Cutting corners is not entrepreneurship...

Harish Khare

Last week, I was invited to speak at TIE, a forum of entrepreneurs of Chandigarh. At the very outset, I told my audience that someone among the organisers had made a mistake. Because I believe that the spirit of entrepreneurship in India is to be rescued from the so-called entrepreneurs. We have rarely seen businessmen and tycoons who would answer the classic definition of entrepreneur, a person who can take risk and has an appetite for innovation. I ended up telling the Chandigarh gathering that no one should mistake cutting corners for entrepreneurship. 

I was not thinking of writing about my TIE experience, but then a few days ago, I chanced upon to watch a 15-year-old movie, Serendipity. In a scene, a character is called upon to define a millionaire. And, this is the definition: “Pimple-faced college dropouts who have made unhealthy sums of money forming internet companies that create no concrete products, provide no viable services, and still manage to generate profits for all of its lazy day-trading son-of-a-bitch shareholders.”

In recent years, we have similarly told ourselves that the market has a magic wand and it can make you a crorepati overnight. The ‘reformers’ and narrative-manufacturers have created the dubious notion that millions and millions of dollars are just lying around, waiting for some bright spark to scoop them up. All that is needed for these potential millionaires is to be smart, have the spunk and have that fire in the belly to succeed, to get ahead, even if it means walking over your own grandmother. The seducing myth is that there is a bit of dormant entrepreneur in each Indian and the government, industry and the society owe it to this entrepreneur to help him come into his own. 

I told my Chandigarh audience that there is no shortcut to hard work, industry, quality, substance, and honesty. Read the books about our business leaders and none of them would be found to be asserting what German entrepreneur Robert Bosch had once insisted: that he “was always plagued by fears that someone would check my products and prove that I had made something of inferior quality.” 

Barring a few exceptions, the success models we have in the world of industry are those who are good at making connections with the politicians, bureaucrats and journalists. What is more, we have spawned false dreams. For each one fortunate enough to become a crorepati overnight, thousands are a disappointed, bitter lot — overburdened with dreams failed. For each successful IIM graduate, we have over one thousand undereducated, unemployable products from fake, bogus “business schools.” 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ initiative is floundering precisely because we mostly have bogus entrepreneurs, who are more interested in being five-star salesmen of Chinese goods than in taking up the challenge of manufacturing goods here in India. 

A year ago, the country was subjected to a very ugly row at JNU over its presumably flawed understanding of the nobility of nationalism. Suddenly, it seemed that we had become so fragile that a few ‘anti-national’ slogans would bring the whole edifice own. For weeks, we had screaming anchors, insisting on defining nationalism in the angriest of terms; we had a Delhi police commissioner and his men taking their cue from the political masters and invading the university campus; we had the Sangh Parivar staring down its detractors of the left and liberal persuasion. The police, the parivar and the mob asserted they — they alone — had the right to determine who was a ‘deshbhakt’ and who was an anti-national. 

A year later, it is more than obvious that someone had shrewdly choreographed this ‘confrontation’ at JNU, India’s premier site of debate, dissent and disagreement. That confrontation was used to make it clear that the state’s coercive power would be unleashed on the students, teachers, vice-chancellors and others if they were to insist on their right to be critical and autonomous; they were made to give in to the demands of conformism, all in the name of nationalism. 

Our government won, but the universities lost; the policeman prevailed, while the academician got tamed; the vice-chancellors have lost their moral authority as they found it expeditious to reinvent themselves as thanedars. 

Since this assault was in the name of nationalism, the JNU faculty had very becomingly decided to talk about ‘nationalism’, its meanings, its values and its ideals. In February-March 2016, they held an extended teach-in; eminent scholars — Romila Thapar, Nivedita Menon, Tania Sarkar, Gopal Guru, Apooravanand, Prabhat Patnaik, and others — took turns to meditate on the theme of nationalism. 

These lectures have now been put together in a book form, entitled What the Nation Really Needs to Know. 

The editors of the volume explain the virtuous rationale for the whole exercise: “The teach-in demonstrated that we at JNU value debate, discussion and dissent, in the best spirit of the freedom of speech, while equally demonstrating the importance of cordial, civil and respectful ways of listening, as part of our commitment to the right to be heard.” Each lecture brings out an aspect of the richness of the lofty sentiments of nationalism. And, we certainly dilute and demean the loftiness if we allow the mobs to supervise and enforce those sentiments.

The last century was witness to the horrors that got committed in the name of the love of the motherland/fatherland. The twenty-first century is witnessing a reassertion of some of that ugliness. We in India need to be watchful. Or, as the editors of the book, put it: we need to understand “the roots of the dark neo-nationalism that has filled our public space, the repressive, majoritarian version that rules our lives.” 

It is a book that every sane, sensible and sober Indian needs to read and have it in his shelf as well as to make a gift of it to his children, parents, friends and neighbours. I am afraid, in the coming days, we all shall need to consult it. 

Virat Kohli’s boys were taken to the cleaners by the Australians in the first cricket Test at Pune in just under three days. I lost a bet with a friend who insisted that India would not be able to cross 150 in the fourth innings, while I was pretty sure that Kohli’s team had the gumption not to go down without a fight. Professional cricket experts will have quite a mouthful to tell us about why we allowed ourselves be outplayed so spectacularly.

I take a larger view of the disaster at Pune. I see it as yet another reminder that we are becoming quite good at laying traps for ourselves and then walking into them. As a nation, we are overselling ourselves to ourselves. Bravado has its uses but it should not be allowed to degenerate into false and undeserving self-promotion. Within the country, we are at liberty to make exaggerated claims of brilliance, innovation or honesty; the outside world is under no obligation to adjust its standards to our convenience. The Aussie captain had forewarned that they had a plan for dealing with Kohli; and, the class showed at Pune. 

Our mediocre political leaders are taking the lead in creating nationalistic delusions and a false sense of achievements, which develop cracks in the very first hour of any international encounter. We shout at each other at home and shut out the inconvenient voice. But the world does not keep quiet or turn the other cheek. No one on the outside feels the need to lower the bar just to accommodate India and its loudmouth mascots. 

Kohli has suggested that he and team mates would learn from the smacking they got at Pune. We’ll see. 

Till then, let us cheer up with a cup of coffee. Join me. 

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