On the Picket Line in Islamabad

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If someone wanted to criticize India this is the right article ...........

Second-hand ideas won`t work for us
By Jay Dubashi
Monday, 26 May , 2003, 12:45
Bollywood is always in the court, not only in its films but also in real life. Bollywood producers are always cheating someone or the other, often the viewers, but quite often foreign writers, whose stories they pinch and try to pass off as their own.

You can do this once too often and you are hauled before the court. Some New York-based writer, whose name I have never heard before, one Barbara Taylor Bradford, says that one filmi serial starring Karisma Kapoor, is based on her story, `A Woman of Substance`, which the serial producers have pinched without her permission.

The mega-serial will cost Rs 60 crore, which is more than the cost of most mainstream films, but why the producers should have gone and stolen from abroad instead of going in for an original one by an Indian writer, I do not know.

We Indians are always pinching things from others, sometimes stories for serials, but often big things like constitution of the country or economic and political systems. Our constitution is supposed to have been framed by the great men who sat in the assembly, but actually it is nothing but a copy of the 1935 constitution which was hammered out in Westminster by Britishers. We just polished it up, added a few more clauses and, hey presto, a new constitution was born. There is nothing wrong in it. After all, if you want a parliamentary constitution, what better way to do so is to go the Mother of Parliaments and copy one?

I wonder how many of our PhD theses are copies of studies done before, either here or elsewhere. With Internet, this kind of copying is now very easy. All you have to do is press a few keys, move the mouse up and down, and you have readymade thesis for your PhD. Since the examiners themselves must have taken their own PhDs from someone else`s thesis, no harm done.

When you depend on second-hand ideas, you create a second-hand society. And this is what we have become, a second-hand society, a pale imitation of the West. Almost everything you see in India is second-hand, from cars to fashions, and from computers to Internet.

We don`t manufacture computers, we assemble them. Our fashions are copied from Paris and London, and God alone knows from where. We make cars that were made somewhere else before, by the same companies that now make them here. There is not a single motor bike that is of our original design. Sometimes we pay royalty, sometimes we don`t. Most of our drugs are copied from original formulations of western pharma companies. This is called reverse engineering.

I wonder if there is a single drug that is ours, thought up by our own scientists. What is true of things is also true of ideas. We borrow them wholesale, because that way they come cheaper. We have or used to have a communist party that was an imitation of the Soviet model. We used to have a socialist party that was a copy of socialist parties in the West. In fact, some communists went to the extent of saying that Chairman Mao was their chairman. I don`t blame them. After all, their original contribution to Mao`s thoughts was zero.

Take economic ideas. After independence, we adopted planning because that was the fashion those days and everybody was doing it. Since the Britishers were nationalising their industries, we went ahead and nationalised ours. If you can borrow constitutions from Westminster, why can`t you borrow nationalisation from them? They had a planning board, we had a planning commission. There were Gosplans in Soviet Russia, we had five-year plans of our own, fresh from the ovens of Yojana Bhavan. And so on.

Now things are different. Since Soviet Russia is a gigantic failure, we have decided to imitate America, which has not only more money (and who doesn`t need money?) but is now the world`s only superpower. So we are now copying the United States like mad. They have a market economy, we have a market economy. America`s business is business; so is ours. The government doesn`t own anything over there; we are selling off our public sector industries to foreigners just to show the Americans that what they can do, we can do better.

We are going in for a market economy with vengeance, though, like the previous Gosplans, it may not suit us. But why worry about what suits us or doesn`t? One reason why we copy other people`s ideas or products is that it costs you nothing. It is so much bother all the time to think up new ideas, when you have never done so. It is easier to copy Charlie Chaplin, which is what Raj Kapoor did, than come up with an entirely original funny character. You can dress like Charlie, you can talk like Charlie, you can sing like Charlie, and you don`t have to do anything else. The whole world knows it is seeing Charlie on the screen and it laughs like mad. All you have to do is lean back and collect money at the cash counter.

The only original thinker in India was Mahatma Gandhi. He did not copy anyone. His dress was his own, his values were his own, even his language was his own. He did not borrow a three-piece suit when he was invited to meet the King at Buckingham Palace. He put on his dhoti and that was that. He did not put on even a shirt. And he walked up the steps of the palace as if he owned the place. He never had to go to the palace again. The palace came to him in Delhi and offered independence on a silver platter.

Of course, you will say that there is nothing original in this world after twenty centuries of modern civilisation. So why invent the wheel again? Make use of wheels as they are and get on with your life. Not everybody can be an inventor. So there is no harm if you copy other people`s ideas, or inventions, to add value to your life.

But look at America. Almost all the major inventions, from the computer to Internet, have come from that country. The original idea may be someone else`s but it is the Americans who have turned it to practical use. This has been true for the last hundred years, which is one reason why the United States happens to be No 1 country in the world. If you want to lead the world, you have to be a leader in as many aspects of it as possible. America is either No 1 or No 2 in almost every area of life, whether it is films, computers, and information technology. Others are copycats.

A copycat is always No 2, never a leader. Great Britain was No 1 in steam technology which helped it lead the first industrial revolution. It was its leadership of that revolution that helped it lay the basis of its great empire. Empires do need armies but the armies have to be backed up by the military as well as financial prowess. And in modern times, industry is the basis of financial prowess.

Open any glossy magazine in India and you will see glossy new products on every page. There are new cars, new telephones, new fashions, new furniture, new houses, new everything. There are at least a hundred new TV serials and a dozen news channels. We never had this kind of thing before. Whoever heard of 20 new motor car models to choose from? There was a time when we had to make do with only two, and you had to wait years before you could manage to buy one. Most of us ran second-hand cars and took them to the local mechanic every other week, for they were always falling down on their job.

Things are different now. All you need is cash and there is no shortage of it either. Every day, I receive attractive offers from banks and sundry financial companies asking me to buy this and that and not worry about money. Interest rates are so low you wonder whether the money you are handling is real or fake. Whoever heard of eight percent interest rate to buy houses? In our time, you couldn`t borrow anything except maybe a few thousand rupees from LIC. Money was scarce and so was everything else. Salaries are now in five figures, not three. A fresh graduate from a management institute makes five or six lakhs a year, everything found. We did not make lakhs even in in a whole lifetime. The country is awash in cash and everybody has a car, a house, and tickets to Mauritius in his pocket.

If so, this should be reflected in our growth. But there is no growth. Actually, the economy is slowing down. In the 1980`s GDP growth was almost six percent a year. In the nineties, it has come down to 5 or 5.5 percent. In fact, it has been around 4.5 percent for the past two years. If there is so much money about, why is the economy slowing down? Because the growth you see around you is not real. If people are buying new houses, new cars, new furniture and new mobiles, and taking foreign holidays, all this should be reflected in growth. But, as I said, growth has been stagnant for the past 10 years, the great years of liberalisation and open market economy.

Actually, what is happening is that while certain sectors are growing, others are shrinking. There is large-scale unemployment in traditional industries like steel, plastics, car parts, chemicals, and textiles. Powerlooms have come to a stop. Khadi industries which absorbed lakhs of workers are not functioning.

Small industries have closed down. And so on. It is true that certain industries are growing but they are growing at the cost of traditional ones. For every two or three small units that have closed down, you have a cyber cafe. For every textile company that is no more, there is one Infosys. The papers play up Infosys, but they ignore textile companies that have closed down. The net result is that money has gone from one corner of the economy to another, but there is no overall growth, or growth is the same as before.

The prime minister talks about 10 percent growth of GDP, as if GDP grew on trees. He and his advisers do not understand why we are not having even six percent growth, let alone 10 percent. New cars, new telephones, new computers etc are the result of liberalisation, mainly because of investment from outside. But all this foreign investment has not led to extra growth, which is what matters. What is the use of all this foreign investment if it results in the closure of existing industries and growing unemployment?

Indians have been told by Americans that open markets and low interest rates are good for you. So we go ahead and do what they tell us. We do have open markets, low interest rates and free trade. But we should have growth too. But there is no growth.

We are copying the West and are doing what the West tells us, because we are told that it is good for us. Good, yes, for a few people, but for the vast majority of Indians, there is nothing but misery and unemployment. Indians have been told by Americans that open markets and low interest rates are good for you. So we go ahead and do what they tell us. We do have open markets, low interest rates and free trade. But we should have growth too. But there is no growth. We are copying the West and are doing what the West tells us, because we are told that it is good for us. Good, yes, for a few people, but for the vast majority of Indians, there is nothing but misery and unemployment. Courtesy: Free Press Journal

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#115 rsridhar

RS, they will; they did. I have very long experience with them, of these matters.

They do raise their eyebrows and then some! If you are not aware of it then either your experience is limited or you have been incredibly fortunate where you worked and/or lived. Perhaps the type of your work experience has not been relevant to hiring etc., since your statement seems to be more ``theoretical`` than predicated on experiential observation.

Ref Urstruly #67

[As a matter of fact, in the words of Naom Chomsky, West has the monoply on violence for the past 800 years. This has to stop.]

Aha, that explains the violence in Kashmir. It is the Islamists` way of breaking one Western monopoly.

re:#110 by ali87
Read my post again. I was talking about networking by Indians in US.
I am not saying networking does not happen in India. They revel in it. I was questioning why there is so much reluctance to networking in US. Of course the reasons that i put forward to explain this were mere speculations and i may be off the mark by a wide margin.
Sridhar

re:#113 by tahmed32
You were morally right in what you did (morally from desi standpoint) but if you had hired all Pakistani employees who were as good as any other, my guess is, no American would raise an eyebrow. It is just an acceptable business practice. You would of course have to justify what you did with positive results.
Sridhar

tahmed32 # 113

I agree with you. Even if we make an effort to stop networking it will always exist. If one of your top performers recommends someone you need to pay heed to his recommendation.

rsridhar: my experience has been that a little different: i was asked to start an IT unit about 20 years ago in a major international organization based in the US. i remember being told of a couple of systems specialists i could check out. ``they are indians, i should tell you`` i was advised, as if this meant they were unknown quantities: this was back when india and IT were just starting their love affair. i hired the two after talking to them and they worked out fine and we are still good friends when we meet. however, soon after joining, one of these chaps came to me advising me of this really smart kid from bombay whom he could use on his project, and i said fine. soon i had smart kids from bombay and madras popping out of the blue every day, and a couple of pakistanis too.
while i wanted to leave it to the individual team leaders to do their own recruitment, i had a job to do and i decided i needed to put my foot down. so i set a verbal rule that until further notice we would not hire anyone from either the subcontinent or the USA, since these were already overrepresented and that was not consistent with the international nature of our organization. after that we had no trouble finding excellent chinese, latino, brit, russian programmers who proved just as good as any indian or US or paki programmer.

moral: i think it makes good business sense, and is also morally correct, to NOT give special preferences to people from your own part of the world. such networking will happen in any case, of course, so no need to worry about it not happening. at least that is my view.

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ali87 #110

Networking is a must in India. A lot of things are done in an informal manner.

The networking of Indians in USA is social among Indians. Most Indians tend to be social animals. Professional network of most Indians is diverse. This is true for Indians who came in the 1980`s and lived in areas without a high concentration of Indians. With the concentration of Indians increasing and the recent influx of H-1Bs things have changed among the new arrivals. Most of them have a narrower and more exclusive ethnic network.

#109 by rsridhar on May 22, 2003 2:56pm PT

What I find funny is even successful groups try the victimology route or the innocence route.
What exactly is Tie if not a networking opporutinty.
When you talk of networking perhaps you dont consider Malayalis, Gujartis, Marwadis as indians I suppose or for that matter the Bhoras.

Each of this community is excellent in networking wich is why they owe thier success in india. Of course the educated indians look down on them because the do blue collar kind of work or business where terms like ek taka do taka are prevalent.

Im amused that people like sridhar talk about reluctance in networking, when in trains you can see older people directly asking younger men if they are married and if not what money they earn and what are thier future plans.

That indians dont network has to be the biggest lie. Just go to Tamil sangham in newdelhi youll know. Take of the case of ITI (Indian telephone industires)in bangalore it has a great number of telgu speaking people. HAL (Hindustan Aeronatics Ltd) has a great many Anglo Indians in mangerial posts. BHEL and BEL is full of tamilans. Similary speakign Tamil is of great advantage in Kannada Bangalore because many tamilians are in managerial positions. PRAXAIR (the US gas gaint) in bangalore is full of Bengalis who cant be other wise found in most companies in bangalore because the MD and senior personal are Bengali. Recently when Pricewaterhouse Coopers (headquatered in Callcuta)was taken over by IBM many consultants were fired. As the redudnant people were fired some of them made their way to Infosys, Wipro and Satyam and guess what where ever there is a Bengali who is a year old in these compaies in a managerial position you can be sure to find he has a team which mainly comprises of Bengalis and mostly from PWC.

re:#107 by tahmed32
What you say is very true. The other thing i found was that the jewish community does not shy away from openly networking and helping other jews. May be this has something to do with history of holocaust. They have never let the deeds of hitler and co ever fade away from public memory. If you watch the History Channel, you would know how often the history of Nazi Germany is shown. Jews have stayed in public memory as the aggrieved party.
I find Indians shy away from openly networking. They want to give an air of being fair. This would make sense in India but not in US.
Sridhar

`` Stretching the networking concept a bit, I am sure Infosys got its first projects through right connections (in addition to economic advantage). In the company that I work, one of our divisions (not mine) has given a contract to an Indian software manufacturer, because (I think) three of the leading people of that division were its former employees ``

If those three employees were good or exceptional the management will be extremely comfortable giving the contract to them. If you want to call this networking that is fine with me. I call it covering your ass in corporate America. That is the way things work.

In my previous company I would say 90% of Indians got their jobs without networking.

arjun_m and bbabu:

Your answer comes from Rsridhar at # 103, who I agree with completely.

This is what I meant to say that networking helps in getting you to right places, but you got to have merit first. Otoh, nepotism tries to get you to right place without your having merit at the cost of some one having merit.

Stretching the networking concept a bit, I am sure Infosys got its first projects through right connections (in addition to economic advantage). In the company that I work, one of our divisions (not mine) has given a contract to an Indian software manufacturer, because (I think) three of the leading people of that division were its former employees. Now for the solution that that division wanted, contract could have gone to at least one other competitor, but (I think) that Indian manufacturer had an advantage that three of its former employees were working with us. However, if that manufacturer were only half as good or say 75% of the competitor in terms of positive points in its favor, the decision could have gone against it.

I agree with Rsridhar that when a student graduates from an IIT and heads for Silicon Valley, I am sure that the IIT alumni there helps him adjust. This advantage would not be available to say an Afghan graduate in Information Technology from Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad or to some one from University of Poone in Gujrat.

Networking is a common practice in multinationals in India and Pakistan where the employees try their luck to get placements in foreign countries of their choices.

rsridhar #103 i remember a russian jewish immigrant who was fairly mediocre in his work tell me he was starting his own business with his wife, and said how some jewish friends were helping them get started. a few months later we ran into one another and he told me of the contracts they had, and he had just purchased a million dollar house. i saw him again after several years, and the business was folded and he was scrambling again.
Moral: ``who you know`` helps you get started. ``what you know`` is what you need to stay in business. and someone who doesnt wait for mr. who to get him started is probably going to be the one who ultimately succeeds.