Here we are, in continuation of the previous post, on ways to tackle the problems faced by the country due to the abundant nature of the Indian economy, as explained in the previous two posts. The excerpt is from It Takes Two To Tango, written by serial entrepreneur, Gaurav Marya. We have divided the subject in three parts. This is the first of the three-part article.

I am an optimist but I don’t wear rose-tinted glasses. I am well aware that problems exist for us in India. The World Bank global “Doing Business Project” ranks India 132 among the 183 countries judged on the criteria of the “ease of doing business.” This is a rank lower than Gaza and the West Bank, but higher than Nigeria. Our neighbours score better; Bangladesh – 122, Nepal – 107, Pakistan – 105 and Sri Lanka – 89.

I share the concern expressed by Prof. Dipankar Gupta, an eminent scholar who started the Business Ethic and Integrity Services at KPMG, when he says: “If India is teaming ahead with a growth rate of roughly seven top nice per cent. . .why is India shining on some fronts and not on others?” (This is from the book The Caged Phoenix.) Prof. Gupta goes on to talk about the “structural impediments. . .[that] deny growth benefits to the majority of one billion plus Indians.”

He is not alone. The Anna Hazare movement has put corruption back on the popular agenda. Aamir Khan, through his television reality show, Satyamev Jayate, has tried to awaken the nation’s conscience on many horrifying facts that still hold true in the country. We still face the challenge of providing quality education to our youth and children. Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilenkani has said: “Technically we have free public schooling. Government schools exist for that. However, in reality, the government schools are dysfunctional.” In his book Imagining India, the quotes that of the 350,000 engineering students who graduate every year, only half can be considered to be employable.

In sum, we need to evolve ways in which the retail investor, the micro customer and the small entrepreneur feel more empowered to design useful, profitable and desirable initiatives. So is the glass half-full or half-empty? Frankly speaking, I don’t have the time to debate that. I want to focus my energies on joining the entrepreneurs who are coming forward to fill the glass. And we are slowly yet steadily succeeding to do so.

My concern here is to move beyond the complacence that “feel good” thinking gives us when we hear growth stories. My urge is to shake off the despondency that is settled within when we think of all the things we still have to achieve as a nation. My urgent need is to share the conviction that ultimately we can only sustain our individual growth if we can create benefit for the whole nation. What encourages me is that I see this same spirit that moves the Indian entrepreneur.

Continued. . .

Be a Quitter. Be the Change. Take Charge of Life

A schoolteacher’s son from rural Gujarat had a dream: to make it big in life. He quit taking “no” for an answer. He ruffled a few wedges initially in life for his inability to hear “no”. Dhirubhai Ambani left his hometown and his humble beginnings to make it big in Yemen, and from here returned to take a chance that eventually bore him millions. The rest, as they stay, is stuff history books are made of. Reliance commercial company, started in 1942, changed the face of Indian Business. It is evident how quitting hearing “no” took one man’s dream from rural India to a Fortune 500 company. He went on to be a quitter and initiated the change, before taking charge of his life and becoming an utter success.

Quite early in his career Bill Gates realised that when you intend to create a giant like Microsoft, school transcripts wouldn’t really count. He left school to sell software. All of 19, Bill was an aspiring Math student at the prestigious Harvard University in Boston when he dropped out even before graduating. But not before meeting his two future business partners, Steve Balmer and Paul Allen. Bill wanted to someday make computers affordable for the average person. And so he did. Bill quit conformity to create a trend we all find our everyday lives dependent on – Microsoft Windows.

He stepped into the Hindi film industry as a child actor at a tender age of eight, and eleven years later won the National Award as a debutant for his first commercial film. After that, he had to face a string of failures in his career. A few films and lessons later, he quit mediocrity and became known as Aamir Khan, the actor India is most proud of today. He started his journey towards being a perfectionist – taking one film at a time, giving it all he got, the best of efforts and the time it required, often involving himself beyond the set boundary of an actor. He wasn’t required to do that considering the cushioned Film Industry background he hailed from, but he stood in the same Industry as someone who epitomised finesse. Today, Aamir Khan doesn’t attend any award function/ceremony and considers his audience the final critic.

When a student from California State University left school in 1968 and made a short film “Amblin”, the cash registers started ringing for the award-winning director, Steven Spielberg. The director of the top-grosser “Jurassic Park” and the much acclaimed “The Colour Purple” is a college drop out. He turned his back on a degree to pursue his dream and holds an Academy Award in his hand instead. He did not complete his classes and neither did comply with the tradition, but instead worked on to create life-size dinosaurs.

If You Don’t Like the Normal, Just Quit It! “You have to quit doing things that stop you from doing the things you are born to do.”