/***Dedicated to the entreprenuers of India at the bottom rungs of society****/
Actually people see business as a way of making money. So true.
But business is about making money by rendering a service and utilising that money to improve the service to gain more money and further improve that service or increase the services provided. It is not about stocking money in a pot and dying with it.
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To make 100 crores out of 1000 crores is one type of business. To make 10 rupees out of 100 is another type of business. This blog is dedicated to those business barons who make 10 rupees daily out of 100 that they invest.
There is this story that I read some time back. A person wandered into the desert in the hope of crossing it. After several days he had exhausted all his food and water supplies. He still had several days to go before he could cross it over. He started feeling thirsty.
His thirst grew to such an extent that he could not bear it at all. It was like death was near to him and staring at him. As he was pushing himself on, he saw a hand-pump in front of him. He also saw a jug full of water placed near it and there was a piece of paper kept under the jug.
His joy knew no bounds. He was about to drink the water, when he noticed something written in the paper. He started reading it. It was written that the person who sees the hand-pump has two options.
Option 1:
He can drink the water in the jug and proceed
Option 2:
He should pour that water in the hand-pump, and use it to pump out the fresh ground water. This way he can not only quench his thirst, but also fill up the jug full of water for the next thirsty traveller.
This is small business.
The small business that I am talking about is not the small business of the educated class, but even smaller business of mostly the uneducated or some-what educated elite.
Millions and millions of Indians thrive on this small business. These people risk on that few hundreds or thousands of rupees that are left with them as the last resort, invest it for their and our country's future and make a living out of it.
Most Indian small businesses are run like that. Roadside tea-vendor, roadside flower vendor, waste paper merchant peddling on his cycle, fruit /vegetable vendors pushing on the four-wheeled carts, platform hawkers, local provision stores, lathe shops, printing press, medical shop, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, small and mid-sized farmers and a wide range of small businesses doing business based on their skills or trading.
In small business, people risk their basic livelihood money including the jewels, 'thaali's, household vessels and clothes to start a new business. They put almost everything they have apart from their own labor and soul into their business.
In this small business, everyday millions of indians are pouring their only jug of water into their hand-pumps and pumping hard, there by enabling a low cost eco-system to evolve and sustain.
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Without these businesses, we would not be what we are today. Because, it is these businesses, that support the low and middle strata of society, provide them with food, clothing and even housing, that we are able to survive as a society.
But for the road-side food vendor vending food for Rs.5 and less, how can a vast majority of our landless laborers and urban poor eat.? But for the inner-wears that are peddled at Rs.5 and Rs. 10, much of our lower middle-class will not be able to wear their vests and briefs. But for the shirts and lungis that are peddled at Rs.50, much of our poor and lower middle class, will not be able to wear this. If not for these people, we will not have people who can sustain at Rs.20-100 a day.
It is their entrepreneur-ship and their ability to create and survive a business at abysmally low costs of operation, that makes us survive as a nation. No. I am not exaggerating it.
It is one thing to make products and services at low cost. It is another thing to distribute them. The entrepreneur-ship skill in making 10 rupee out of 100 rupees is much different and much harder than making 10 crores out of 100 crores. This is known. I am just adding, that it is the most vital element of today's India.
How..?
It is this production and distribution chain in things from food stuff to clothes, that keeps India as a place with low cost of living. It is the entrepreneur-ship of millions of people that keeps an eco-system of low cost of living not only for themselves, but for the whole nation.
It is this low cost eco-system of production and distribution, that sustains the low and middle levels of society and keeps our labor costs very low. It is because of this eco-system, that skilled, un-skilled, educated and un-educated labour is cheap. In a chain reaction, cheap labor enables many more products and services to be available at lower costs.
Hence the overall cost of living is lower, which makes india as an attractive labor destination in the fields of software, engineering, BPO's etc.
But for the eco-system that has been setup by the entrepreneur-ship of people whom I mentioned above, the low cost of living in India is not possible.
It may appear that the prosperity of the last few decades is primarily due to entrepreneur-ship of the educated middle-class. True. No denying the fact that the educated middle-class contributed a lot in acquiring businesses from abroad.
But what is it that made them to acquire these business..? Is it that they were technologically superior..? Or is it that they were quality wise superior..?
No.
It is primarily because as a society they were operating at much lower costs compared to the educated counter-parts living in western and U.S. societies. It is this cost competitiveness that brought businesses to them. The cost competitiveness came in because, the society operated at lower costs. Large sections of society operated at lower costs because of these low cost entrepreneurs in production and distribution chain.
It is these poor farmers, platform hawkers, road-side vendors, push-cart vendors, small time traders that created an eco-system of low cost living, by compromising on their standards of living, created a method of producing and delivering products and services at the least cost possible.
Fundamentally the lower costs of operating in our society compared to the costs of operations in developed countries combined with technologies that makes it possible to deliver ubiquitious services and products from anywhere to anywhere is what propelled the development in last few decades.
Hence if those big business barons like Premji and Narayana moorthy achieved something, it is not only because they exploited the opportunities, it is also because the low cost eco-system of India supported it and enabled them to do what they did.
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So what is the big deal about running a business at lower strata of the society..? It is a way of living, u may say.
I see it differently. It is the entrreprenuership ability of these people that makes them to pour their last jug of water into the handpump of hope. It is that ability that produces benefits to them and others in the eco-system.
The entreprenuership ability of such people need to be appreciated, protected and grown such that they are able to serve the society.
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Most modern Indian middle-class has lost the ability to be entreprenuers, while the lower middle class and poor still retain that ability. The modern middle-class is being built of technical laborers and nothing more.
Unless a nation's middle-class is built of entreprenuers, it cannot sustain its growth for long. The other way of it is, unless the entreprenuers become the middle-class, a nation cannot sustain its growth for long.
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Our nation has two choices. It can be efficient or It can be effective.
Efficient by allowing centralized economics to overrun small businesses and make most people into labor or bio-mass for few large entreprenuers.
Effective by protecting, strengthening and growing more and more small businesses of various kinds, so that our eco-systems are sustained. There will be loss of efficiency, but we will be effective as a society.
Our nation's planners should think of both, efficiency and effectiveness while they devise policies. They should not be dogmatic in their approach and ape dogmatic policies that benefit few people.
It is a national imperative to produce more and more entreprenuers in the society than creating bio-mass for large businesses of India and other countries by making more software coolies, BPO operators, engineers and technologists for businesses of europe and U.S.
It takes GUTS to pour that last jug of water, when we are dying for life, into the handpump of hope.
And that guts is what India needs..
-TBT | 
