India will ban duty-free import of flat-screen televisions from August 26

[shanmune]

Yes, it is good to read the political side of the issue. At the same time, I want to understand where things went wrong on the economic front. We all know the CAD has gone bad and that's the reason why INR is losing it's value. What I understood from Gurumurthy's article is that the import of capital goods requried for manufacturing (excluding oil imports and gold) have increased dramatically year-over-year (for the last 5 to 6 years), but the manufacturing output went down year-over-year. Please pardon my ignorance, but what I haven't understood is that how come the capital goods import increased by a huge extent when the consumer (manufacturing segment) of those goods had a year-over-year decrease in it's manufacturing output ... How can there exist such an imbalance ? I am confused ... :sad: There must be some thing terrible wrong with our economic affairs. Again, this is not taking into account of oil/gold imports where there is always an imbalance, but for the rest ??? Any thoughts ???? By the way, I am not sure if this is the right forum for me to post this ...

 

[siddh]

I am no fan of any government but if you look at the news it says " India will ban the duty-free import of flat-screen televisions from August 26, the government said in a statement on Monday, adding to a package of measures designed to prop up the rupee by stemming the flow of foreign currency out of the country." I gather this means that all the flat panels coming into the country will now attract a duty. This means panels coming through the FTA route also. The news has been published in such a way to give emphasis on the Panels brought by people from other countries.

 

[ranjeetrain]

Originally, they were the FDIers of their day, not so much attacking as walking in to do business. It seems to have become unfashionable to remember that they bled India dry before walking out again. Perhaps it is unfashionable to remember that because it doesn't suit those who think that FDI is the panacea of today. I have no doubt at all that American corporates can, and will, if given a chance, make the East India Company look like a bunch of complete amateurs.

I have to say I didn't word my post very carefully, primarily because that would make the post unbearably long and more importantly will lose focus. I didn't want to talk about how British got into India, but yes, my point was, a relatively very small group of people came to India (on the pretext of business), started interfering in politics, and used both financial as well as muscle power to overtake India. But we will be straying from the topic if we go into those details. The summary is - British divided India, in as many ways as they could. And that was their main reason for success in India. There was no way they were more powerful (in military terms) than all of Indian sultanates combined. But yes, they were singularly motivated, whereas Indian Rajas and regional rulers were more interested in going one up on the neighbor with the help of British.

There is nothing wrong in FDI. FDI can be had despite protecting the home industries. In past, government was very protective of home-grown industries, specially SSIs. But in this era of fast industrialization/commercialization and cut-throat competition, it is not possible to protect them infinitely, despite their inefficient operations.

The downturn in Indian manufacturing sector is not only a result of government's lack of willingness to protect them. But also it is indicative of the new world order. Natural selection, survival of fittest. In this age, only the fittest survives. But in India, we look at government for protection.

Okay, we will say no to FDI. What next? The situation won't change until we stop importing, say from China. There is no way our manufaturing would improve unless they improve their operational efficiency. But we Indians happpen to be too orthodox in our approach. We are very very slow in adopting new methods, new measures.

The problem is not FDI, the problem is within ourselves. We are not updating ourselves to remain competitive on the world stage.

FDI with good governance (strong regulations and monitoring) is the only way to recover Indian economy. If that doesn't happen, we will see GDP reducing year by year, imports increasing, exports declining, balance of payment problems, sliding rupee. This will all happen, unless we look at the root cause of the problems we have.

 

[ranjeetrain]

Yes, it is good to read the political side of the issue. At the same time, I want to understand where things went wrong on the economic front. We all know the CAD has gone bad and that's the reason why INR is losing it's value. What I understood from Gurumurthy's article is that the import of capital goods requried for manufacturing (excluding oil imports and gold) have increased dramatically year-over-year (for the last 5 to 6 years), but the manufacturing output went down year-over-year. Please pardon my ignorance, but what I haven't understood is that how come the capital goods import increased by a huge extent when the consumer (manufacturing segment) of those goods had a year-over-year decrease in it's manufacturing output ... How can there exist such an imbalance ? I am confused ... :sad: There must be some thing terrible wrong with our economic affairs. Again, this is not taking into account of oil/gold imports where there is always an imbalance, but for the rest ??? Any thoughts ???? By the way, I am not sure if this is the right forum for me to post this ...

There are a number of things fundametally wrong with Indian economy. I don't have a degree in Economics from Harvard, but I have been managing money for 3 decades, so I know a few things. Which, going by the current affairs, seems to be more valuable than the knowledge of our high profile team of PM-FM.

(1) Lack of Infrastructure - We all know that India lacks infrastructure. There is nothing wrong in having a shortcoming. Wrong is - to be unaware of the shortcoming or the willingness to overcome it.

Whereas very small nations - (Japan/South Korea/Sigapore/Taiwan) have upgraded their infrastructure at time warp pace, India has been stuck at left/right political clashes. Whereas other countries talk about improving efficiencies, in India we talk about protectionism.

Any nation which doesn't have infrastructure, cannot have any real sustainable long-term economic growth.

(2) Dependence on imports - No country who is dependent on imports can have long term growth. We Indians are too much "import friendly". The word "imported" is a magic word in our society. We attach so much pride to it, it instantly transforms the value of any item this word is prefixed to.

No wonder, we are still a imports-dependent country. Owing to the public sentiments, and government's lack of knowledge/lack of will to change the situation, we have not worked upon strengthning of the manufacturing sector. Look at any example, of which there are plenty in Asia alone, and it will be evident that a strong manufacturing industry is at the back of a strong economy.

But in India, we are happy importing. We won't improve our manufacturing. We won't buy a BPL/Videocon TV even if it performs 95% of the same as a Sony even at the 70% of the Sony price. We will buy Sony / Samsung.

(3) Education - For a country of 1.2 billion people, and for a country which had student from all over the world as early as 600 A.D. studying in it's universities, we are doing extremely poorly on education.

Our educational system is in dire need of reforms. Our educational institutes need to be better + cheaper and there needs to be many folds more of them. For a country of 1.2 billion poor people, the only way to upliftment of life is through education. It's an extremely simple fact, that our visionary politicians are not realizing.

The only way to change the mindset of Indian masses is through education. The biggest difference between any two persons in the world is education. Unfotunately, there has been way too little effort put into improving education system

Each of the above points can be broken down into multiple finer aspects when it comes to actually implement them. But in the root of all the problems India has, are the above three. Sort out the big three and fotunes will change.

 

[BLASTO]

Originally, they were the FDIers of their day

That's an interesting thought. But there is not much of 'investment' per se?

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

My knowledge of history (and economics, although I managed to pass an exam in that by some good guesswork :lol is very limited and my knowledge of India today, and over the past couple of centuries is not exactly great. But...

They founded the city I live in. They founded the railways. Some of Madras's roads might have been better then than now. I don't say they did any of this without self-interest, but nor would any commercial organisation. I think, yes, they "invested," but they made sure they got more out of it --- until the end, when they were loosing money and happy to go with some political face saving.

It's history, but I don't think it is entirely off-topic to the current situation, or to possible future scenarios in the success or otherwise of India's economic future.

 

[mathan]

This should have been done a long time back, the industry was also asking the government to impose duty on TV sets brought in from abroad but this government only acts when the ship starts to sink.

This new duty is not going to improve the state of the falling Rupee but this is a step in the right direction and more steps like this would help.



TVs which were brought duty free not only hurt the manufactures, it also caused loss of revenue for governments (central+state) and it also hurt our economy in a very small way. The industry had made representations with the government with facts and revenue loss figures for them and the government, but the timing of the announcement makes me believe that this is a desperate measure taken by the government for economic reasons and not under pressure from some lobby group.

If the same TV is available at the price it is sold at Bangkok, why should we import it? I don't blame the manufacturers or dealers as they need to pay higher excise duty and also have to take care of the funding for the political parties who are in power. All these expenditures are adjusted in their selling price and it is the consumers who bore the brunt. I bet we can still bring these TV's and pay the custom guys a small fraction of the 35% duty. Yeah, maybe I was wrong when I said the TV manufacturers or dealers were lobbying but maybe it was the custom guys who were seeing each and every passenger carrying a TV and thought they needed a pie on this.

 

[murali]

My knowledge of history (and economics, although I managed to pass an exam in that by some good guesswork :lol is very limited and my knowledge of India today, and over the past couple of centuries is not exactly great. But...

They founded the city I live in. They founded the railways. Some of Madras's roads might have been better then than now. I don't say they did any of this without self-interest, but nor would any commercial organisation. I think, yes, they "invested," but they made sure they got more out of it --- until the end, when they were loosing money and happy to go with some political face saving.

It's history, but I don't think it is entirely off-topic to the current situation, or to possible future scenarios in the success or otherwise of India's economic future.

I am neither an economist nor a historian by education but am an ardent reader and learner of both. Unlike all other European colonialists, the Brits always did some good things, like building infrastructure, educational institutions, respect for and rule of law etc. Having worked in several countries for nearly 40 years, I have a multitude of friends from different nationalities, including the Brits. I always like their great sense of humour and the willingness to make fun of themselves. But the problem is the mess they created wherever they left, be it in Asia or the Middle East or Africa. They saw to it that these people will keep on fighting till the end of the world.

But the problem now is not those colonial hangovers. After 66 years, we still have not grown up. It is our problem and better not to drag history into it. That has always been the psyche of the Indian whereby the thinking faculty always narrows down to finding fault with others. No wonder, we have the habit of keeping our houses and premises clean by throwing all the rubbish to the neighbour.

I can only laugh when people here write about developing a good manufacturing base and reducing imports. That is meant for the Chinese who are willing to work hard for the money they earn. We belong to the "service" industry with all those IT booms and have virtually killed our manufacturing and agricultural bases. People now thrive to make money in share market, speculative trades, real estate. Then they complain about lack of resources, especially oil for the foreign exchange crisis. You take a nation like Japan with practically little resources. You won't find many Japanese browsing Internet job sites searching for jobs in the Middle East, or migrating to the Western hemisphere. Life calls for facing realities and taking hard decisions which we guys, unfortunately, are never going to do. We continue blaming politicians, parties, Customs etc. Indeed they stink. But who will change them? Not hifivision blogs, I believe.

P.S. If you look at Kerala where I am from, in the last couple of months, all that has been going on is plenty of activities related to Ministry shuffling, solar case etc. Politicians, ministers and mediapersons have been spending all valuable time and money after these without caring for the common man and the state's issues. But we are responsible for this as can be seen from all those crowds waving flags, taking processions, blocking roads etc. The greatest part of this is that these same guys, who no doubt have misused their offices and corrupt to the core, will win in the next elections. You know in Kerala, the most literate state, only a Christian will win in Kottayam, only a Hindu in Trivandrum and only a Muslim in Malappuram.

Because, we are secular and patriotic. Jai Hind.

murali

 

[murali]

Thank you for the thank you.

But one thing - I always hate the Poms in cricket because they never play to win... they always play not to lose.

cheers.
murali

 

[krishnenduk]

Well said Murali bro.....

 

[shanmune]

I am neither an economist nor a historian by education but am an ardent reader and learner of both. Unlike all other European colonialists, the Brits always did some good things, like building infrastructure, educational institutions, respect for and rule of law etc. Having worked in several countries for nearly 40 years, I have a multitude of friends from different nationalities, including the Brits. I always like their great sense of humour and the willingness to make fun of themselves. But the problem is the mess they created wherever they left, be it in Asia or the Middle East or Africa. They saw to it that these people will keep on fighting till the end of the world.

But the problem now is not those colonial hangovers. After 66 years, we still have not grown up. It is our problem and better not to drag history into it. That has always been the psyche of the Indian whereby the thinking faculty always narrows down to finding fault with others. No wonder, we have the habit of keeping our houses and premises clean by throwing all the rubbish to the neighbour.

I can only laugh when people here write about developing a good manufacturing base and reducing imports. That is meant for the Chinese who are willing to work hard for the money they earn. We belong to the "service" industry with all those IT booms and have virtually killed our manufacturing and agricultural bases. People now thrive to make money in share market, speculative trades, real estate. Then they complain about lack of resources, especially oil for the foreign exchange crisis. You take a nation like Japan with practically little resources. You won't find many Japanese browsing Internet job sites searching for jobs in the Middle East, or migrating to the Western hemisphere. Life calls for facing realities and taking hard decisions which we guys, unfortunately, are never going to do. We continue blaming politicians, parties, Customs etc. Indeed they stink. But who will change them? Not hifivision blogs, I believe.

P.S. If you look at Kerala where I am from, in the last couple of months, all that has been going on is plenty of activities related to Ministry shuffling, solar case etc. Politicians, ministers and mediapersons have been spending all valuable time and money after these without caring for the common man and the state's issues. But we are responsible for this as can be seen from all those crowds waving flags, taking processions, blocking roads etc. The greatest part of this is that these same guys, who no doubt have misused their offices and corrupt to the core, will win in the next elections. You know in Kerala, the most literate state, only a Christian will win in Kottayam, only a Hindu in Trivandrum and only a Muslim in Malappuram.

Because, we are secular and patriotic. Jai Hind.

murali

I think most of us agree with your points. Almost on the same line, I just put 2 or 3 points quickly here.
1. Most of the developed or democratic countries value the life of their citizens, but that is not the case in India. why ? Is it because of politicians ? My simple answer - We as citizens of this country don't respect and value the life of our fellow citizens. A simple example - how many of the educated class people (leave aside the people who hasn't got education) give way for ambulance vehicles in the busy city roads ? Most of us are least bothered about it.
2. As you said, we keep on blaming politicians, right wing, left wing, etc... I found a very strange and peculiar behavior of the educated people (of course not all of them).
Many of us crib the conditions in India (it's understandable), make a big fuss about it, and still we don't respect our own rules and laws (traffic rules or keeping our locality clean, etc). The moment we land on a foreign soil, we start abiding by the rules/laws of that land. Very strange indeed !!! we crib, we violate the rules of our mother country, but start behaving nice when staying in other countries ... In that case, we morally loose any right to crib ...
3. I can say one thing with lot of esteem ... I think no other country or region is as diverse or pluralistic as India is (how many religions, how many languages, etc...) and even if there existed a country like that, I doubt if that country would have survived even for a century .. I salute this beauty of India which was the cradle of one of the oldest and advanced civilizations existed on this earth ..

 

[murali]

Cradle of civilization???

I own a small piece of land bought with loans in the initial days of my professional career. Later I bought a house. Now that I am about to end my professional career and settle down, and with no interest to build another house in that land, I have been trying to sell it and use the money to buy another house where I can spend some time in my old age.
At least half a dozen people have approached me in the last few years willing to buy the land at the prevailing market rate. Fine with me. But then I put my demand that the entire deal be "white" with no black stuff involved. They look at me as if I am crazy and walk away. Maximum 50% is offered as white, that is the bottom line. One guy took me to the Registrar who does the deal and the latter laughed for several minutes when he heard my demand. It is as if I have come from another planet. But I insist because I do not want to cheat and more importantly, spend the rest of my days in Income Tax offices. May be I am a fool and naive.

The point is --- these so-called rich or middle class or whatever you want to call them have money, are willing to spend to buy land or bouse, but do not want to pay the government a few percentages for stamp paper etc.

Evolution of civilization, I presume.

Culture, civilization, etc, they are meant to develop values in humans, not build castles, streets and temples.

Thank you and goodbye.
murali

 

[shanmune]

Cradle of civilization???

I own a small piece of land bought with loans in the initial days of my professional career. Later I bought a house. Now that I am about to end my professional career and settle down, and with no interest to build another house in that land, I have been trying to sell it and use the money to buy another house where I can spend some time in my old age.
At least half a dozen people have approached me in the last few years willing to buy the land at the prevailing market rate. Fine with me. But then I put my demand that the entire deal be "white" with no black stuff involved. They look at me as if I am crazy and walk away. Maximum 50% is offered as white, that is the bottom line. One guy took me to the Registrar who does the deal and the latter laughed for several minutes when he heard my demand. It is as if I have come from another planet. But I insist because I do not want to cheat and more importantly, spend the rest of my days in Income Tax offices. May be I am a fool and naive.

The point is --- these so-called rich or middle class or whatever you want to call them have money, are willing to spend to buy land or bouse, but do not want to pay the government a few percentages for stamp paper etc.

Evolution of civilization, I presume.

Culture, civilization, etc, they are meant to develop values in humans, not build castles, streets and temples.

Thank you and goodbye.
murali

I agree with you... that's why I said we (as Indians) don't respect the living of other citizens ... I gave an example for that and not being honest enough in paying taxes is another example for that. Of course there are many imperfections in our society, but still there are some positives left like co-existing in diversity and I attributed that to "cradle of civilization" and heritage .

 

[ranjeetrain]

I am sorry to say that in this long thread there are only a few sane voices whereas the rest are busy blaming politicians for the downturn in the economy. This post is one of the sane voice.
First of all Self-reliance or Swadeshi is used by the established upper class (business or industrial) for their own selfish reasons. This class having the lodest voice subverts the interest of the biggest section of the society - consumers.
Take th current example of imported lcd tv sets. If imported tv sets are going to be costly who would it affect? Not the rich. TheY can spend a few thousand more. I bought my first plasma set at 100k. So if I could afford it then surely I can buy at 50k instead of 30k. But the consumer who was already stretching his budget at 30k would not be able to buy it. So is it not a discrimination by the government in favour of the rich. Does this not mean that rich can get away with anything but the poor and the middle class have to suffer and mane sacrifices in the name of self-reliance.
As for our swadeshi lobby I again give you an example. Nowadays videocon's Mr. Dhoot is emerging as champion of Indian manufacturing. A few years back he bought Thomson's Crt line. His plan was to sell a technology whose future other companies abroad had already seen as ended. Now if we were to shun fdi and imported goods then the whole of india would have been watching crt tv and driving fiat and ambassador and Mr. Bajaj's Chetak .

True. Blindly blaming politicians isn't going to serve a great purpose. We are all a part of the society. Whatever good or bad is happening we are all responsible for it. Politicians are just taking advantage of a public that is busyy with their own life. If politicians knew they would be held accountable for what they do they won't go berserk the way they are doing.

FDI is critical for India not only because it gives us better products at more competitive price. It is critical because we DON'T have CAPITAL of our own. India needs capital. Where will it come from? Indians are busy parking their money in swiss banks. Whatever capital we have thousands of crores of that is going out of country on a monthly basis. Unless we attarct FDI we are not going to remain competitive with the fast changing world.

 

[BLASTO]

I have to say I didn't word my post very carefully, primarily because that would make the post unbearably long and more importantly will lose focus. I didn't want to talk about how British got into India, but yes, my point was, a relatively very small group of people came to India (on the pretext of business), started interfering in politics, and used both financial as well as muscle power to overtake India. But we will be straying from the topic if we go into those details. The summary is - British divided India, in as many ways as they could. And that was their main reason for success in India. There was no way they were more powerful (in military terms) than all of Indian sultanates combined. But yes, they were singularly motivated, whereas Indian Rajas and regional rulers were more interested in going one up on the neighbor with the help of British.

Putting things into perspective always help not losing focus. I am just rewording what you have written above in the below paragraphs.

It is imperative to understand that there was no "India" as we know it, during the time the British came in (however few they may be).

It was a scattered landmass ruled by small to medium sized competing rulers competing for resources and land.

In today's context, you can imagine each one as an autonomous country in itself to get the context right. So, there was no single country and actually nothing to divide.

Each country only safeguarded their own interest apparently. Add to that most of the neighboring countries were foes rather than friends apparently. An analogy in today's terms will be, If there is a third nation which were more powerful than India but certainly weaker than India, Pakistan and Srilanka combined were to wage a war on India, will the three countries unite and fight back? Such is the expectation when trying to comprehend the Indian rulers of the past uniting to fight the British (leaving out few obvious pockets of friendliness). In fact, a lot of them would have been happy to get rid of the neighbors.

The British really just made pacts with disconnected autonomous countries initially and finding it to easy took the next steps.

With this picture, it can be argued that the British actually unified India (when they left).

This is actually a picture portrayed in lots of history books outside India and if you think as a neutral person, It is not even far from truth.

If, today, you sit in the safe confines of a single nation and look back trying to rebuild the past, you will face parallax like what your post suggests or what the Indian history books would want you to believe.

Just my 2 cents..

 

[BLASTO]

My knowledge of history (and economics, although I managed to pass an exam in that by some good guesswork :lol

Maybe you can use your knowledge and guesswork to try answer my long term doubt.. hyeah:

Something that always perplexed me is, why are not many white people around?? I mean 300 years is quite a long time not to leave any footprints??

South Africa, for instance, and a lot of other places are a mixed population really..

 

[ghatgepatil]

Yes Blasto, quite true.

Indian history books tell a complete different story. Each and every chapter which we went through (when kids) have / had been manipulated to suit the 'long term' aspirations of the so-called democratic political brigade. Well, anything to do with our history of the '20th century' has been cut to shreds. The worst impact is on our younger generations.

Well, did WE not accept 'all' for a very very long time??? Its only NOW, that the truth/actual is coming in the forefront. When, we have already spent too much time, virtually a life-time to accept wrong.

 

[ranjeetrain]

While I agreed with your earlier post I have to disagree here. You talked about bpl and videocon. First of all to my knowledge bpl was not an indian company at least in the beginning. I may be wrong here and I wait to be corrected. Secondly these companies imported their technology so there is nothing indigenous about them. There manufacturing processes consisted of tightening the screws. They never left a chance to tie up with foreign companies. Bpl collaborated witb sanyo. So these and all other so called swadeshi companies acted in thier own selfish interst and not to promote indian manufacturing. I will gi e an example of Tata the great Indian industrialist. Tata steel is actively demanding higher import dusties on steel to protect local industry but tata have collaboration with every forien company in every field. What is the need for tata to partner with sky of Britain. Why is tata importing set top boxes. Why is not tata manufacturing these boxes which are very simple and cheap devices in india. What would be tata's reaction if govt. were to ban import of set top boxes. So you see these Indian companies are not so Indian at heart. I am not saying that they should be. In today's world business cant not be run by sentiments .

You talked about education. You are somewhat right here but as ours is a poor country we can not provide high education to everyone. Bigger reform in education would be if the medium of education were to be made the native language of the population into the higher studies.
Think about it and give one example where a country has developed based upon an education system in a foreign language.
Our 90% population cannot pursue higher education because of English. The rest 10% of the so called educated people get marks by rattafication. Their minds are forever in the service mode. Their minds are not set free to innovate and creative thinking.

Bro, I agree with some parts of your post, and disagree with others.

Agree that "these Indian companies are not so Indian at heart". But you answered your own question immediately: "In today's world business cant not be run by sentiments ."

The point is - a business has to be run like a business. Ask those who are in business. Service class people often blame businessmen for wrongdoings. Whereas, the fact is that businessmen do face a lot of troubles we conveniently choose to ignore while we crib about their unfair practices and all. (And here I am not protecting rotten apples who hoards goods causing artificial shortage and such. IMO, they are not buniessmen but criminals and unfair business practices like those must be stopped. A good starting point would be severe imprisonment of people hoarding goods causing artificial shortage.)

I have a question if I may. Would you bother about the consumers' interest and nations' interest more or would you see how the business would flourish if you were the highest decision maker of a multi-billion dollar company?

I am sure you answered that as "profit for the business" would be your top priority. You see, the first and foremost target of a business is profit. A business won't exist until it runs in profit. Once a business has established itself, it has run for years or decades in profit, then is when the company can take social responsibilities such as consumer interest and national interest. If a company starts with the idea of consumer welfare and national interest, I am afraid to say, noble as the idea sounds, it is doomed to fail. Start a business and you will see what I mean. It's easy to blame businesses for being selfish but it's hard to be unselfish businessman in this competitive world. Only the companies who have been in business for long will be able to put consumers ahead of everythign else.

I also want to talk about your example of STBs by TATAs.

Again, I don't see why you should see it as a problem if they are selling imported STBs rather than manufacture their own. As far as I can see, there would be more inconvenineces than conveniences if they didn't do so.

We will be buying made in China stuff from fleebay. Of course quality will be a problem. We might not get a warranty or service support, not to ask, we will be buying online blindly, without actually seeing the product. We also might be paying more (due to added cost of freight and cutoms).

I have to ask, which option do you prefer? Buying off fleebay/Amazon with pratically no warranty and paying extras in customs/freight or buying from a trusted industry of repute from your homeland, which backs the product with a warranty, gives you a cheaper price by importing in bulk and saves you hassles. Which option do you prefer?

Another point is - why do you hold it against them if they are not manufacturing the stuff. By the same token, would you also blame ISRO for using foreign made components in their rockets? If ISRO didn't do that, let alone having the capacity to blast off a two tonne load into geosynchronous orbit, we won't even be abble to send a pup in the lower orbit.

I hope you get the point. The point is - it is not good to discourage people who have set out to ddo something. TATAs atleast brought the STBs here and made it accessible to masses. Otherwise how will people in remote villages/small town will ever buy it? Mind you more than half the Indian population is still not an internet user. Aren't we being a bit too harsh and selfish when we blame a company who actually has made something accessible to masses, for not being "Indian at heart", being "selfish" and not being "indigenous". If this is how we are going to look at people who are at least trying their bit, we will only be buying made in China stuff off ebay rest of our lives.

Rupee would continue to slide will be just another side effect.

 

[doors666]

With this picture, it can be argued that the British actually unified India (when they left).

This is actually a picture portrayed in lots of history books outside India and if you think as a neutral person, It is not even far from truth.

If, today, you sit in the safe confines of a single nation and look back trying to rebuild the past, you will face parallax like what your post suggests or what the Indian history books would want you to believe.

Just my 2 cents..

get over it man.... poms basically looted this country... unification was a by-product.... if they had not come, we would be rich and divided, like europe...

most of the people that usually whine about politicians dont even bother to go and vote.... you deserve the politician you dont select... most of the people that usually crib about infrastructure and other poor facilities, dont pay their taxes honestly, that is another kind of corruption...

 

[ranjeetrain]

You talked about education. You are somewhat right here but as ours is a poor country we can not provide high education to everyone. Bigger reform in education would be if the medium of education were to be made the native language of the population into the higher studies.
Think about it and give one example where a country has developed based upon an education system in a foreign language.
Our 90% population cannot pursue higher education because of English. The rest 10% of the so called educated people get marks by rattafication. Their minds are forever in the service mode. Their minds are not set free to innovate and creative thinking.

Okay, I am completely on the opposite pole on this one.

There are many countries in the world, that are desperately trying to make English as their medium of instruction, specially in higher education. Countries like India/Philipines have only been able to come to negotiating terms with the western world because of their English speaking population. If it wasn't for English speaking population of India, India would still be considered a country of snake charmers and Indian would still be cab-drivers and dabbawallas abroad and will continue to be treated like doormats.

The only thing that has made a positive difference between the India between 1950-1990 and India 1990-2010 is the FDI and English speaking middle class of India.

I feel as strongly about my mother tongue as you do about yours. But at the same time I am 1000% sure I wouldn't have achieved 1/4th of what I have without English education. English education, in my mind, has been a boon to Indians. Without English education we won't have the service industry which is a large part of our revenues in foreign currency. Without English education, we won't be so well connected. Ask someone whose English is not good what does he have to say. He will more likely wish that he had the opportunity to study English. People who only studied in their mother tongue face more problems than those who have the skills in English, world's most spoken language.

Anyway, the main point is - imparting education, regardless of the language of instruction. As far as I know, all states have their books in regional language. That is the case at least in state run schools till 10th grade. It's only in higher studies where English become medium of instruction, AFAIK. And that is immaterial in this context. The point is - the vast masses of India are illitereate as of now. It will take decades to eradicate illiteracy. Higher studies for every Indian will have to be a distant dream for now. Or so I would think.