Re: [nukkad] Gujarat polls: The assertion of entrepreneurs

["Dr.M.C. Gupta" <>]

[This message contained attachments that have been removed.]


This article further seals the already sealed lips of psecs, whose silence
is deafening. Here is an article by a professor from the best IIM in India,
who himself is a South Indian, not a Gujrati. Those who cannot see the facts
for themselves, nor see them when shown by experts, have only themseves to
blame.

M C Gupta

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On 1/3/08, Gireesh Dixit  wrote:
>
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> [This message contained attachments that have been removed.]
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>
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> http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1142702
> Gujarat polls: The assertion of entrepreneurs
> Prof R Vaidyanathan
>
> Wednesday, January 02, 2008  03:17 IST
> The community wants its rightful place in national politics, and will get
> it
> The election results of Gujarat have been analysed by the losers, namely
> the poll forecasters and other assorted media experts, most of whom had egg
> on their face. The real loser, namely the Congress Party, as usual declared
> victory for Sonia and Rahul. Then there was a cacophony of voices regarding
> inane things like Hindutva/ Moditva, etc.
>
> Most of the analysis missed out an important point - that Gujarat is
> asserting and claiming its well-deserved role in the national scheme of
> things. Gujarat has the most entrepreneurial and risk-taking group of
> communities and individuals, with a Diaspora spread far and wide, in East
> Africa, Europe,
> USA and East Indies. In post-Independence India, their tallest leader,
> Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was not given much importance -in a sense, he lost
> the prime minister's chair due to Gandhi's decision regarding Nehru. Not
> many national schemes/ monuments are named after him and another leader from
> that state, Morarji Desai, is completely forgotten.
> The contribution of Gujarat to our economy is mind boggling and it
> continued with its entrepreneurship even during the Nehruvian era of license
> quota-raj. But, unfortunately, in the peak planning era of the fifties and
> the sixties, policy formulation was undertaken by experts who can be broadly
> classified as liberal and vaguely progressive. A significant number of
> them belonged to the Bengal province. The Mahalonobis model adopted during
> the Second Five Year Plan gave a boost to their ideas and ideology. We find
> that very few experts from the western part of India, particularly Gujarat,
> were involved in the economic and planning affairs of our country during
> that time.
> This got strengthened in the post-Nurul Hasan period - he was education
> minister in the early seventies - wherein most of the social science
> institutions were filled with progressives of various hues.
>
> Entrepreneurship was derided and treated with contempt. It was considered
> as "bania mentality" and the by-now infamous Nehruvian thunder of "hang the
> traders from the nearest lamp post" became a part of intellectual folklore.
> Indian thinking and worldview was appropriated by a small but vociferous
> group of progressives who cheered re-naming Dharamtala in central Calcutta
> as Lenin Sarani. Risk-taking was considered as blasphemy and getting
> government jobs became the ultimate human achievement.
> Then came the major impetus in the form of liberalisation, after the
> catastrophic foreign exchange crisis of the early nineties. Before that, the
> ultimate Gujarati businessman and risk-taker, Dhirubhai Ambani, had shown
> that the government was extortionist and hence, rather than bend rules,
> entrepreneurs needed to formulate government rules to get ahead in
> business. That is a major breakthrough in entrepreneurship in our country.
> Coupled with liberalisation, this slowly brought about the decline of the
> progressives.
> It is another thing that many children of these arm chair revolutionaries
> of the sixties and seventies have since graduated from management schools to
> enter investment banking and other fields with six-figure monthly salaries.
> But the press and the electronic media still have the "progressive boomer"
> generation babies who cannot comprehend what is taking place. It is the
> assertion of the "bania" or entrepreneur against the State. Ironically, it
> is the Centre which has been putting shackles on these risk-takers, for they
> also want a place in the high table of politics, not just business.
> This assertion of Gujarat has to be distinguished from the complaints of
> say West Bengal. West Bengal has a huge grievance industry that believes it
> was wrong on the part of the British to shift the capital from Calcutta to
> Delhi. The grievance industry talks about price equalisation, imperialism,
> etc. In other words, Bengal asserts that all its problems are due to -
> imaginary or real - enemies who are outside the state, when it has itself
> destroyed all entrepreneurship in chemical/ engineering and computer
> industries, where it was a leader in the forties and fifties.
> The assertion of Gujarat is different. It is based on achievements rather
> than grievances. It wants its rightful place in the Delhi durbar since it
> has been growing in double digits, has spectacular achievements on the
> electricity and water fronts, and is the only state with courage to make
> stealing
> electricity a criminal offence. In a sense, the assertion of Gujarat is a
> logical culmination of the process of liberalisation and the emerging global
> entrepreneurship of Indians. The idiom and the contours of the debate are
> changing from that of caste, socialism and imperialism to water,
> electricity and small business. The three pillars - non-alignment,
> socialism and secularism - of the Nehruvian era, which are the prime mantra
> of the progressives, are all dead.
> Gujarat did not talk the language of caste and it is a tectonic change
> from the identity politics so much the favourite of the progressives.
> Gujarat is enthusiastic and does not want to be ignored in this era of
> business and risk-taking. Gujarat wants to occupy its role in national
> politics. That is
> the message this election has served.
>
> When the economy liberalises and business flourishes, it is but natural
> that entrepreneurs would like a major role in running the affairs of the
> country. The two-sector socialistic planning model of the fifties handed
> over political power to one group and now the liberalised,
> entrepreneur-worshipping economy will give importance to another set of
> people, who will occupy the Delhi chairs. Nothing to be surprised.
> R Vaidyanathan
>
> Professor of Finance & Control, IIM-Bangalore
> Views are personal. Feedback may be mailed to vaidya@iimb.ernet.in.
>
>
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-- 
Prof. M C Gupta
MD (Medicine), MPH,  LL.M.,

Advocate & Health and Medico-legal Consultant

mcgupta44@gmail.com
www.writing.com/authors/mcgupta44
http://mcgupta44.blogspot.com/

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