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Mridul/Rajen Rajen has done a lot of research on this subject and honestly you do not expect me to improve upon it. You possibly know about the Indian Investment Centres run under the auspices of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Government of India. It has offices in New York, London, Tokyo, Dusselfdorf, etc. These are small offices headed by an IAS officer on deputation, a second officer and a few Assistants. Their job is to recruit industrialists to India for joint ventures on terms attractive to both the parties. India also seeks expertise in various fields in order to help Indian businessmen. They also provide help and advice to both importers and exporters of various products. I am not discussing about large-scale or heavy industries. So far as small industries-cottage industries and the like- are concerned, I don’t think the Centres could do much. I saw samples of various little things, say for example, toys, for which the Directors could not find promoters or buyers. I think some of these were sent by the All India Women’s Handicrafts’ Board or something, I forget after so many years really. Then I met an Assamese entrepreneur in London who showed me a sample of a small accessory required for heart operation; I was simply horrified to look at the thing, it was so rough and ugly-looking without proper packing. Whatever the merits of the product, it must be well finished and packaged. Could our businessmen be so ignorant? I met a manufacturer of leather jackets from Pakistan. He told me Pakistani products do not sell because of poor finish; for examples the buttons were not good. His jackets were sewn with costly Japanese-made buttons which lasted. He went directly to the Indian/Pakistani shops with the hope of getting contracts for supply. He did not carry a lot of samples; he said he could make to order. I do not how far he succeeded. I then met a Gujarati businessman who regularly visited UK to collect money from shopkeepers who seldom bought goods from him on payment of cash. Another Gujarati businessman, a dealer of textiles who went bankrupt, told me that only a dishonest, cutthroat businessman could survive in the textile trade in London. The moral is whatever business you want to start, you must take into account the possibility of losses. Then about marketing. I met a diamond cutting-tool manufacturer from Mumbai. It was a limited market. The manufacturer was able to carry them inside one of the pockets of his jacket and went from door to door of his likely clients in the Hatton Garden area where the jewellers were. I don’t know whether he succeeded. The point is promotion of marketing is not undertaken in that way in the advanced countries. My youngest son along with a few University friends of his bought a franchise from an American firm to sell water-purifiers in Spain. He is no longer in that business but I had an idea how he and his partners went about the business. The trouble with Indian cottage industry is that some of the products are officially sponsored which means a few things are exhibited in a show room of premises like those of Assam Houses in Calcutta or New Delhi with perhaps an attractive sales assistant and that’s all. If there is any sell, it is by one of our countrymen or a few others having some connection with Assam or Nagaland etc. In Moscow airport I saw lots of Indian goods, bric-á-brac, mainly decorative items made of brass and other stuff.. I did not see lots of things being sold while waiting at the airport but I could see that the displays were the result of Indo-Russian friendship during the communist regime. Of course Russia is still friend; only the other day they openly supported India’s entry into the Security Council. Goods from India and Bangladesh are abundantly available in areas predominantly inhabited by our people. Lots and lots of goods. The businesses survive because Indians and Bangladeshis sell and buy them. A small percentage of the buyers and sellers could be cosmopolitan. Say for example, Videos sold to Arabs and Africans. You realize our plight, I hope. There is not a single shop in London owned by an Assamese. That must be the case in USA as well. Mridul spoke of lethargy of the Assamese people in
general. I do not think Assamese people are inherently so. I think they need a change of scene. I asked an English
boy of about thirteen years what he wanted to be in future. He did not come up
with a ready reply. I asked him: Do you want to be a doctor, an engineer, a
lawyer, a teacher and so on? He did not have ambition to be any one of them. At
last I asked him what about the career of a pilot? He instantly became perky.
Assamese young men and women might not take to making passi-khorahi but I am
sure at the grass-root they would like to be a car-driver, a policeman, a
handloom weaver, a nurse, a receptionist/typist and so on. Now as regards coming out of the state in search of job, I am told
that Assamese men and women do not hesitate to take the plunge these days. In
Assam we lack vital information in many fields. For example, I appeared once at
an All India examination and even became successful. I did not join, the job was
in Himachal Pradesh or somewhere as my salary at home was higher. But that job
was better than mine having a future. Other people do not go to a posting
outside the State for which there are valid reasons. I once approached Late
Lakshminath Phookan, the Editor of Assam Tribune for a job. He offered me one
but then added the job I was then doing was a superior job by all accounts. He
said if you had confidence to work as a journalist in New Delhi for a foreign
agency, you should join Assam Tribune, not otherwise. I replied that I didn’t
have that confidence. Today I’ve it; then I didn’t. By the way, I once got a job
as a reporter in an All India news agency but I didn’t join as, again, my pay
was much, much higher than what was
offered. I didn’t think of the future. It was during the language agitation in Assam, I asked a very prominent Communist leader from Assam why he did not protest at certain decisions of the All India Communist Party meetings? He confided in me:Baruah, look here. The representatives from Assam are a minority. Whenever we want to open our mouth, we’ re shut down by other vested groups. Late Principal Hem Barua told me that as he was not the leader of the Praja Socialist Party in Parliament, he had often to play second fiddle while taking part in Parliamentary debates. His only satisfaction was that he, a Calcutta product, was competing with a man like late Sri Nath Pae, the PSP leader who was intellectually nourished in the best of UK institutions. However Hem Barua was polite; he did well and enjoyed the esteem of a person like Late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister. It is a bad idea having to illustrate matters from personal experience which I am doing because I do not have first-hand knowledge of anything really. I have also the utterly despicable tendency of becoming verbose. So I stop. Regards Bhuban |
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