A survey claims that around 75% of young Indians want to run their own business. This figure is the highest among the emerging economies and way ahead of China. A big bulk of these dreaming dare-devils are first timers with fresh ideas or gen-next adventurists just wanting to be different. It is this raging entrepreneurial spirit that is expected to propel India to the top of the global ladder.
But there are snakes to reckon with: The Government and those who run, or rather, ruin it. A decade of UPA has particularly been the biggest dampener for the zooming zeal that has brought India this far. Whatever has been achieved is not because of the officialdom that is supposed to spur the spiral of growth but in spite of it. It is a tragic irony that the man credited with changing for good the economic face of the country over twenty years ago is also the one who has now presided over a disastrous and scandalous reversal in very quick time. And all this under the cloaks of honesty and unassailable economic wisdom!
As scam after scam unfolds and the seamy underside of big business is exposed one can only rue the way the great growth story is being frustrated by so-called honourable men. Crony capitalism and its unholy nexus with politicos are legendary. That the Bombay Club of bloated barons who were the biggest beneficiaries of an indulgent license raj are also front runners in a liberalised raj is proof that change has only been cosmetic. Small wonder, scams too reflect this reality what with Tatas, Birlas and a slew of high profile magnates smeared in coal or stuck in spectrum. Sure the honest hoaxes in high positions of power get away with nary a spot on their white kurtas while the bureaucratic scapegoats and even pally industrialists are deemed expendable. But were not the rules of the game clear from the beginning?
It is in this context that the hue and cry over the naming of a Birla in a Coalgate FIR seems incongruent. Big business is aghast that one from its flock could be in the dock while the media bemoans the hit on the investment sentiment and economic confidence that this will entail. So, it is to be assumed and accepted that India’s business confidence index is directly proportional to the fortunes of a few chosen and pampered industrialists who also happen to deal in public money and public resources and without any risk whatsoever to their private property or purses! The confidence and comfort of millions of small and medium businesses or traders, all of who have staked their lives, livelihoods, labour and limited belongings in pursuit of dreams, is of no consequence. Their financial fate and reputation do not even figure in the economic scheme of things even if they contribute the bulk of GDP and employment, not to mention the spontaneous entrepreneurial spirit they represent, despite odds!
And speaking of odds, there is a litany that the youth of India, the aspiring brat barons, cannot afford to ignore. Even a Birla cannot insulate himself from the corruption, criminality and cowardice of the self-serving ruling elite. This country is rated at a notorious low for transactional transparency and convenience. Setting up a business here and enduring in the environment needs the spirit of an Everest climber. A suicidal streak must certainly be written into the DNA. Many official doors that open automatically to a Birla remain bolted beyond bounds or will likely budge only to liberal crease. While the service sector may seem attractive to the tech-driven current generation, it is in manufacturing and agriculture that the country’s salvation lie. Unlike the transient skills that new fangled service businesses entail, agri and manufacturing offer scope for long-term employment and stable growth. But it is these two areas that have been rendered most unattractive to youth, thanks to the insensitive and senseless policies of so-called financial wizards who impose (failed) Western prescriptions on a country with a totally different ethos.
Across sectors, small businesses and startups, in the absence of own capital, will have to rely on bank debt, that invariably spells death. When it does come (debt, not death) it is too late and too little and your project would have made a turbulent take-off and flying at half height. The private lenders, in banking or otherwise, who show enormous keenness in making a debtor of you by alluring solicitations display even more eagerness in making a defaulter of you. And then a fatal slip happens, most often a returned cheque, sullying your credit history for posterity. Mind you, any number of FIRs will not hamper a Birla’s money raising prospects or his social standing, but a simple computer generated CIBIL score is enough to seal a small fry’s fate and fairname. Blood suckers, sharks and Shylocks then zero in to scavenge on a business that has been deliberately slaughtered or was not even allowed a minimum breathing time. Indeed, all legitimate money has been put beyond the bounds of the ordinary businessman, thanks to these strangulating regulations that somehow remain shy of the self-styled, shady custodians of national ‘business morale’!
The idea is not to discourage that teeming, dreaming 75%. But the rest 25% may actually end up a wiser lot.
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