We should consider felicitating Indian entrepreneurs more often because they may someday change our lives for the better
Felicitating more entrepreneurs in this way will make them feel loved which, in turn, may make them think about their countrymen a little more than they usually do, if they ever become billionaires. Representation pic/iSTOCK
I feel bad for entrepreneurs in India. Sure, they may have a lot of money and a few fancy homes, some may make it to the covers of magazines, and one or two may even get invited to accompany the Prime Minister whenever he goes abroad, but it still feels as if they don’t get much respect from the average Indian until they make it big. I thought about these maligned folk all through January while Americans celebrated a criminal act against a CEO.
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This lack of respect may have something to do with how so many businessmen have disappeared with abnormal sums that don’t belong to them, but there could be other reasons I haven’t fathomed.
Consider that old gentleman from Bangalore who is routinely reviled on social media, which always confuses me. It happens whenever he opens his mouth in public, which is sad because it admittedly happens a lot. I haven’t been able to understand why he is treated with such disdain, given that his ideas are often of the highest quality. One of them involves us all working 70-hour weeks so that millions of Indians can rise out of poverty. Embrace capitalism, he says, presumably because it has worked for him even if his employees disagree. He’s right because it’s how all developed countries rose to the top, on the broken backs of citizens who died young. And yet, this perfectly simple solution from a simple man with a simple wife who recently purchased a simple home worth R50 crore is mocked relentlessly.
The reaction to that gentleman’s nuggets of wisdom prompted me to worry about entrepreneurs in India, and whether we have been treating them with the respect they deserve. I thought about how one of them was shunned a few months ago just because his electric scooters failed to start, stop, or function the way they were supposed to. There were thousands of disgruntled customers, apparently, and the poor man was being reviled just because he refused to acknowledge that his product was a failure. The poor entrepreneur was turned into a meme, when all he wanted was to be a millionaire. He should have been celebrated as an inspiration but was compelled to quit a social media platform instead. It prompted me to ask: since when have failures been attacked in this country? If we continue down this path, we may no longer have politicians.
This may have something to do with our culture. We only celebrate entrepreneurs when they graduate to the position of business barons, after which we applaud their every move. When they’re on their way up, we revile their ideas. Then, if they get to be rich enough, we are happy to shut our city down if their offspring decide to have an engagement party. It’s as if there’s a threshold their bank balances must cross before we place them on pedestals reserved for people genuinely deserving of respect.
My humble proposal, therefore, is an annual awards ceremony for entrepreneurs, judged by common Indians alone. The awards currently in circulation are all sponsored by business magazines and media houses, which makes it easy to predict who will win something because we can all see the companies who advertise. Not that this is cheating, of course; the politically correct term is ‘advertorial’. No, my proposal involves a public voting system that allows us all to participate and nominate entrepreneurs who are trying to change our lives with their products, services, or ideas.
I acknowledge that it may be hard to find nominees who aren’t fighting cases of fraud, but that little hiccup shouldn’t get in the way of us celebrating the spirit of entrepreneurship before these enterprising men go to jail.
Felicitating more entrepreneurs in this way will make them feel loved which, in turn, may make them think about their countrymen a little more than they usually do, if they ever become billionaires. It’s like an investment that may pay off in surprising ways. Maybe one of them will think about the award someday in the distant future and pay us all back by not cutting down a forest to build a mall.
Pandering to the ego of rich folk is a trick as old as time, and I feel as if we haven’t been doing it enough. We have to do more to make them feel respected even if they aren’t because, if there’s one thing they all understand, it’s the importance of being shallow.
When he isn’t ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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