Start-Up India: The awaited economic brick

The launch of the "Start-up India, Stand-up India" programme unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Jan 17, 2016 is much awaited brick for India’s economic transformation and growth. The way, Prime Minister unfolded the initiative is conveying an important message to our knowledge work force. Prime Minister could connect to internal conscious talk experienced almost by every experienced professional. He stated “Each of us, at certain point in time in the past, must have associated with our intuitive instincts and wanted to do something really new. However, as most of us could not meddle with the reality, only few of us could walk to the last mile and converted our intuitive thoughts towards reality”. This is where he stressed the need for our strong conviction to achieve despite the possible odds and referred the Uber’s success story. Prime Minister’s depth behind this cognitive statement is certainly touching the depth of our conscious to associate with out-of-box solutions and become entrepreneurs. This is where PM positioned his start up concept and asked India to stand up on it.

At this juncture, it is worth understanding the backdrop of India’s economic growth journey to learn the underlying forces that led to what we are today. Indian economic growth is unfolding similar to Japanese martial art concept “Shu-Ha-Ri” where “Shu” stands for “Protect or learn the fundamentals under able hands”, “Ha” stands for “Breaking with tradition or Taking exceptions to the preset rules” and “Ri” Stands for “Leave  or separate to innovate”. Japanese martial art asks individual to learn this art using this concept. Post our independence, if we retrospect, three major planning strategies have influenced nursing of our economy growth trajectory similar to Japanese martial art “Shu-Ha-Ri”.

“Shu-“: Indian government through “Nehru-Mahalanobis” model established excellent economic foundation through emphasizing rapid development of heavy industry so as to create an industrial base so that India becomes self-reliant in the capital goods sector. Public sector was given the responsibility to develop it since private sector was not willing to invest in heavy industry which required lumpy investment, had a long gestation period and low profitability.
Gandhian model of growth later tried to strengthen our economic foundation through rapid development of agriculture and small scale industries. Village and small industries were emphasized from the point of view of production as well as employment. Though, this model tried to seed strong roots like employment oriented planning, it could not turn the goals into reality due to short stint of Janata party government.

“Ha-“: It is the stage where government reflected on the laws and brought in necessary exceptions to empower privatization through “Rao-Manmohan” model of growth in 1991. It emphasized privatization and globalization of the economy. It succeeded in opening hitherto reserved areas to the private sector. It abolished licensing in all industries except a small list of 18 industries. It freed MRTP (Monopoly and Restrictive Trade Practices) companies from the ceiling limit. Foreign Direct Investment was facilitated. Automatic approvals upto 51% of the equity was given. Public sector companies were given autonomy to improve their growth and productivity.

“Ri-“: This is the stage where government wants to leave the future economy outlay to experienced hands of India’s knowledge working class to try something new and transform Indian economy. Our technology is touching 1.5 billion people every day. We have million problems at hand to solve.
India’s knowledge workers indeed gained entrepreneurial skills since last 25 years through partnering with foreign counterparts in various domains. We, the Indians, certainly contributed to innovations and improvements across the globe being the employees of large or middle scale corporate sectors. When we reap corporate experience closer to 20 years, most of us may associate with intuitive insights and may want to contribute to continuous improvement or innovation around us leveraging our experience and intuition.

Today, common man is impacted with distorting influence and growing grip of corporate world. Corporate sector to a great extent reaping profits at the cost of common man fundamental needs and natural resources.

Let us take education as an example. When most of the intellectual class is attracted to corporate sector, we see dearth for passionate and qualified teachers in colleges and schools for the past 20 years. So far, India is known to the world by its intellectual knowledge workers it produced. For the past 20 years, our education system is becoming marks securing operation contrary to our erstwhile educational values and conceptual foundation. We certainly need to fix this gap. Otherwise, ours current strength becomes future weakness. Experienced and intellectual class need to think about this and contribute our bit to save our future generations.

Let us take healthcare as another example. Vaidyo Narayano Hari (Doctor is equivalent to God)” was the faith rested on Doctors by our elder generations when we had limited facilities and knowledge in olden days. With advent of new technology, tools, depth of knowledge and skills, we expect our healthcare sector to go leaps and bounds in servicing the mankind. Corruption and unethical health care practices has irked current mankind in India to such an extent that we need a culture where “number of rational and ethical doctor should grow and it becomes national movement”. We may justify our experienced pain when we go through the findings of the report titled, "Voices of Conscience from the Medical Profession: Revealing testimonies by rational doctors about the reality of private medical practice in India" has been put together and published by SATHI (Support for Advocacy and Training to Health Initiatives). In essence the sensitive “Trust Layer” between Doctor and “Patient” communities has been consistently tested in the past 15 years on the negative side. There is need to participate in India’s much needed national movement for “building more number of rational and ethical doctors” for better tomorrow through setting right culture. Society requires innovative solutions in this space.
Today, common man needs basic rights that include hygiene water, genuine medicine, humane doctor, good teacher etc. Twenty years before, common man never felt these needs as these were abundant and implicitly available. “Profit reaping” private sector and “fixed mindset” public sector today are keeping future generations in big void. This is where small scale industries (especially start-ups) need to step up and re-engineer solutions with noble service mindset. In this process our nation prospers and economy grows. When “Start-ups” stand up to societal needs, India prospers towards nobler goals and economy transforms to higher heights.

Prime Minister’s ray of sight is exactly invoking India’s knowledge class to stand up to this point and contribute value to the society. This is where Modi said “Seeing is believing”.  Enabling start-ups is like sprinkling innovative solutions on various part of our land where private sector and public sector cannot reach up to. Experienced professionals need to strategize their intuitive instincts and their efforts towards end user needs and societal re-engineering.

If we connect the dots, Indian government nursed our economy first by protecting and directing it towards strategic goals with stringent laws (Shu), then by liberalizing it (Ha) and now leaving the economic levers to India’s knowledgeable working class to capitalize on our individual intuitive instinct. This is where the Ri phase commences. The onus now lies on India’s professional working class to standup to this need of the hour and lay this economic brick to better our future generations leveraging our intuitions, experience and technology engulfed with noble service mindset.


Stand-up India to this cause called “Start-up India”. Let us contribute so that mother India’s future generations experience our enshrined value system.