After Parag Agrawal succeeded Jack Dorsey as the new CEO of Twitter, a majority of Indians abroad and here in the country took enormous pride in the achievement. After all, it’s not a daily occurrence that an Indian leads one of the biggest companies on the planet. However, the episode also proved the sheer duplicitous nature of the countrymen.
Those cheering for Parag and Twitter are the same citizens who sneer and hurl abuse at the country’s businessmen for doing the same, here inside the sovereign borders of the country and trying to give a fillip to the Indian company.
Atul Mishra, the founder of ‘The Frustrated Indian’, summarized the main problem that is giving rise to such a precarious situation by tweeting, “Ambani-Adani have generated more wealth and jobs for the nation than 20 Nadellas, 200 Pichais and 1000 Parags multiplied 10 times over, yet they only get hate on social media. We are a nation that worries about brain drain and curses the wealth creators in the nation.”
Ambani-Adani have generated more wealth and jobs for the nation than 20 Nadellas, 200 Pichais and 1000 Parags multiplied 10 times over, yet they only get hate on social media.
We are a nation that worries about brain drain and curses the wealth creators in the nation.
— Atul Kumar Mishra (@TheAtulMishra) November 30, 2021
Read More: As India celebrates BIG TECH domination by Indians, it’s time to reflect on the issue of Brain Drain
Choose your idols wisely
People idolize the likes of Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella even though they are serving foreign companies that pay little to no taxes to the Indian government. Google, Microsoft, Twitter and other tech behemoth companies are based out of the US and thus, the major part of the taxes goes towards the American government’s way.
The Indian government and the public get tiny morsels of it and yet the Indian inc leaders of these companies are promoted to the ‘Demigod’ status. In fact, the Silicon Valley companies are still outside the ambit of the Data Protection Bill (DPR), which has been stuck with the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for some time now.
These companies harvest the user’s data in large swathes, keep it to themselves, and when the Indian government repeatedly demands them to set up data centres here in India, they refuse to do so. The tech giants then indiscriminately sell the user data for ads and make profits. The DPR, if passed will keep these companies in check.
Read More:‘Indians’ data belongs to India,’ Ravishankar Prasad sends a clear message to social media companies
Opposition leaders like Rahul Gandhi started the trend to hate on Indian businessmen
As far as the Indian business houses are concerned, the growing trend to cuss at them has been propagated by none other than Congress’ talisman and prince Rahul Gandhi. The dynast who has not made anything from scratch in his entire life and has been served a top position in the country’s oldest party, courtesy of his surname, often accuses the Modi government of being ‘suit-boot ki sarkar’ or ‘Adani-Ambani ki Sarkar’.
The accusation levelled by Rahul Gandhi is that the government supports corporates and its policies do not favour the common people of India. However, the truth cannot be far from it. The crony capitalists benefitted more under the UPA era and the Modi government shut the doors for them. It established a rule-based capitalist economy where profit and hard work are rewarded.
Read More: The myth about ‘Ambani-Adani ki sarkar’
Reliance and its massive employment drive
A company like Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) headed by Mukesh Ambani has done more for the nation development than Congress in its over 50 years rule. According to a Business Standard report, RIL alone added over 75,000 jobs in the Indian economy and hired more than 50,000 freshers in the financial year 2020-21, despite the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company hired over 50,000 freshers during the year, including hiring from some of the leading institutions such as IIMs, XLRI, ISB, IITs, NITs, BITS and ICAI throughout the year.
TATA, the true Indian success story
Another home-grown company named Tata has managed to keep the Indian flag hoisted for over a century due to its commitment towards the people of India. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) –a part of the Tata group has over 469,000 of the world’s best-trained consultants in 46 countries. In February, TCS was named a Global Top Employer by the Top Employers Institute for the sixth successive year.
The company generated consolidated revenues of US $22 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2020, and is listed on the BSE and the NSE – the two premier stock indices in India.
Jamshedpur, a multi-cultural city in the eastern state of Jharkhand has been founded by the late Jamshedji Nusserwanji Tata. The city is also called as Steel City and Tatanagar or simply Tata. It houses some of the biggest companies of India with a majority of them being of Tata Group of companies. It wouldn’t be entirely wrong to claim that Tata has single-handedly managed to revamp the fortunes of the city.
Infosys and its growing clout
Akin to Tata, another Indian success story in Infosys, based out of Bangalore has been able to give the country back manifolds. Having an annual revenue of 12.78 billion US dollars in the fiscal year 2020, the company employs almost 260 thousand employees across the planet with the major chunk of it being Indian employees.
We as a society are highly suspicious of the wealth and job creators. By and large, India is a risk-averse society and thus, the notion that businesses are for the ‘few chosen ones with billions in corpus’, is an idea that is perpetuated and ingrained in our brains from childhood.
The child then grows up dreaming of being a mere cog in the industrialized machinery, rather than inventing the new machine. However, when someone manages to be moderately successful in their enterprise, the opposition and the wildly fickle public tend to ostracize them. If India is to make big in this century, it must rid itself of such notions.
We made 41 unicorns in the first 11 months of this year. If we want the next Twitter to be based out of India, the attitude of deriding our enterprises need to stop.