Time to scale up!

Time to scale up!


Ma Durga, believers aver, “arrived” this year on a celestial swing, a dolna, depicted in all the puja pandals by chains descending from the heavens on either side of the idols. And the clear implication of this, to a troubled and much harried world, is that she would waft our troubles away by the displacement caused by that heavenly swinging motion.

And to cement the image of impending good times, on Dussehra/ Vijaya Dashami 2009, she also “departs” grandly, on elephant back. And this elephant or gaja as her vehicle/ Vahan, symbolises an ushering in of prosperity.

For us Indians perpetually under the yoke, prosperity generally means a lessening of our trials and tribulations as opposed to an out-and-out transformation. We are so used to living in the embrace of relative shades of grey that we dare not aspire to brazen upliftment!

So much so, that achievements and breakthroughs, such as ISRO finding hydroxyl and ice on the moon; and Leander Paes winning his 10th Tennis Grand Slam Doubles Title; have perforce to be regarded as exceptions rather than the rule.

Our own occasional stabs at greatness are in sharp contrast to the world view of the “can-do” Americans. They have a singular talent for thinking big.That they also routinely gather up the best human capital available globally, accounts for their other great characteristic-innovation; and what they themselves call “American ingenuity”.

It must be a matter of some pride that many of the individuals that make up the tapestry of American achievement are ethnic Indians. Of course, this luminescence comes from the export of our best and brightest and the only consolation is that out well of talent does, in fact, run deep.

That is how the success of Chandrayan I comes to pass. But this achievement, like Leander Paes’ consistency, or Pankaj Advani’s winning of every conceivable title in World Billiards, or Vishwanathan Anand’s long reign in International Chess, or the virtuosity of Sachin Tendulkar with a cricket bat; is still far less than we ought to aspire to as an ancient culture of a billion plus souls. But to do so, we need to learn from the experts without reservation and unleash our potential.

A crushed and humiliated Japan after WW II, was remade in the American image by General Douglas MacArthur. Japan accepted the challenge of its changed circumstances and worked its way back to economic prosperity, albeit in the fields of electronics, automobile and two-wheeler engineering/manufacturing in the main. But in these fields they have long been world-beaters, at least in volume and mass market terms and are now climbing the luxury charts too.

So much so, that in the Koreans, the Chinese, the Singaporeans, the Malays and the Thais, you find very able imitators of the original imitator, Japan, with suitable modifications that play to their individual strengths, but with that same export oriented will to prosperity. That they all serve the Americans and their market to an overwhelming degree, is a specific vulnerability of their model seen in 2009, but we know that already.

Here, in India, driven primarily by a large and under-serviced domestic market, we have huge possibilities begging to be addressed. But first, amongst a logjam of other pent up needs, we have to deliver cutting-edge technology for once! And this, along with quality, reliability and sufficient capacity - to get away, from our “shortage” psychosis left over from the Licence-Permit Raj. And we have to do so in manufacturing, infrastructure and services alike, to achieve that most necessary quantum leap into the desirable and state-of-the-art, rather than languishing forever in the land of jogar and make-do.

Japan with its initially tinny cars and low-end and unreliable electronics, was also once derided as the fountain of all that is “cheap and nasty,” and some of that low quality opprobrium, the dangerous corner-cutting, attaches to Chinese goods today.

But in time, it is repeatedly seen, such problems recede in the face of a national determination to excel. We might be the product of a resurgent neo-colonialism and its patronising pushing of “intermediate technology” solutions designed to facilitate the selling of imported high-end goods and services to us in perpetuity. We also flaunt a third-world exceptionism, sometimes cloaked in fashionable “green” raiments, but it is motivated local collaboration to keep us desiring, only “appropriate”, translation- second-rate, solutions.

We need to view such subversive theses and their spokesmen with suspicion. And subject them to the same scrutiny we presently reserve for all those mega initiatives that may actually catapult us into the big league. A case in point is the recent observations of the Vice-President of the French senate’s committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence Mr. Chevenement, also a former Defence and Home Minister of France, who stated it is not China that would give the thumbs down to India acquiring a permanent seat in the UNSC.

China apparently sees India as another welcome Asian addition to the Security Council. And alternative European collaborators in the high-technology stakes, Britain and France, are not opposed to India’s entry either. This leaves the US and Russia. And so, we must try to fathom why they would want to keep India out?!

But intrinsically too, we are chronically suspicious of prosperity and power and thus easy to manipulate. It is a hangover of recent decades of failed socialism certainly, but also the ravages to the psyche suffered by a long subordinated people.

But the time may have come to put all this behind us. Dan Brown’s new million selling book on Masonic Symbols in Washington DC has put astrology back in fashion. Our own celebrity astrologer Bejan Daruwala has long predicted India will emerge as a “superpower” in the next few years after all.

Meanwhile, as per Vedic astrology, Saturn has recently moved from a most difficult placement in Leo to a much nicer berth in Virgo, where it will stay for the next two and half years. And coincidentally, India’s mahadasha has just changed from Venus to that of the Sun, associated almost always with growth and betterment. This mahadasha is only six years long, unlike the Venusian twenty; but if it provokes bold thinking and causes us to dare to scale up, it is time enough for the progress and prosperity we all so fervently pray for.

(1,051 words)

Vijaya Dashami
28th September, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Op-Ed Leader in The Pioneer on September 30th, 2009 entitled "Time to raise the bar". Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and is archived there under Columnists.