Gujarati Capitalism: Going Global(economist.com) |
Gujarati Capitalism: Going Global(economist.com) |
"Trust and honesty remain essential to Gujarati-dominated industries. Mr Mehta, himself a Jain from Palanpur, whose diamond company has a turnover of $1.8 billion and offices from Antwerp to Tokyo, says that, despite the size of the business, it is still “all based on handshakes and words, with no contracts”. "
These people have traveled from Antwerp to Tokyo for 200 years...yet Palanpur is a shithole just like every other town in India. They have seen all the benefits of a free and modern society, but have not lifted a finger to bring 1% of those ideas to the town where they live.
Surat which processes 90% of the worlds diamonds is also a shithole. Its just yet another massive Indian city with no modern infrastructure, garbage and sewers everywhere, and had a plague outbreak about a decade ago!
While these globe trotters make millions which they stash, how much money do you think the rank and file of diamond polishers make? Do they have adequate health benefits and protection against problems like this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16201206
“We don’t have to deal with government too much, and mostly not with the banks, as most money comes from families,” says Dinesh Navadiya, the head of the Surat Diamond Association. “So there is little scope for corruption.”
No corruption...except massive tax avoidance. It is impossible to run the smallest business in India without running into corruption.
Some might argue these people have no obligation to improve society and that's Ok. But any article writing about the pros, should also write about the cons.
Another article along a similar vein: http://qz.com/459422/how-indian-families-took-over-the-antwe...
Its disgusting to hear all these people come for is business opportunities, refusing to speak the local language, adopt local customs, assimilate, or give back to the community at large, while the host society sees jobs shipped to India and tax revenues decline.
Excerpt: What it takes A far more encouraging example can be found farther up the coast. Surat, a city in Gujarat of 4.5m people, is a flourishing trading hub that not long ago was a wretched dump like Gorakhpur. In 1994, after a reported (but never confirmed) outbreak of pneumonic plague, it became famous for squalor, gridlock, slums and rotten management. Since then it has been transformed. Effective managers cleaned up. Rubbish was collected and transport improved, streets were swept and public services delivered. Miraculously, the improvements were sustained. Some 96% of residents pay their municipal taxes on time. Manoj Kumar Das, who now runs the city, says that over the past decade the growth in Surat’s population averaged 5% a year, among the fastest of any city in the world. According to his planners, by 2031 it could have 9.3m people, overtaking London.
You complain about "positive generalizations" and yet you resort to generalizations yourself without checking facts ?
As for Palanpur - I don't know much - but fund this: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g1156005-d302375-Rev....
Theres still so much backwards cultural stigma thats prevalent in India that I think its just going to take a lot of time for Indians to realize what needs to be done.
We know that this is not permitted if we are attributing negative qualities to a group of people. Why is it then permissible to generalize when we are praising the same groups? In doing so the author is sort of admitting that it is at times logical to generalize groups of people and that there is no risk of prejudice in doing so.
If this article was about whites or about Christians, it would not have a laudatory tone. Instead, the author would be writing about how the "old boys network" keeps others out of lucrative businesses, about how there's no diversity in the top rungs of these companies, and about how "handshakes" are circumventing government laws and taxation. But that is exactly what the Gujarati network is all about. Yes, it is a hardworking group, but also very in-group oriented, and yes, racist.
This article seems more like PR but isn't far from truth. I think, as a community, Jews have probably outdone any one community out there.
In fact, a great many jewish business families in British-India adopted Gujarat, and spoke Gujarati.
Here's another biased take on the topic by a Pakistani journalist:
http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/WaBCEddMLH5DaM0aD5wzbN/Why-I...
And here my answer on Quora on a related question: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Gujarati-people-make-up-a-large...
Finding moral fault in others is often just a way to explain their own lack of accomplishment.
Not always, of course. But something to be very careful of.
The author made it sound like every and each Gujarati person is destined to entrepreneurial success and failing and losing are unexpected outcomes in their cases.
Nothing against Gujaratis or Indians in general. I really like entrepreneurial and trailblazing people provided they earned their wealth through legitimate means not questionable or unethical ones but I preferred to read a more impartial analysis or critique of this anthropological topic than this nauseating self-congratulatory Economist article.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patidar_reservation_agitation
So... Gujaratis have an ethic of capitalistic success. Are you also comfortable saying Blacks have an ethic of failure, Jews have an ethic of in-group morality, Gypsies have an ethic of stealing, and so on? If you are not, then you are arbitrarily imposing a limit that qualities assigned to a group must only be good. If you are, congratulations! You are now racist.
The article merely documents the entrepreneurial genius of the Gujarati community which is worth lauding. Gujarati is not a race.
Growing up in India, I was told that owning your business was the only path to success. In 1990, my dad borrowed a ZX Spectrum from a friend so I could play video games and he was genuinely confused when he found out that I spent all day typing (I was learning BASIC) instead of beating his hi-score in Jetpac. Thankfully, as I learned programming, I got a tremendous amount of support from his Gujarati friends, all of whom wanted me to write DBase III+ / FoxPro software for their businesses. But whenever I came up with non-business ideas, my people just didn't get it. I don't think anyone outright discouraged me when I wanted to write software for fun but they just didn't understand why I would write freeware when I could easily sell it. Half of my years between 15-20 were spent being lectured by successful businessmen on why/how I should market my music player or transliteration software.
This article resonated with me because I finally get just how ingrained business is to my culture. I always knew I was the odd one out and came to terms with that a decade ago but now I realize how others in my community must think of me. Time and again I have chosen to not make money even after I made a finished product. For me, once the product is built, I completely lose interest and want to make something else. For them, I already did the hard part of making the product and am bailing out at the fun part of making money from it.
To any Gujaratis reading this who love hacking for the sake of hacking, I'd say there are dozens of us! Let's keep talking business with family and friends of family during the day and quietly watch Numberphile after everyone is asleep.
Actually both should be permissible, as both can be true in the statistical and cultural sense.
We're not unique snowflakes as we like to believe. Our culture shapes us in many ways, nicely in some ways, badly in others, and it does the same to others sharing it.
There's a reason why stereotypes exist, beside bigotry and arbitrariness.
I honestly cannot speak for any Gujarati in SV or even tech, but in my experience, I don't think that Gujaratis are significantly different in terms of skills, morality, or values than any other Indian or non-Indian group of people. It is very easy to say Gujaratis are shrewd or follow the old-boys-club tactics but those are just typical human traits passed on culturally and sociologically instead of genetically. The basic Gujarati values mirror the basic Indian values (be peaceful, love everyone, respect elders, help the poor, be studious, work hard) but some are emphasized a lot more than others.
For every commenter in here saying Gujarat is a backwards place, I personally know a Gujarati who has donated large amount of money to non-religious public service projects. My uncle sponsors the education of 10 kids in our village in India and feeds 100+ people on the death anniversary of my grandfather. I am not saying he is a saint, I am saying he is just one data point among the tens of thousands of successful Gujaratis. It's not fair to measure charity, benevolence, and kindness because one's native place is not Singapore or Zurich just yet.
In the past few decades, our village has progressed significantly, with wealthier Gujaratis awarding scholarships to kids in need ( http://www.balasinorcollege.com/found_trust.html ). Is that enough to wipe out poverty from Gujarat or India? Absolutely not. Gujaratis are NOT any different from other people. Few great, most decent, and a handful of bad apples (e.g. Harshad Mehta). I don't think the article was trying to highlight Gujaratis are some uber-exceptional race. It was just highlighting how ingrained business acumen is in the Gujarati ethos.
It's good to celebrate success but not good to determine the worth of individuals or social groups solely on the basis of financial assets or business holdings.
This is the real slippery slope you don't wanna step on.
I think the right approach is to compliment specific groups and people and behaviors; and criticize only behaviors. The specific people/groups who are behaving well will value the personal credit and build on it; the specific people behaving badly can take impersonal criticism without feeling the need to be defensive.
Occasionally naming names is warranted in criticism, but that's the exception.
English people as merchants or commercial folks on an individual level, I haven't heard of that. Maybe from Europe the Italians or Greeks to some extent, that's true but English people, I don't think that his/her observation is correct.
English people didn't make it commercially « on their own » but with the help of their state or empire globally and this is a historical fact and thus the comparison to the Chinese, Levantines or Jews who mostly acted on personal initiatives is not apt one.