DALIT ENTREPRENURESHIP*
in Business Industries and Trade
some Warnings and Steps that must be taken
Ladies and Gentlemen, Call me a Pessimist or a Cynic if you must! I am used to it, hence let that be so! But please Think-over what I have to say! I have the right to say what I want to say! And you have every Right to Reject and Dismiss them. But mind, what I say contain many things, for anyone to ponder about!
I only want to add that, we should not Curse the Red Light when speeding up on the Road! That Red Light is a Warning. That is in fact for our Good! We must Stop and Relax a while, till the Light Turns Green. That is sure, being nice and indeed wise! Similarly any intelligent must listen to learn and think what others say! One can reject them summarily or even out rightly, but only after listening and considering their views, unless it is only a repetition!
Sadly many of us SC&ST Dalits, seldom heed any advice or words of caution! That is one of the important reason, why We SC&ST Dalits are still backward, sixty years after 1947. Others may also not bother about warning signals. But, we need not either bother or worry about others, or think about what they do or don’t, or copy them in any way.
Here, I may appear to be highlighting only the Hurdles, or be accused of sermonising. But they are no doubt all real Red Lights! That won’t Turn Green ever on their own! We have to find Solutions and alternate Paths, to move ahead! Only that will Lead us and our Communities, to Economic and Social Prosperity, with better Standards of Living!
We SC&ST Dalit Communities have been historically Oppressed Discriminated Sidelined Neglected Marginalised and Exploited. In addition, We SC&ST Dalit Communities, have been Specifically Denied every Opportunity to Live as Human Beings with Respect Dignity Civil-Liberties and Human-Rights. Those are based on millenniums old historic continuing social and economic biases.
The prejudices against us are massive, unending, and severe. They are all always based on Racial Ethnic Colour and Cultural Antagonisms, which prevail even today, specifically to continue them in the future also! Every excuse ruse and reason were used, to justify perpetrate and perpetuate these cruelly inhuman injustices.
Those, oftentimes could not even be described or documented, in Words and on Paper, by anyone in any language, being too indecent. More criminal and inhuman, even for imagination! The Injustices and Oppressions, by the so called elitist or educated or established communities, and educated people in power position and authority, are difficult to be explained or understood. That is the extent and real Reason why this Nation, appears to be mystic and very confusing. The direct Fallout is that, this Country continues to be, and remains as an highly unjust unfair dishonest and backward Nation. It continues to Struggle to Develop. Instead of Progressing, the Nation is only inching forward, even Sixty Years after Independence!
Those of us, who sincerely talk, or genuinely believe in utilising the big Opportunities, new Openings and Emerging Businesses, must carefully look back as to where China, Soviet Russia the erstwhile USSR and USA were, just Fifty Years after their Liberation, and Declaration of Freedom and Independence! By then, they had established themselves as Super Powers. But even after sixty years, this Nation is nowhere near where those others were after only fifty years!
Those who believe in Emerging Opportunities, may Repose Great Faith in LPG – the Liberalisation Privatisation and Globalisation. They sadly seem to not see, observe, monitor and forget or bothered about, the rapidly narrowing and fast Closing Jaws of Structural Adjustments, and at the same time the Opening of the Economy in Stages. They are Closing specifically to Keep us Out of Reckoning. They have been carefully structured and regulated to prevent us from Developing, and at the same time push us down to be and remain only at the bottom, and serve others who don’t work, don’t want to work, and in fact, don’t know how to work!
The Future of this Nation, minus SC&ST Dalits, many Minorities and most of the MBCs, is being Underwritten by the Govt, only and exclusively for the benefit of the Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities. The Economy is Opening in Stages. That is a calculated Strategy, to ensure that the Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities grow, moving up Step by Step in Stages, and go Forward, and that they are not washed out by the oncoming rush of the businesses trades industries, and the goods and services of the Western and Eastern Economic Giants.
The Carefully controlled new LPG Powered Economic Dawn, is being regulated by the Govt, not because of any concern expressed by We SC&ST Dalits and others like us, but because of the Warnings and Oppositions of the Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities themselves! They don’t want any abrupt or sudden Opening of the Gates. The Govts are very sensitive to the Fears the Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities Express to any uncontrolled unregulated sudden and full opening of the Doors, any where. But the same Govts are not bothered about our losses and sufferings!
The Govts are actually, but in fact openly and publicly, Transferring the Resources of the Nation to the Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities. That they do, very Steadily and Slowly, in a planned systematic sly manner.
Most of the Water, Power, Fertile Lands, Raw Materials, Asses to National Wealth, had gone into the private hands, or are being kept carefully reserved for the future uses of these Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities. For a Moment, let us forget the Economic Growth and Opportunities. Let us see other Social and Cultural Sectors. The Utility of all Educational Institutions at every level, Benefits of every Research and Development, Import of Technology and Scientific Inventions, go to only help the Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities. Similarly, the hundreds of MOUs for Cultural Exchange, Educational Development, Scientific and Technical Collaboration, being signed by the Govts in this Country, with various Foreign Countries and Institutions, go only to Help the Growth and Benefit of the Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities.
Who are all these Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities? In fact one can boldly and fearlessly say, they are not part of the Indian Society! If they are really part of the Indian Society, they won’t so easily turn out to be Comprador agents of many exploitative Foreign Multi-National Companies on the one hand, and extremely inhuman criminal oppressors of Majority Communities and the Indigenous People of this Nation. In fact as the Father of the Indian Constitution, Baba Saheb Dr Ambedkar often had Observed, this Nation does not treat us as Citizens of this Country, but Worse than Cats and Dogs or other Animals! And he had observed that, there is no Society at all in this Country. Baba Saheb had also said that, this Country never thought of and never felt the need for building a Society. Why did he Say this, and what are the implications? When there is No Society, there is neither any Brotherhood and Cooperation, nor there be any Consensus! Only Anger Antagonism Enmity Jealousy and Intolerance between various Communities, and against other Groups.
Who really are these Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities? Let us really try to find out. In any other Country, Nation and Society, any one or the other small or big Powerful Businesses Industrialists and Traders are neither separate nor exclusive Communities? They are all, in fact every one of them is related to someone else or other in the larger Society, whatever be their avocations! Hence, they are part and parcel of the larger Society of the Nation State in those Countries. That is not so in this Country! None of the Powerful Businesses Industrialists and Trading Communities, ever belonged to We SC&ST Dalits in anyway, and never were they related to us. And most of the mental backwardness and ideological blocks are to be found only with these Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities?
As Ambedkar had said, this is a Fractured Nation – split and scattered as separate, often antagonistic mutually suspicious and intolerant Castes. In real terms, Castes are dead decayed frozen small social Groups and Communities.
Most of the Times, the Castes are actually interned in watertight, hermitically sealed separate exclusive and isolated compartments. Thus, the Castes, each one of them is separate and totally different. And on the same lines, it is a reality that all the Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities are totally different from Us – the SC&ST Dalits! As a Community, we are really different from all those Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities.
I would like to retreat once again, in spite of being repetitive; really all these business class owned Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities are not part of our Society. At least, in any case, we are not part of their Society! For, hey are separate People, belonging to exclusive Castes. Hence, they are of altogether different communities, ranged against all other people, and out to grab others money, assets, riches wealth, and spare surplus, and even very essential badly needed money for food, medicine, health care, children’s education, dress, marriage etc.
As a Nation and an heterogeneous conglomeration of different Communities, this Country always believed and still believes in Apartheid – the combination of two Dutch Words – Aparth and Hood, which mean Separate and Housing or Living. And, we have really mastered and perfected this Art. That is very different and totally unlike the too Crude and relatively short-lived Western Experiment, that evolved in a big way in South Africa, only to collapse within a period of about Four Hundred Years. Where as ours, had grown strong, and is being more powerful to turnout to be a permanent feature across the lakhs of Villages and hamlets across the Country in the Rural Areas; separate settlements and slums in the semi-urban, urban-rural areas of the various towns cities and metropolises. Hence, there is no commonality or sharing of any interest. And there is no Question of occupying any single platform by We SC&ST Dalits, at par with these Powerful Business Industrialist and Trading Communities. This once again establishes that there is no Doubt that they are Separate, and We are also Separate! This we must realise.
The Western Liberal Education transplanted rather reasonably in a successful way in this Country, had built almost every Indian Elite from their Indian Cultural Moorings in Village Communities, into multi-millionaires of modern India, and some have even grow-up to be World Class Citizens and mega-Billionaires. That was and still is, the beauty of Western Liberal Education.
What had this Nation, after 1947, Done to Us?
Today, this Nation, produces many Graduates and even Post-Graduates, who it is openly said by many Authorities Officials and Employers to be Unemployable! That, generally, when it comes to employing and appointing Us SC&ST Dalits anywhere! But, We SC&ST Dalits, also see by ourselves, those with 95 plus scoring elitist Children and other Individual Scholars, said to be very brilliant ‘first-class first’ or ‘gold-medallists’ often can’t even write a leave Letter Correctly, without any Structural Spelling Grammatical and Composition Mistakes. And that, most of today’s Graduates can’t even make, or write any Application without Copying.
Why had the Education System Collapsed so, and Failed in spite of the Great Expansion? It did not Fail? But it was Failed! It did not Collapse? It was made to Collapse! That, only to keep We SC&ST Dalits out of the System, throw out most of those who manage to get into the system, and even Fail those who somehow stay on inside the System till the last, or turn them into unfit useless poor graduates.
We must Realise that, amongst all things done so far, under the Frame Work of the Democratic and Republican Structures of Govts, built on the Govt of India Acts of the British, the Communal Award and the Solemn Agreement and Pact signed at Yerawada Jail in Poona in 1932, White Paper on Indian Independence, and various Constitutional Promises, Legal Guarantees, and other Govt Provisions and Acts, We SC&ST Dalits had really benefited from only –
· Freeships and Scholarships
· SC&ST Hostels
· Reservations in Admissions, especially in Professional Colleges and Institutions of Higher Learning
· Reservations in Jobs, at the Time of Recruitments and Appointments either by way of Direct Recruitment, or Promotion etc
· Employment Opportunities Generated by various Govts – inside the Govts, under the Govts, within the Control of the Govts, Autonomous Bodies etc funded and supported by the Govts, and in the Govt PSUs
As we were and are slowly growing up through Education, Employment – Direct Recruitments and Promotions, had come the LPG in a very big way. And the LPG, actually Attempts to systematically block undo and dismantle whatever benefits the above Schemes have Achieved. We must realise these, instead of getting carried away or enamoured by the so called Emerging Opportunities and Openings of the LPG. In fact we must open our eyes, see and remember as to what these LPGs had done elsewhere. We can crystal clearly see, what had happened to the other mighty Super Power of the World – USSR, and its Economy as a direct result of the LPG. The Crude Reality is that, the then Super Power USSR, no more exists. It had simply vanished! How? Not in thin Air! Such a large Nation had just disintegrated and split into more than a Dozen Nations – most of them still struggling to survive and exist. And what is worse is that, those Forces of Splintering, generated by LPG are still active and are at Work amongst many of them.
Yes, LPG may generate many temptations and offerings. That is for you me and perhaps some of us who are better placed, not for the millions and millions of our poor SC&ST Dalits! I had talked about the splintering and scattering of the World’s Mighty Super Power of yesteryears. Yes, We SC&ST Dalits are by ourselves a big Nation. We are the Third Largest People in the World, nearly 300 plus Million if We take all SC&ST Dalits inclusively, accounting for SC&ST Dalits in Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism etc. We Come, next only to China, and the whole Indian Population taken together – including Us SC&ST Dalits! And We SC&ST Dalits, the significant Section of Backward Nation still Struggling to Develop, are without any assets, riches, land, homes, property, riches, wealth, academic and political leaders, who could be counted and relied upon! And we have No Thinkers, No Institutions, No Colleges, and No Universities of our own. Where as the Blacks, with hardly about Fourhanded Years of Sufferings, compared to our near Four Thousand Years have many of their own Wonderful Institutions like Colleges, Universities! How then are We Going to Develop? I mean as a Community, or Class of People?
Are We SC&ST Dalits, to just remain believing and keep on waiting, when the various Govts say that –
· the Nation will be a Super-Power, by 2020?
· there will be Self-Sufficiency in Food, in another Ten Years?
· and many such tall loud and bold but most of the times hollow and only very misleading or Diversionary Claims?
Will these Satisfy us? Will these tall Promises and Declarations ever Develop us?
Are we to Remain Satisfied with Central Planning? And, are We also at the same time, be happy now, with LPG?
What will Deliver Us, as a Community?
Yes, What will Deliver Us, as a Community?
Should We Believe, or at least try to Look into the Communist Oppositions to LPG, and try to understand why they do so? Or should we simply go by the Way LPG goes? Should we toy with the Idea and Hope, and look for the ways and means of Re-Nationalising the Sold-Out and Privatised PSUs, and also Nationalise all the new and glittering Private Sector Industries, Institutions and Businesses?
What should We Do in the meantime? This Question opens up many an unexplainable, not understandable, and unexpected Pandora Boxes!
How are We SC&ST Dalits, going to make use of the so-called Opportunities Emerging due to LPG?
Yes, How are We SC&ST Dalits, going to make use of the so-called Opportunities Emerging due to LPG? Before popping up and trying to answer this, we must realise that the Post-LPG Scenario is Ruthless! There is no more any Protected Fields, in which the elite Business Houses and Industrialists of this Country Grew Up all these Decades!
The elite Business Houses and Industrialists we see around, are the same ones who had always been against us, and intolerant to our presence anywhere near by! And, they are the ones, who had been intolerantly closing down all the post-1932 Windows of Developments.
Will those who were and still are intolerant to even any of our small Developments in Education Employment and Promotions, allow us to enter in their fields of Business Industry and Trade? And that has to be carefully watched, especially in the light of the fact that, we do not even know what Businesses actually are, and are unable to understand their Strange Ethics, close-knit internal business-bondages, rather wild Mannerisms, funny techniques in different spheres, quirk ways of cutting corners, crooked methods of finding many new underground paths and burrows!
There is nobody to teach these, to any of us! And nowhere to go! And no place to learn them! No uncle or aunt, no grandfather or family friend or even any distant relative to give us useful exposures, the valuable insights, and also to properly prop us up as Entrepreneurs, Industrialists, Business People, or even as simple Traders. Hence we have to struggle all the way, groping as blind deaf and dumb people in a sea of desert sands!
We have no Culture of Business and Trade in our Surroundings, Community and in our Blood! Where can We Learn these? No School, no College, no Training Institute for these! And on the Top of it, there are many upstarts and false ones amongst us, who will always rush up, and take or block whatever opportunities emerge, and the openings that may appear in the horizon! Furthermore, we are short of Projects! And, No Capital, No Funds, No Money, and No Sponsors, or anyone to Underwrite Us! We don’t even have any seed money, no cash for working expenses, nor any operating outlays! Then, we don’t have any Financial Discipline!
We generally, are unable to separate the Business Funds, from our personal money! We can’t segregate the Funds flowing in and out, or circulating within the business, and the actual thin layer of small profits, accruing in the early years of any business or trade or industry.
We can’t sadly see the dangers of looses. It is exactly due to the lack of Financial Discipline that we often loose even the Capital Invested, taken as Loans or raised through pledging whatever small assets our parents families, or we have built up! As a result, most of even the very few odd SC&ST Dalits venturing out, to become Entrepreneurs had collapsed very badly, loosing many many millions.
There is a severe shortage of Capital amidst us. Banks have Failed us! Worse, our own People in the Banks had let us down. State Financial Institutions don’t want to look at us! Special Funding Agencies like SIDBI and NABARD don’t help us. We are too small to go anywhere near IDBI, EXIM and other Specialised Institutions. And many State SC&ST Finance and Development Corporations are already tottering.
NSFDC is busy in splitting itself into Separate SC and ST Corporations, or in taking Commissions. Individual SCs and STs have spent a lifetime and fortune in coming to these, and going back with only increasing disappointments. Every time they came to the erstwhile NSFDC, or come to the now partitioned separate SC, ST Corporations at Delhi, from Different Corners of the Country, they grow more frustrated!
The Land of Free Enterprises – USA, has an experience of only Two out of Ten Enterprises surviving and succeeding. As many as Eight Collapse. They close, and finally fold up.
What have We got to do we do to make SC&ST Dalits Entrepreneurs?
Talking, exhorting, emotional appeals don’t help or serve any purpose. Only useless crowds come up. That had been the experience of the few good officers in even the failing and failed NSFDC, and most State Corporations.
Some Samaritans and committed Officials have tried, a step by step Approach. First hold a general informative Camp! Select those who show some positive interests potential and perseverance. Select them for more intensive Exposures. Then pick up those who have potentials and real commitments, for systematic entrepreneurship training. Then take only those who are really Promising and Capable. Take up their cases with the Govts, Banks, Funding Agencies and Specialised Units like SSI etc, to Promote them further. Arrange Seed Capital if need be, and the necessary Fundings and Loans. Generally avoid subsidies. That is where the problems and real corruptions are. They had proved to be big pitfalls!
What New should We Do?
We will have to, at some stage, establish a Pool of retired but committed administrators, bankers, financial experts, mangers, technical people, to guide the struggling new and fledgling SC&ST Dalit business industrial manufacturing service and trading Units, to make a determined and concentrated effort to make them a lasting success! No other way will help.
There is one Alternative! That Alternative is, to take the very risky and also difficult, not that easy proposition of encouraging young SC&ST Dalit Boys to marry Girls from baniya communities and households, actually involved in business industrial manufacturing service and trading. See if such SC&ST Dalit Boys can learn, and come back to hep other SC&ST Dalit Boys and Families Communities enter into business industrial manufacturing service and trading.
One more real Practical Alternative is to Organise Groups of Ten Twelve Young Volunteers, or Youngsters picked up from High Schools and Colleges and make compact Groups. Pool and systematically encourage develop all their intrinsic capacities capabilities resources personal skills drives – both monetary and physical. Then train them through whatever possible ways in business industrial manufacturing service and trading; and carefully guide them through to ultimate Success. This will surely be time consuming Painful and Long Struggle. But, there is no other organised way out. And there can be no Short-Cut to the massive extensive difficult Problem of surmounting and overcoming the backwardness miseries and poverty of We SC&ST People and Communities. In fact there are no Easy Solutions to Big Problems anywhere in the World, and none were at anytime in human Evolution.
Finally are the Real Dramas in Life, and the Dilemmas –
1. Have We Prepared or Preparing our Children, particularly our Daughters Sisters Wives, even Mothers, other Women Girls and Children of our SC&ST Communities, to Face and Adjust themselves to the Culture of the fast moving heartless highly exploitative Private Sector?
2. Are We Prepared to the Unfriendly Takeovers of our Well Educated Boys and Girls, being deliberately and systematically poached and hijacked by the other Communities, who are otherwise still antagonistic and opposed to Us belonging to SC&ST Dalit Communities?
3. Are We Guarding against the takeover of the hard-built SC&ST Dalit Businesses, Industries and Wealth, easily by Cheap Girls and Bad Boys, who Trap and Marry our well educated and better placed smart Boys, and in many ways simple stupid Girls and Women?
Before I retire and rest, I would like to say –
1. Working for SC&ST Dalit Development is really a big arduous long Struggle!
2. Talking and Working about SC&ST Dalits has now become a Fashion for many!
3. The Sphere of SC&ST Dalits is now a gold Mine, as there is some National Focus, World Attention, and hence easy good money and big platforms are there!
4. Please don’t get carried away by all those who make tall claims, big speeches, deliver forceful oratories, and in short try to establish themselves as reincarnations of none other than Baba Saheb himself, or worse more than him! There are many such elements
5. Never go away either disillusioned or with overconfidence
6. Don’t be carried away by all those who make many false easy and wrong Assumptions and build big Castles in the Air, or weaves many Patterns of their own Dream World
7. Never believe in all those who talk big, offer magic wands, and boast about having advised our leaders, taught others, and moved heaven and earth during their lifetimes or tenures in Service
8. Believe not in the newly emerging many Merchants of over-confidence, out to make money, and set on jet-set lives based on our sufferings and struggles
9. Beware of all those who make a living, lead a life of Comforts, and are building huge palaces for themselves and their Families with Public Collections in the name of poor SC&ST Dalits
10. Be careful about the International Beggars, collecting money in the name of SC&ST Welfare and Development, but spending their time in their own promotions, and building Web-Sites to Post the Pictures of their Wives Children Husbands Baby and Family Members as if they belong to admired adored and much revered Royal Families
Finally, I would like to add these –
1. We have a long way to go!
2. Big Struggles await Us!
3. Many small but successful experiments had taken place, and are still on!
4. We have to learn a lot!
5. We have to prepare and harness ourselves to face many more challenges!
6. We are not really poor and weak. We are a massive powerful Political Force! Our Strength lies in our Numbers. That is in Our Unity, Determined Struggles, Concerted Fight for the Future of our Lives and Children, and Collective Actions!
We have before us the Struggles and Remarkable Works of many great SC&ST Dalits in this Country. They are all very valuable useful good great and nice Examples, for all of us anytime anywhere, to emulate and get Inspirations.
They offer us, certain types of lessons and models – both good and bad. Listed here are just few, which in many ways are very illustrative and actually are rightly representative.–
1. Internationally Trading Venkatachalams of PV Sauce and Seven-Seven Condiments of the erstwhile Madras Presidency
2. The Visakha Industries, promoted by Hon’ble Shri G Venkatswamy & Sons
3. The huge Struggles of Sardar Buta Singh and Family
4. Padma Shree Krishnammaal Jagannathan of LAFTI – Land For the Tillers in the Rice-Bowl of Tamil Nadu at Tanjore, now in the new Nagapattnam
District of Tamil Nadu.
5. The Life of Babuji Jagjivan Ram of Bihar
6. The Lessons we can learn from the unsinkable Baba Saheb
N Manohara Prasad
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