Make in India

I am glad that through my blog I am contributing to "make in India"! How? This blog-site is owned by an American company and hosted god-knows-where, but the content for the blog is totally generated in India. With Modiji promoting make in India everywhere, I think we also need to creatively propose what all can be made in India. We are a nightmare for manufacturing hard stuff and shipping them to places in the world, given the pathetic state of infrastructure in the country. But the official make in India seems to be focussing on just that... check out the makeinindia website.

I therefore think we need to look at alternatives... something else needs to be made in India:

1. Babies - We make them most here... and the best ones... I guess we have the right warmth and oxygen content in the atmosphere to get the best stuff to right places... Come here and just do it... deliver kahin bhi kar lena... This in other words would mean promoting tourism, luxury hotels, Osho Ashram, exotic destinations, nude beaches, etc. etc. - whatever makes the mood.
2. Manure - We have more living beings in this country per square unit of area than anywhere else in the world. And together we make more shit than anywhere else. And earth's getting so hot, we need to grow more trees. Come here, collect all this shit and process it to make manure. I am sure we have enough shit to cover all the rest of the world. And believe me, this is very fertile shit, but we are short of land in India to spread it and grow trees over it. It's just that our shit has not been able to cross our shores because of VISA limitations - we have been sending people out to spread the shit, and that's damn inefficient. And our animals are getting no opportunity. Let's manage logistics better and get the shit out. I can assure you this shit will convert deserts to dense forests.
3. Movies - We manage to make a lot of good movies, more than anyone else. From Slumdog Millionaire, the west has seen that India offers a different look and feel in movies through its filth and poverty. We have good amount of it which they can exploit a lot more. And once they get bored of it, we have the modern India as well, which is also pretty decent, and Indian movies are doing okay to showcase it. By carefully taking care of what's coming in the camera frame, we can get views like the west in many locations in India.
4. Textiles - (This is already part of the official make in India campaign, as per their website. But, what the heck, I'll still talk about it :P.) We have our styles of clothing, exquisite textiles and are pretty good at making those. Try Indian clothing - it's really cool. And besides, we have also accepted and adapted all kinds of fashion in the world. We can make everything for you, and for quite cheap. Add some premium for quality and invest a bit for quality control. Raw material is not a challenge for us in this sector. Local logistics before export will still be a challenge, but I guess it's not as bad as shipping machinery. 
5. Problems and Solutions - This one's our USP. We have so many educated young people here without anything challenging to do, and yet alive and breathing - so hungry. And all quite intelligent, analytical and argumentative. We can design academic problems for you - all subjects, all topics. And since the rest of the world is getting dumber and dumber in theoretical academics, we'll also give you solutions to those problems. We're not like cruel Resnik & Halliday who only gave answers to odd numbered problems; nor like I.E.Irodov, who wrote a whole book of problems but never cared to write one with solutions to those. We are kind and we understand that a book of problems is useless without answers to all questions at the back of the book, and another book with solutions by the side.

The above list is only indicative, and there is a lot more we are good at which the white guys can leverage to make in India. But it doesn't look like Modiji is thinking about all these things. If he's only thinking about manufacturing of machines / parts, we are going nowhere. If he's thinking of all the other things we can make, we will take the world by storm!

work, leaders - a few thoughts...

Most of us carry on with our boring meaningless jobs. And yet motivational media continues to talk about pursuing meaningful careers, doing what one wants and all that shit. Perhaps it's an illusion which if adopted, can motivate us to carry on with hope and optimism. Like God, it has the power to make us do stupid things in hope that something better will come out of the stupidity.

 

Belief in God is a fundamental necessity for most humans. For some of the rest, the belief simply does not make sense. And for the remaining individuals, like me, even the concept of 'sense', as we know it, does not apply to these things and therefore, choosing to believe or not believe is simply not feasible based on any rational explanation. I've written about it many times, so will not flaunt my agnosticism again. But brought this up to draw parallels with one's trying to find meaningful work or meaning in work or building meaningful careers.

 

I am not sure exactly when I wrote the above two paragraphs... may be some time last month. However I totally don't have any memory of writing these. I just found this now in my drafts. Happens with me often, when I look back at my old blog posts, I often cannot recollect having thought and written down all that shit past 10 years! But I do think I did a good job making sure they survived this long and will last forever if internet and the content on it can be trusted for its longevity.

 

Going back to where this post started, it seems to me now, that as humans evolved, and so did leaders among humans, the part where the leaders motivate other humans to work became the most critical aspect of leadership. Deep down, the purpose of leadership is to make sure the show goes on. And the biggest show on earth is our human civilization. The illusion of building something meaningful and in turn achieving something meaningful out of it is necessary to keep leaders motivated. However most followers are motivated by lesser incentives, like staying alive. These respective motivations are probably instinctual for both leaders and followers. Their respective concepts of rationality are built on top of basic framework defined by what drives them by design.

 

I am wondering whether the above line of argument leads to the conclusion that leaders are born, but cannot be made. I am not sure. Depends on whether some of these instincts are natural or can be built through nurture when the mind and personality are taking shape. I don't have sufficient information to derive a logical conclusion here. And also, to classify all humans into 2 groups - 'leaders' and 'followers' - doesn't seem very right... There must be many more types, and it might just be the limitation of our language that we can't identify shades of gray, and shades of all the other colors possible.