For the past several months, our financial press as
also other print media have been excitedly raving about our nationals
and corporations spreading their wings beyond India. They write about an
Indian company buying an oil refinery outside India; about our telecom
giant acquiring large non-Indian companies at a price that, till about a
decade ago, appeared unthinkable. They also write about Indian sugar
manufacturing companies trying to acquire agricultural lands in less
developed African/Latin American countries to support their existing
Indian business. There are also write-ups telling us that large Indian
companies engaged in steel/cement business are looking at acquiring
mining interests elsewhere in the world to meet their ever-growing
demand for inputs for their manufacturing business in India. There are
now definite reports about a successful Indian pharmaceutical company
acquiring, in the teeth of bitter litigation, a substantial non-Indian
company engaged in manufacturing and marketing generic drugs for global
sale.
All these indicate a sea change from our earlier record as
cost-effective manufacturers of basic inputs being exported to feed
large global entities in their manufacture of products that require
further value addition — in the manufacturing as well as marketing
field.
So, I started musing over these reports and asked myself
the question: Is this something that should gladden our hearts or, aside
from our usual national pride, it should provoke deeper thinking about
where are we heading?
I think about Indo-Aryans migrating 3,000
to 4,000 years ago in search of a more hospitable climate, bringing
along with them their advanced techniques and erudition. But my mind
also goes back to what happened to the people of Zoroastrian faith who
were persecuted by the fanatic spread of Islam in their home country —
Persia as it then was. My mind goes back to some newspaper reports that
the largest number of people who illegally sneak into North America from
Mexican borders are people of Indian origin.
Clearly, migration
signifies a kind of restlessness of mankind to be better tomorrow than
what they were yesterday. But the universally acclaimed success of our
software personnel does suggest that, apart from greater economic
success, they have enriched India and they have not been any less
attached to their motherland.
I have heard that one of our most
outstanding intellectuals — alas, no more — was asked by some
interviewers as to what part of his decisions concerning his personal
self and career he would have handled differently, if he was in a
position to do so. The answer was full of melancholic despair when he
said that his earlier steadfast decision to live and work in India could
have been otherwise.
I, therefore, realised that migration is
wholesome when dictated by a desire for enrichment — material and
otherwise — for self without losing faith in and love for one’s own
country. But when it is triggered by disappointment or fear, it is not
necessarily a happy phenomenon.
Take the case of Indian steel
companies seeking mining rights outside India. Perhaps they do so
because of unenlightened local governments whose desire to enrich their
power-brokers overrides that for economic development. And this is
compounded by mindless activism of people lacking knowledge about
economic home-truths, their ignorance being amply compensated by their
foolhardy bravado.
Again, take the case of Indian sugar
companies seeking farm lands elsewhere. Why have they been working in
that direction? I guess, it is because of antiquated agricultural
policies worsened by rampant political opportunism and bribery. The
great enthusiasm of our present Prime Minister about India opening a new
chapter in economic liberalisation through SEZs is all but dead. There
are credible stories about some authority in charge of granting approval
for an applicant for a unit in SEZ asking for bribes and sitting over
the application frustrating the honest efforts of the applicant to
participate in this economic reform.
So, my mind is more
burdened by the thought that this trend of ‘spreading out’ is no less
triggered by the foolish way in which we govern our polity, marked by
sloth, delays, counter-tenor of ‘activism’ and, worst of all,
engulfingly corrupt administration partnering some in the political wing
that are no less venal.
It is, of course, true that Indians by
their upbringing are more venturesome when it comes to spreading out.
Why, Mahatma Gandhi started his legal profession by seeking to work in
South Africa. Our native wit and the spirit of enterprise of our trading
community were responsible for the economic progress in some parts of
South Africa. All this appears to me as matters of pride.
But,
the recent trends do unmistakably point to the Zoroastrian syndrome:
persecution leading to migration. As Mr. Palkhivala used to eloquently
thunder, “In economics there are no miracles: only consequences”.
That is why I am raising the issue that is captured in the title of this article.
