There are a couple of things that I am noticing lately.

1. People who are back from the US and other nations where they had gone for seeking employment and are now back, who are absolutely amazed at what is happening here in India.

2. People who are a little hesitant and wondering if the Global economy recession is going to have a hard impact on us, and most of us oldies have realized that we could withstand and live through this to tell the tale - its not even a brainer no more.

3. Then there are the third group of people, who are sitting in their respective cosy offices abroad and are pointing fingers at this country as if its heading towards an impending doom.

4. There is the fourth kind, the ugly kind, which is wanting for some foreign nation to come and rescue us and "take us to the next level".

I love the first and the second kind. Am tolerant towards the third kind and just hate the fourth one.

Let me start off with an anecdote: About a few years back, maybe ten or so, we were a much different nation. I'll give you a very simple example: The CDMA Technology of Qualcomm was partly developed in association with IIT Madras. A couple of slip-ups, and we were one of the highest royalty paying countries (close to 7%, when hongkong and the likes were paying half of that, and China paying around 2%) to Qualcomm. Needless to say such mistakes wont ever happen again. In the words of Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, "We are a very confident nation now compared to how we were even a few years ago". Unless there is an equal opportunity for growth, research and commercialization, we don't ever sign deals anymore. From a nation that "needed" a break, we are at a point where unless the deal is fair and maybe even lenient, we aren't interested - we have plenty of other options, and partners willing to work on more friendlier terms these days.

As usual, let me take two steps back and go from there.

I am not sure how many of you have read the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhiji, but there are some pretty shocking revelations for those who havent read it. For one, while reading though the text, you will realize that there was a time when Gandhiji thought that India will only grow to be in its supreme power under the british rule and even served in the british army for a time, as a medic. He never openly confronted the british and was a fabulous diplomat in engaging with the british rule, kept and maintained cordial relationships and only rose to rebellion when blood shed started to happen. That's when the words "Swaraj" were uttered. We still haven't accomplished those dreams, and have even come close to accomplishing what that word really means.

But before this generation is over, nay! even sees its grey hairs, I can assure you that we will.

There is a lot of talk, and whispers that the outsourcing industry has reached its peak and is dwindling off. I am not sure how that has to affect us in anyway. For the record, we've moved onto better things. Most of the software companies here in India, and even the MNCs like TCS have setup some fabulous innovation labs that are churning out the next generation of cutting edge consumer interaction and lifestyle solutions. Did someone miss the train while our boys were out and are still are buying out foreign companies?. We run one of the biggest airlines fleet. Make the most profitable and inexpensive telecom networks with the most cutting edge technology deployed (Talk about the genius of the AND), have revolutionized the cement industry in optimizing operations costs so low that we have to teach the world how to do it - and Should I even talk about the steel industry and the likes of VideoCon who is bidding for Motorola's mobile division? We have moved up the ladder of service, into creation, long time ago. Were the naysayers snoring when that all happened?

It is a fact that a lot of prototyping and initial release softwares, applications and products are built out of the Indian subcontinent. So much so, that I think that its even a wise choice for entrepreneurs across the globe to move to India, given that India and China are probably the next two biggest emerging economies which will be bigger than the US ever has in terms of demand, supply and market disruption. You might say that the appeal for entrepreneurs to move to India is still not yet complete, but I can assure you that we'd get there - very soon. If the trend is moving towards there, I'd jump the next boat and get here and find a seat. It will count for something when the masses move in.

Secondly, even as we are racing towards the makings of an innovation hub, there are hue and cry about the fact that we are not "valley-endorsed". I really don't understand the issue here. The valley is nothing more than another market for us. The valley is not going to send help, they are not going to send us people to hire, nor are they going to sit there and talk about us folks here - I doubt they even understand the way the markets move here in India. Most are still puzzled as to how we manage to survive and rake in billions with such a low ARPU in running mobile networks. Let them figure that bit out and we'll talk about understanding markets :)

We do not need the silicon valley to tell us that we have achieved what we have set out to do. The valley is not even a benchmark for us to etch for. The valley is just a draft and an outline that we hope to cover. When the indian startup ecosystem is in place, it is going to be dazzling, that i doubt we'd find a comparison in the western world. The closest that we'd find is what goes on in China, Japan, Taiwan and the places around.

"India has more interesting startups that I imagined", Said a Venture Capital friend today. I think I was more happy and excited about that statement than knowing that India even had product startups - whenever that date was. But all jokes aside, India is very deceiving. The looks of it, and what you see from it can be very misleading. A very aptly put example would be the research centre which houses TeNeT. The building from outside is anything but ordinary, but houses 27 companies - atleast their core teams - and brings in close to $100 Million in revenue. Don't let the looks fool you. I have been saying this for ages, but as Siddharta Govindaraj, the man behind the Open Coffee Club Initiative in Chennai puts it "I’m always surprised at how many start-ups I’ve met at OCC. Who knew that there were so many?"

A rough estimate puts the number of startups that emerge in India at around 500-600 a year (those with a focus on technology). There are far more companies that spring up in the non-technological sectors, which are also companies that are following the traditional routes of running the firms as proprietory/partnership entities rather than incorporated and chasing venture capitalists. One truly doesn't know the size of the startup community in India, till you start making mental figures of all the companies that you know of, and how many of them fall off the radar but continue doing some excellent work - many of which are operating out of residential zones well disguised.

Scoble has a post on the state of entrepreneurship in Israel and how the valley tends to revolve around companies that are birthed in the valley. I thought that was obvious. News around home is what is easy to access, verify and report. Some of our Indian blogger friends have set out to make an open note to Scoble inviting him to visit India. Well, we've always been great hosts, and we would love to host him. But as a guest and as a spectator to the silent growth and supremacy that we are growing into. The valley, especially a mere media figure who hasn't even bootstrapped a venture of his own, has little to offer us -we have way too much noise of our own and we need to fix that as it is. We definitely don't need more. We will learn from the likes of Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet,Paul Graham, Ray Kurzweil, William Gibson, to learn the tricks of the trade and play the games as per the rules of the Arena - fair and square. We will work together. We will embrace knowledge and partnerships. But we will follow no one, nor allow others to lead us.

A question I am often asked on this topic is as to why we don't feel the speed that other economies that are rushing to catch up and leadm seem to ooze. It's the difference between a mouse and an elephant. A quote by Rama Bijapurkar during a keynote was that, The markets and the size of the "influencers" in most markets are so small that its these few elements who need to run to and fro frantically to cause change. The difference and constrast is that of a tennis ball flying from one side of the court to another, and a mountain boulder which starts to move. We, being the sizeable nation that we are, are a hard lot to move. But considering that we've started to move, I doubt its going to be that easy to stop it before we catch up or overtake the rest of the nations. We really are an elephant that learnt to dance.

Our "Swaraj" is not too far off. There is a steep path to climb with the poverty, education and all the inequalities that we compass, but its surely not impossible to dream, dare and achieve.

That is the fundamental conception of the Hindu way of life, which has years of penance and austerity at the back of the discovery of this truth. That is why, whilst we have had saints who have worn out their bodies and laid down their lives in order to explore the secrets of the soul, we have had none, as in the West, who laid down their lives in exploring the remotest or the highest regions of the earth. Our socialism or communism should, therefore, be based on non-violence and on harmonious cooperation of labour and capital, landlord and tenant.

Amrita Bazar Patrika, 02-08-1934

Harijan, 02-01-1937

6^th May, 2003

Read the introductions by Gandhi because they were short, skimmed over the preface and started off the first chapter. In to the reader . . . :

. . . . and therefore, when anybody finds any inconsistency between any two writings of mine, if he has still faith in my sanity, he would do well to choose the latter of the two on the same subject.

Gandhi on newspaper:

One of the objects of a newspaper is to understand popular feeling and to give expression to it; another is to arouse among people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects.

All three purposes are open to interpretations and criticisms. At the age of nineteen, I am not quite wise enough to to present a critique of Gandhi's works. But the same conflict between dharmashaastra and arthashaastra arises in my mind. Gandhi did identify economic imperialism as the dread of the future; something we realize only now, that too with reservation or even worse, support! I wonder why Gandhi does not identify different people with the three gunas satah, rajah and tamah and justify the course of history along them, as Bankimchandra Chatterjee had done so extraordinarily well in his novel, aanandamath.

7^th May, 2003

In an e-mail to my father, rewrote yesterday's diary entry. I often have these intellectual e-dialogues with him, and more often than not find myself agreeing to his statements and questions; often he is too religious for me in the sense that his thoughts about dharma, in my humble opinion, have elements of unjustified faith.

That man is educated whose mind is a perfect logic machine. This perhaps matches the criterion of a vidwaan; but education is not knowledge. The mind being the perfect logic machine, asks questions and seeks answers. It finds inconsistencies in the answers to his question "Why?" every time beyond a certain a certain amount of pondering. That is where we know that intelligence cannot move any further and logic has reached its saturation.

M K Gandhi and Hind Swaraj:

Finished the book. How can he talk of travelling back in time to rid the society of the vices of modernity, as numerous as they may be? He says, "evil has wings . . . " and also that dharma is difficult to implement. Same will be the case without railways, doctors, lawyers. Same shall remain the difficulty of implementing dharma even without weapons. Sin and vice may spread at a slower rate, but so will goodness. The relative influence of dharma and adharma shall be exactly what it is right now. What will happen, however, is that interactions over a distance will become impossible. Forget about what we call cognition -- true knowledge is never attained through seminars and conglomerations -- but the basic human and engineering sciences need interaction to spread. Are engineering sciences unwanted? Certainly not. But it is, after all, engineering and automation that spoils individual labour skills. Another perspective yells, "but it is the human mind that produces the machine that replaces skilled labour". I think what Gandhi thinks is that once such a machine is built, it kills the skill of every future generation of human labour by forcing a discontinuity of tradition. The minds that build the machine are clever and intelligent without doubt. That is precisely why they are dangerous because very few among those minds are philanthropic. Of what use is such creativity of one mind which destroys so many talents?

Tens of thousands of thoughts hover in my mind. I cannot put all of them to words. Moreover, giving shape to one thought is a process that, in itself, gives rise to several new strings of thoughts, questions and perspectives. Cerebration is undoubtedly an infinite process.

© Ritwik Banerjee

M K Gandhi and "Hind Swaraj" by
Ritwik Banerjee is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

india

philosophy

perspective

swaraj

religion

hinduism

life

gandhi

nationalism

That would be the legitimate use of English, whereas English today has usurped the dearest place in our hearts and dethroned our mother tongues. It is an unnatural place due to our unequal relations with Englishmen. The highest development of the Indian mind must be possible without a knowledge of English. It is doing violence to the manhood and especially the womanhood of India to encourage our boys and girls to think that an entry into the best society is impossible without a knowledge of English. It is too humiliating a thought to be bearable. To get rid of the infatuation for English is one of the essentials of Swaraj.

Young India, 02-02-1921

Complete independance versus autonomy.

Nationalism vs subverting your identity.

It is very difficult too for us Tibetans to reconcile the two views, I can imagine the state of confusion it leaves the general audience in. The average viewer of TV news, who are probably being exposed to the Tibetan cause like never before. The person who almost starts to support the cause and then holds himself back when he/she hears that there is also a view that says "autonomous region".

So, how do we do this? How do we reconcile the two views.

Any Tibetan worth his/her salt learns the phrase "bod rangbZen" (independant Tibet) as soon as they talk. My daily prayers, used to include a line "eni bod rango rangbzen ra ba shog" [trans: "and may Tibet be independant]

Any Tibetan in exile and in Tibet (if they were free to express) would talk about the day "our country is liberated from China". This concept of nationhood is strongly held by every Tibetan..even the quaintest nomad grandfather. Strange does it not seem, that a modern, almost western concept of nationhood is so prevalent amongst this community of people that the Chinese have bulldozed into a one size nation fits all?

So what about that autonomy you ask..well, we rationalise it thus:

His Holiness, the Dalai Lama speaks from pragmatism and cynicism of the chinese might. The older I get, the more I can rationalise his point of view. The more I admire him- a monk, a simple monk, so tuned to international politics and diplomacy and such a previously undefined foe for China! Its quite something!

Anyway, to go back- The logic for his stance being a buddhist philosophy of middle path (neither extreme). It talks about literally sleeping with the enemy! Yes, to ensure the survival of that million odd brethren we exiles have left behind to suffer the every day wear and tear of life under the chinese.

Because how would a couple of ill-armed semi-nomads ever get independance from a govt that rolls tanks over its own students? Why would China initiate the process of breakup of the motherland when they have regions like Uighurstan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other minority strong areas? How would they let go of the precious metals and mineral resources of Tibet? How could they lose the extreme strategic geopolitical location of Tibet? How could they lose Everest- where they plan to send the Olympic flame to burn in some public charade of world dominance (private ha! ha! to that one Mr Wen Jiabao)

So in view of these insurmountable political and economic reasons, how many lives can we sacrifice to the cause of independance...when we could be spending our energies working with the chinese to create jobs for tibetans and improving their living standards. And because of these pragmatic thoughts, we have HH the Dalai Lama espousing "autonomy" as against self rule. This is a very important stance to state on the international diplomatic level.

But I cannot stop dreaming. Was it Tilak who said "swaraj is my birthright, and I will have it".

It may take extremism, it may take diplomacy, it may take the middle path, it may take the internet, it may take forms we have not seen yet in political movements, but it should get us there. I am still talking about independance. You may call it a fading hope, but it is my duty to pass it on to the next generation and the next and the next.

Today's read: From the NY Times

Thoroughly misunderstood, the word stands numb with wounds and pain, from the constant chiseling foist on it, to reshape it’s meaning to suit individual conveniences. It seems to be interpreted, as what gives an individual, the right to live as he desires comfortable. It is assumed today, that if his luxuries and ease inflicts malaise or mental burden to someone he does not relate to, it was all part of the deal.

It’s good not to look back into past miseries; however, it is rude not to learn to avoid contributing to any more of it. And to render this possible, it is essential for us to have forethought, a plan that accommodates contingencies and reactions to unfavorable consequences not only to our benefit, also to safeguard the goodwill and faith of our partners in success. However shunned or avoided, every human being has his lump of “shouldn’t haves” somewhere at the end of his nerves. And many do not like calling it ‘Regret’, as it makes their self-reliance weak. And it’s beyond their comfort zone to accept self-defeat.

Let’s admit, it is not too late yet; and today we have external sources that are trying to build motivation by challenges and competitions. There are callouts to the leader within to come out of cocoons of cozy lifestyles and make the much-needed difference for a better future. And to realize “Swaraj” as an opportunity to come together andthe freedom to act responsibly for the betterment of the nation as a whole and not a path to proclaim individual achievements and a free rein of ego-pampering.