we are not a tech super power,most of our code sucks.The best work we do other than subsuming in fake accents to post purchase dissonance of buyers in the west,is billing for a shopping giant in Arizona by my friend Mafleys team. Essentially we are glorified e-Clerks. Why is it that all our top 25 companies are either importers of oil and gas or just a value adder to a nature endowed commodity ? No iPhone? Not even a Facebook which started only in the year 2004,and for which we would look foolish to blame the British for historical imbalance. Probably other than the idly dosa wet grinder no other original invention of ours. probably the Idly a good invention even into which we managed to penetrate our historical pride of jugaad by innovating the idly upuma! Adds Satish Padmanabhan,The danger lies here,in our inability to find solutions to problems unique to us,which nobody else is going to develop for us to blindly copy.No other country is going to tell us how to manage our problems,how to help our poor out of their poverty,how to give them healthcare,schools,how to bring equality to women,how to dismantle caste,how to bring new ideas to agriculture,how to bring order to our chaotic cities,how to solve our transport problem.Here it needs our own creativity and genius and thats the reason we have failed in all these areas so miserably for so long. And No,we cant keep cheating ourselves with alibi of corrupt political class for too long! I have gone to the best of bakeries in Paris,but my this mornings breakfast,Banana Bun with Sagu at the Hassan Iyengar bakery at Manipal,Karnataka swept me of my feet. No Make in India,Instead,I actually suggest Bake in India! (for the multi lingual, pun un-intended)
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 05:32:44 +0000
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