Since Shyam Saran has raised these issues I would like add a point about culture to the kettle 4 the benefit of alleged thinkers at @RSSorg.

https://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/india-s-emergence-as-leading-power-119111300015_1.html

1/n

Remember culture eats policy for breakfast. If you don’t get culture right, any hope of getting policy right is doomed.

So assessing the impact of culture before putting policy in place is imperative.

Commerce & Industry have always been relegated to the lowest levels of Hindu society for the last 2500 years.

Commerce & Industry was always with Shudras & Vaishyas, and it never became much of a concern for the brahmin class. Ample resources obviated any such need.

Even today, “going into business” is the last resort of those who don’t do well enough academically to find a salaried job. When I told my people I was gonna trade stocks for a living they were appalled.

That’s the typical attitude. Enterprise & risk taking if 4 the poor.

Only the Marwari community has evolved the culture, the informal institutions, the support groups for sharing knowledge and intelligence, the networks for raising founders’ equity & various other absolutely essential things that make enterprise possible.

Most of all, as business community that have learned to live with the reality, without forgetting their roots and have never punished failure. A fellow having declared bankruptcy can find capital again so long as his integrity is not in doubt. None other have that culture.

The Brahmanical tradition has raised a few great thinkers but for the most part, though out history, the class has specialised in producing a bureaucracy that Hindu, Muslim & British rulers used to administer India.

No businessmen.

Brahmin mind is a conservative mind averse to any risk taking. It shuns & abhors change while the business mind welcomes & exploits change for a profit. In fact, often, the business mind drives change for a profit.

Why is this important? Look at the history of revolutions.

Who caused the Industrial revolution? It was the merchant class in Britain. No not the big land owners, not the aristocrats, not the peasants or soldiers. The merchant class. Why did they lead the revolution? For a profit. Very essential to understand this.

Preior to the industrial revolution, if an artisan had a smart idea for making a better spinning wheel for yarn, he needed a patent for it. Patents could be had ONLY if the artisan was sponsored by a large landowning aristocrat. The aristocrat took 50% or more of the profits.

Only after the aristocrat signed on, could the artisan or merchant go into business. This rent seeking by aristocracy - something like our old Zamindari system - had to be overthrown before the industrial revolution could take off. And it was. The merchant led the revolt.

If you look at any revolution in antiquity or even the French Revolution you will find the merchants who led the charge for change. Even the Renaissance - the revolt of Italian cities against French domination - was led and financed by merchants who refused 2 pay taxes to France.

Moral of the story? Merchants spearhead change in society always. If you don’t give them the fullest of liberty to bring change, no society can prosper.

On the contrary, The brahmin class as maintenance people. They keep a system going but can never spearhead change.

India needs a new culture that celebrates business success, trusts businesses, allows them fullest freedom at home and abroad but also disciplines them, not by Govt. regulation, but by ensuring that there is local competition, and selectively from abroad.

Every oligopoly must have foreign completion through free imports. Every tycoon must have local completion to ensure as far as possible there is no oligopoly in the first place.

Our policy has been perverse. We allow & protect monopoly, but expose bangle manufactures 2 Chinese exports.

So the Ambanis are given virtual monopolies while small manufacturers like lock & agarbatti makers are deluged thru cheap Chinese imports.

Does that make sense?

For India to do what Shyam Saran says in his excellent piece, @rssorg needs to get out of policy making and put trusted merchants, - professional & actual businessmen - inlace to spearhead change required in policy & culture.

Dang was able 2 do it 4 China. We need an India Deng.

But before you can do that please get the charlatans who don’t understand anything but rule the roost out of office - both at the Govt. and the @rssorg level.

You are not the change India needs & cannot be. Culture should tell you that.