Of Pride and Prejudice...

Went out to dinner with a friend last night and I came back full with more food for thought than I had consumed for a fill. What started out as a dinner to just catch-up with each other, for that is what we both intended it to be, turned out to be a soul-searching experience for me.

Fresh out of B-School and armed with a library-load of even fresher management jargon, I was high on theoretical jingoism as I waxed eloquent on areas of the like of efficiency and effectiveness, reduction of lead time and cycle time et al, in my attempt to impress upon my friend the importance of ‘value addition’ on his part to the family business, the reigns of which had now been handed over to him by his father.

Helplessly he watched me rattle off nineteen to the dozen as I kept re-iterating the need for him to pursue a Master’s in Business Administration sometime in the near future for better insights into effectively driving his business…blah blah blah…

Patiently he listened, and then when I was sure that I had spoken convincingly enough and had no more to say, he took over. And what he told me over dinner as we sat at the rooftop of Bombay Blues, watching the incandescent shimmer of evening traffic glide past us into a distant luminosity, I shall always remember as one of the key lessons life uncannily throws you way when you least foresee it.

All of 23, here was my fine young friend, out of grad school with dreams of making it big on his own as a consultant. And a good start he had made in that direction too, having landed himself a plum position in one of India’s better known consultancy firms. Barely eight odd months into his dream job and many accolades later, he had to call it quits. The family business was in the doldrums and his father in despair. Destiny now fired her salvo of taunting mocks at my friend – the son of the house - to prove all he was worth in a trial by fire as he was ushered in to hold and guard fort.

The retail tea business, for that is what they are into, was slowly beginning to succumb to the mighty clout of mammon in the form of organized retail, courtesy clearance of 100% FDI in the tea sector.

The clearance came at a time when prices had touched abysmal lows, much below the cost of production and the industry was in much need of a stimulant. With global output showing an upward trend and new producers and exporters entering the fray, the prices slumped even further. Correspondingly, Indian prices and exports took a beating and efforts were now on to shore up the bottom-line.

Faced with such a situation, it is, today a do-or-die conundrum for small time retailers in a bid to salvage their businesses. And it is no different for my friend’s family either as they struggle to stay afloat in their efforts to eke out a living. Things have reached such a zenith that they are in serious consideration of moving house form their plush apartment in uptown New Bombay to a rented flat so as only to repay the mounting debt incurred on keep the business going.

With tears in his eyes he then told me that it was all very well to mouth competitive strategy for sustained growth in business and economic development in favour of the consumer whilst supporting the claim to open markets. The ground realities, in the absence of sound economics and tempered politic, in emerging economies like ours however project a whole new story.

With domestic markets soon disappearing in the face of falling incomes and rising costs of production, it’s only a matter of time before India’s blind rally at embracing globalization is soon going to claim its merciless pound of flesh from many more families such as these.

I don’t for a minute – as I state all of this – claim to be "anti globalist". What I am attempting to say here however is, that on the issue of globalization when it comes to India, there are deeper implications that are conveniently overlooked by the powers that be, given the steeped layers of a socio-cultural pluralist and disparate state of peoples in this nation state of ours.

And here I liberally quote Thomas Friedman, one of America's foremost political and economic affairs writers, when he said that all economic growth cannot only be explained with reference to the markets; power, politics,environment and culture are of equal import. "One has to understand that it is the interaction of all of these that is increasingly defining the face of economic growth and therefore international relations today. Only then will we be able to satisfysingly order the chaos. And understand this, one must, considering that if there is one system that is influencing more people in many more ways than they'll ever understand, it's globalisation.

In dealing with a non-linear system, especially a mighty complex one, you can't just think in terms of parts or limited aspects and then add things up and then say that behaviour of this and of that, added up together, makes the whole thing. With a complex non-linear system such as globalisation, you have to break it up into pieces and then study each and every aspect and the strong interactions between them all to approximate the magnitude of impact unleashed by it."



India needs to pay heed, else it'll be India mining instead of India shining - all over a concept that is being rashly implemented, in a pip to the WTO post, berift a wider pan Indian vision!





“What is happening to the world, lies at the moment, just outside the realm of common human understanding. It is the writers, the poets, the artists, the singers, the filmmakers who can make the connections, who can find ways of bringing it into the realm of common understanding, who can translate cash-flow charts and scintillating boardroom speeches into real stories about real people with real lives. Stories about what it’s like to lose your home, your land, your job, your dignity, your past and your future to an invisible force. To someone you can’t see. You can’t hate. You can’t even imagine.”
- Arundhati Roy