Can you imagine an India of 1850?

Just THINK about it! There were no aeroplanes in 1850. The automobile was not yet invented and therefore there were no buses at that time. There were no railways in India in 1850. The only mode of transport was a horse and a bullock cart for short distances. Electricity was not yet invented and India did not have the telephone or a telegraph in 1850. There were no paved roads at that time and worst of all there was no national language for common people to communicate with each other across different regions of the Indian subcontinent. Indians were strangers to each other!

The only form of communication on the Indian subcontinent before 1850 was the word of mouth or the Indian Postal Service. The British East India Company established some form of postal service in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras in 1764. The service was confined to the internal activities of the East India Company. Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India, made the postal service available to the general public during his 10 year tenure from 1773-1785. Today, Indian Postal Service is the largest postal system in the world with 155,333 post offices around the country.

It was not until 1851 that the then Governor-General of India, Lord Hardinge, initiated the railway system in India that transformed the whole subcontinent and its history. The first freight train was introduced in Roorkee (now in Uttar Pradesh) on December 22, 1851. This was followed by the first passenger train service between Bori Bunder (now in downtown Bombay) and Thana (now Maharashtra) on April 16, 1853. The total length of this track was 21 miles. By 1880, the total rail network in India covered 9,000 miles, mainly connecting the three British Presidencies of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, all major port cities. Indian Railways cover 40,000 miles of tract today.

Every district in India must have a billionaire

India has probably 50 or more dollar billionaires concentrated in Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore. This leaves more than 600 districts without any major entrepreneur and therefore investment. Not only it is bad for our national security, it is bad for the rate of development. Rajasthan for example has 32 districts and to the best of my knowledge there is not a single billionaire from the state. Is it because of the infrastructure, raw material, labor or what? Just imagine if there were 32 billionaires in Rajasthan, one from every district, the state GDP would have been growing at the rate of 15% a year. Similar situations could be created in states like Uttar Pradesh with 71 districts or Bihar with 38 districts. Then who is responsible for the sorry state of affairs in all of our 610 districts? Corporate India has to accept some blame as well!

The state of Andhra Pradesh has 23 districts and quite a few are being developed in different sectors. I have tried to feature these in my blog, ‘Destination India’ and the prospects are great. Andhra Pradesh is $62 billion economy as per 2005 estimates. I have only visited Hyderabad once a long while ago but not any other district. Hopefully one day we would travel to all 23 districts and photograph them extensively the way we did in Rajasthan. It is an expensive exercise but needs to be done as early as possible! It is my belief that we do not know our own country and our governments do a bad job of enlightening us. Somebody needs to visit all 610 districts of India and create a digital library of pictures and meaningful descriptions of all the visited sites.

There might be 500 dollar billionaires in India by 2020; wouldn’t it be great if they spread their operations in all 610 districts of India? It is the job of the private sector to create employment in any country. The central and state governments can only help create conditions for the entrepreneurs to create businesses and hence grow the economy. Indian corporate sector has shown tremendous vitality in the past 10-15 years. There is no doubt in my mind that if we create a broad vision for Corporate India, it would not disappoint. Look at the Ambanis, DLF, Infosys, Mahindras, Tatas and Wipro; all have grown in leaps and bounds. It is estimated that there are 160,000 multi-millionaires in India. These investors and entrepreneurs should be able to litter the Indian landscape with creative businesses in all 35 States and Union Territories.

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World Economic Forum interviews Anand Mahindra I

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Sakaram and Pandurang to fight terror with a ‘danda’!

Once again there were serial blasts, this time in Delhi. Once again the ‘Dandy’ (Shivraj Patil) gave a statement, this time in Grey Safari suit. Once again the politicians were caught with ‘dog poop’ on their faces, this time in the national capital. But the problem remains and keeps growing. Now, the Indian Mujahideen has given an advance notice to Mumbai and I take them for their word. Who plans to protect Bombay (or Mumbai), Sakaram (a term used for an incompetent Bombay cop), or Pandurang (the omni-present peon)? India is not prepared for this new phenomenon of the ‘Islamic Terror’. If the Indian Police and other ‘National Security Agencies’ consider this as a law and order problem, they would never be able to fight this growing menace. No one understands this kind of terror better than the London security agencies or the State of Israel. Both have faced prolonged periods of organized terror and both have fought back successfully.

There are two parts to the organized terror. One is the cause and obviously the other is the solution. In my opinion, the cause could be ideological, religious or civilizational. The solution is not that easy. The first part has to be fought by a sustained effort for reconciliation and inclusion, like the one you see between Blacks and Whites in America. The second part must be an initiative and certainly not reactive. What you see in India is the latter kind. The security agencies and the police force is looking at crime prevention rather than establishing an infrastructure to combat any form of organized terrorism. The crucial part of creating the infrastructure is the infiltration into the enemy territory. In India, the terror comes predominantly from the Islamic World. The security forces need to have a cadre of well trained linguistics who could easily penetrate into the terror networks and provide critical information to the government. It means that these field agents would not only have an intimate knowledge of Urdu, Arabic, Persian and other Islamic languages but also be familiar with the Islamic Culture. India is blessed with millions of Muslim Patriots who would willingly serve their country, provided India takes care of them and their families in return.

The second part of the security infrastructure is the ‘technological advantage’. If the terror networks are using contemporary technologies to commit crime, the security agencies should be several steps ahead of them. The US government had the ‘internet technology’ since the Second World War, but never commercialized it. India needs to develop sensitive technologies for national security purposes only. This means a full participation of the private sector with personnel having a ‘National Clearance’ as well as having the best and the brightest brains working for the government. Not only the ‘Central Government’ but even the ‘State Governments’ must recruit personnel directly from the IITs and the IIMs. India has no dearth of talent. It has always been the out-dated methods of government hiring and lack of firing that has resulted into this huge second-rate pool of government employees. Another important component is the compensation to the best and the brightest. If the governments are not ready to compensate the talent commensurately, it would be their loss in the long run. Each and every act of terror has incalculable commercial and economic cost to it. We just avoid thinking about it! It is time to grow-up.

Muslims in India need progressive leadership…

There are 150 million Muslims in India who need progressive leadership to guide their future. Most of the Muslims in India follow moderate ‘Sufi Islam’, but are intimidated by a minority of very vocal Wahhabi or Deobandi element. The problem is even larger because of the absence of any credible political leadership. There are no Muslim Political leaders in India who can claim any following on the national level. The few Muslim Leaders in Kashmir or Uttar Pradesh are too self serving to think of any future for their community. My bigger concern is the ‘victim mentality’ that ordinary Muslims have started cultivating as a substitute for the lack of talent. As long as you lavish praise on the Muslim participants, they are happy and feel the competition is fair. The moment they start loosing, the competition becomes unfair. This victim mentality would not serve the Muslims well in this competitive world. Unfortunately, the Muslims need to be told the truth for their own good. Like it or not!

Muslims are too busy in their self pity and do not think of other ordinary people facing discrimination at every step in their lives. The ordinary people do not complain because they are lumped together as the ruling majority. Let me enlighten my fellow Muslim citizens. My family migrated from West Punjab (now in Pakistan) to UP (Uttar Pradesh), before and after Partition of India. We were probably a couple of hundred families. We were called refugees and were not welcome to stay in conventional neighborhoods. We were allotted some land outside the city limits to build our dwellings. This migrant community had no choice but to keep it to themselves. Muslims on the other hand were part of the regular society. If this was not discrimination what was that? Back in Punjab we grew up as meat eating people (non-vegetarians). In UP only Muslims ate meat, we were not invited to traditional ‘Hindu House-holds’. Does it sound discrimination to you? Most of us spoke in Punjabi only, but some of us could talk in English. Majority of us could barely speak in ‘Chaste Hindi’, people avoided talking to us. We learnt Hindi in just 10 years. Do you think this could be considered discrimination? We did not proclaim ‘Jihad”.

Most of the Punjabis in UP couldn’t get a job since there were no jobs to begin with. We were all self-employed and quickly made little money. Their children in schools were given an extra slap just to send a message to the parents that school teachers were not impressed. During the 50s and 60s NCC (National Cadet Corps) was mandatory, we all had to join NCC. No matter how we performed, we were never given any ranks since we did not belong to the ‘Marshall Caste’ (Warrior Classes). Talent did not mean much, you had to have some sort of ‘Singh’ attached to your name to receive any form of recognition in defense related organizations.

Once we grew up, we moved to Bombay, looking for higher education or jobs. Bombay had become a part of Maharashtra by then. Anybody coming from ‘North India’ was automatically called a ‘Bhaiyya’ (people of Eastern UP) or if you moved in from the South India, you were all ‘Madrasis’. Only a ‘Marathi Mulga’ was worth some-thing. Rest of us were outsiders and were often told to go back to where we came from. It did not matter if we were Hindus or Muslims or even Christians. we were all outsiders! Muslims, are you listening? So stop whining and compete as we all do. You just have to work little harder and smarter. We all did and succeeded.

What is the big deal about Dabbawalas of Mumbai?

The big deal is that The Economist decided to cover a topic like ‘Dabbawala’ in it’s business section on July 12, 2008 issue. It is a big deal that BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) produced a documentary on Dabbawalas and Prince Charles visited them in 2003, during his visit to India. The New York Times reported the growth rate of Dabbawalas in 2007 and Harvard Business School has produced a case study on the ‘Dabbawalas’. It is certainly a very big deal.

The system of Dabbawalas (delivery of lunch boxes) originated in Bombay around 1890s. Who actually started the service is debatable, but it was formally organized by Mahadeo Havaji Bacche, a migrant from rural areas of Maharashtra. The lunch delivery service was attractive because the distance between the residential areas and the business district in Bombay, made it difficult for the workers to go back home for lunch. Initially, some 100 unemployed Ghattis (men from the hills of Maharashtra) were contracted to deliver home food to a small group of office going people. Bacche tried to unionize this force in 1930 but failed. ‘Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust’ was registered in 1956 as a charitable trust. By 1968, the trust was converted to a commercial entity called “Mumbai Tiffin Box Carriers Association”.

The Dabbawala phenomena has prevailed over the last 100 years and more. Today, some 200,00 meals are delivered in Mumbai (Bombay) everyday, by approximately 5,000 strong work-force at a service charge of eight dollars or Rupees 325 per month. The Dabbas (Tiffin Boxes) are picked-up form the residences at 9:00 am sharp and delivered at the offices between noon and 1:00 pm. Once the lunch is finished, the empty Dabbas are collected and returned to respective homes by 5:00 pm every single day, six days a week. Indians work 6 days a week. The Dabbawalas are paid Rs. 5,000 ($125) per month on equitable basis.