Anandshankar Pandya
IT is a wonder that after the slavery of 700 hundred years when much of the wealth of India was looted, and financial institutions destroyed and the country ultimately achieved independence through nonviolence under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi then within a short span of 50 years only business community of India generated immense wealth by establishing big industries including steel, cement, textile, pharma, petrochemicals, auto, chemicals etc. and exporting its products abroad at the same time providing all the necessities of life to the masses of India by selling these goods locally without any help from the Govt.
But unfortunately due to a misplaced concept of socialism influenced by Russian ideology, Indian businessmen suffered great hardship and handicap due to hundreds of anti business rules and regulations of license and permit raj.
There were constant raids I.T., ST, Customs and excise on the industries making them weak and sick. It goes to the credit of Narasimha Rao the then Prime minister who introduced same economic reforms liberating the productive forces of the business community who immediately began to expand their business and industry due to their traditional inherent genius of entrepreneurship.
Today it has been proved beyond doubt that had the Indian business community not been strangulated by socialism for 45 years, India by now would have become a land of native multinationals, bringing rich reward to the country from all over the world. Even with a dose of partial liberalization the sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange qualified for recognition as a developed world market index alongside traditional giants like the Dow, the Nikkei, the Dax-30, the CAC-40, THE SPI and Hang Seng.
The Independent, London, started featuring in its World Markets column the much maligned BSE sensitive index of 30 scrip’s along with the listings of 10 leading markets of the developed world, like New York, Tokyo, Paris, Frankfurt and Zurich.
This, coupled with the marked success of Indian companies in raising capital from Euro – issues, boosted expectations of higher growth rate, higher profitability and the prospect of global stock markets more forthcoming with capital, especially when PE ratio of Indian companies are between 10 to 35 in comparison to MNCs like Glaxo and others hovering in the range of 40 to 75.
That the Indian companies have been moving in the right direction in other ways too is evident from the keen interest shown by them of late in quality – related matters. That includes the ISO 9000 certification, for which just one qualified in 1989, but more than 100 today.
For marketing competitively priced, zero defect products globally, Indian companies must adopt international technological specifications and standards as their own – a truth that have dawned on at least 100 companies.
The new Indian is modern rich, powerful and a staunch believer in pluralism and diversity. He is every were today. Laxmi Mittal, one of the richest men now lives in London. Dhirubhai Ambani from a scratch built a mighty business empire and his two sons Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani have further made great progress. Mukesh Ambani today is the only Indian to be ranked fifth best CEO in the world.
Though India has been affected from this global melt down yet it did well with a GDP growth of 9 per cent a year back. And though it has come down to 6 per cent due to the wrong policies of the Govt. but Indian industrialists are capable of managing all difficult situations and still making progress.
When super power countries are still reeling under the stress of recession our entrepreneurs are busy acquiring companies overseas and building overseas empires. Ratan Tata has acquired a big steel co. Corus and Jaguar a big Auto co. in London and has started making big profits. It is not for nothing that late Shri Aditya Birla had built a Rs. 3500 crore overseas empire. He planned Aluminum fluoride project in Australia and other industries in Poland, Egypt, Tanzania and Nigeria and successfully competed with top American, Chinese and Japanese players in Thailand and Indonesia.
Apart from these industrialists there is a galaxy of business leaders like Anil Agrawal, Kumar Manglam Birla, Narayan Murthy, Adi Godrej, Rahul Bajaj, Azim Premji, Anand Mahendra, Subhaschandra Goyal, Nusli Wadia, Oberio, Venugopal Dhoot, Ruia brothers and many others whose genius is second to none in the world and who are capable of removing poverty and unemployment of the masses in India if Govt. respects their views and wisdom and frames business rules and regulations according by As Gandhi ji once remarked that we should not ignore the experience and traditional wisdom of our business Community.
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