What do you think?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indians_good_for_cheap_roadside_garage/articleshow/1716374.cms

Thoughts...........

If the page fails to open, here it is :

TORONTO: I agree with this article about the India-China comparison. What really annoys me is that we in India have 10 MBAs/managers/business persons for one person that does the real work. (The ratio is supposed to be opposite.) How many people go into research as opposed to becoming paper pushers?

We are capable of having our own software companies that could design software and call it their own product. Instead, we have consulting services like TCS, Infosys, and Wipro that do work for others. What we do is similar to running a cheap roadside garage rather than designing and manufacturing a car.

This attitude extends everywhere. We have four sports officials for every athlete (I am not talking about cricket.) besides the fact that we won't win a single medal in the Olympics for next 5 Olympics in track and field. On the other hand, China is tipped to overtake US in medals tally in the upcoming Beijing Olympics. In the mean time we can spend time gloating about our "glorious 5000 year old culture and civilization" which by the way no longer exists. May be I should put a few more zeros after 5000 and new airports and roads will start popping up automatically.

Honda did not gain its reputation over night. They made substandard cars for many years. But they were independent, with their own design and research. It is all about self respect and less about business. We on the other hand are so business and money minded that we won't go that extra effort to do it on our own. We don't mind spending billions of dollars buying up foreign companies and not spend anything to fix up the broken infrastructure at home. We don't mind our graduates taking up dead end jobs in call centres.

In fact we feel proud about it instead of feeling ashamed. We feel proud about our generic drug manufacturing capability which really is copying existing drugs that some one else designed (In Mumbai lingo, it is called Ulhasnagar goods.) and we are proud of it.

As for the infrastructure, we don't have any. We complain about high fuel prices but then we see our vehicles move at an average speed of 2km/hr on our city streets. This is after 10-12 years of liberalization. If it can't be done in 10 years it means we are not capable of doing it. There are no excuses for crippled infrastructure after 10 years of "liberalization".

Even the Soviet countries had a better infrastructure after the collapse of Soviet Union. When I read the economic supplements of the news papers, I feel like I am living in the most advanced country in the world. I only need to walk out of my home on the pot holed streets with no sewage on the road, people defecating and urinating in public, no traffic lights, to see the harsh reality.

We have power cuts in most our major cities. We have new aircrafts flying on domestic routes but no new airports, no new runways, no new air traffic control, no new maintenance facilities, no new schools to train new ground engineers and pilots. All the new airline businesses are busy making money while these things go unaddressed.

As for the environment in India, it is disaster of vast proportions unfolding as we speak. We need to use small inefficient air conditioning units because our middle class house holds want to keep their cool with the extra spend able income, without thinking about the cheap gases that go into those units that damage the environment.

We are learning how to make petrol driven vehicles when the rest of world is looking for alternative fuels and technology to replace the fossil fuel driven machines. Mumbai today is amongst the top 10 most expensive cities to run business in. Where does it feature in the list of cities by infrastructure? We can start looking from bottom up.

But then again, India is a land of contrasts. We have the coldest glaciers and the hottest deserts and I am proud of it. Unfortunately that contrast also applies to wealth, business, economy and certain other things which I am not proud of and no one in the right state of mind should be.