Going beyond logic is fast becoming a national pastime. I mean, look at the way ordinances, legislations, regulations, prohibitions, lockdowns, and bans compete with protests, PILs, marches, chakka-jams, bandhs, rants on the social media platforms, and rallies. The list on both sides is much larger than what you read here and if I were to include everything this article seriously risks being turned into a thesis. Lest I forget, even calling each other a bigot is a national pastime today, though the funny trivia here is that 9 out of 10 people whom I asked the meaning of this word, hee-hawed and hummed a lot and even stomped their feet as they chewed imaginary raw broccoli in disgust but said nothing. I have no idea how one is supposed to interpret this body language.
One of the things that everyone seems to be talking about is ‘Make in India’… and this is what tickles all my cells – from those that grey everything to those that excite the gonads! The truth is that we do make a lot of things in India and being ‘atmanirbhar’ isn’t difficult at all. As I have already mentioned, we have expertise in organizing even tractor rallies and this includes even filling up and sharing toolkits for others to follow.
The concept of ‘Make in India’ isn’t limited to assembling smartphones or other electronic gadgets. It extends to an entire treasure of thoughts and actions that are not borrowed from outside the country. Calling each other names is just the tip of this iceberg. Politics is all about making up names and ‘pappu’, ‘chaiwala’, ‘chowkidar’, ‘feku’, ‘bhakts’, ‘mufflerman’, ‘AK49’, and ‘aaptard’ are so frequently used that for some people even recollecting the original name becomes a tedious exercise. Yes, we also have ‘madrasi’, ‘chinki’, ‘bhaiya’, and ‘thulla’ in the same list though probably not linked to any celebrity. We are definitely ‘atmanirbhar’ in coming up with entertaining names. Talking of naming and renaming, every political party in power has had this urge to keep changing the names of places, roads, and whatever else is game enough to this tampering. If poor Aurangzeb suffers being shoved out of memory, we also have Connaught Place, Wellington Crescent, Madras State, Orissa, Uttaranchal, Mysore State, Allahabad, Pondicherry, Gurgaon, Bangalore, and Bijapur among others struggling to get their new names popular. The Wikipedia gives an alarmingly long list. The point is that we are too busy making names in India. Each day I open the newspaper in the morning I fear reading about some or the other name being binned unceremoniously. Is this what we mean by ‘Make in India’? Is our creativity limited to jibes and playing with links to our past?
To creatively interpret the art of making things to titillate the Indian taste buds to serve a mish-mash that we call Chinese chaat which is combining noodles and gol-gappas with that indefinable spicy thing we call Manchurian koftas is just one of things that are made in India. Yes, even samosas with a filling of chowmein or pasta. I have even come across a small eatery where they make parathas with gajar ka halwa as the filling. We have taken the concept of ‘Make in India’ beyond imagination. However, not every attempt is as palatable as the ones mentioned in this paragraph so far. And every city has enough patri-sellers with row upon row of handbags, sandals, jeans, tee-shirts, gadgets and almost everything wearable or usable with an unashamed display of logos of brands that could never be priced as low as just a couple of USDs. Books are pirated. All these have been taken seriously by enforcement agencies but nevertheless, still thrive. Look at the way some of us copy and paste poems, stories, and even well-written social media updates to pass them off as our own creative outpouring. We have all heard of ‘scholars’ who have earned their PhDs by copying their thesis… and some of them have even paid others for writing their copied research! The digital world has only increased the number of copyright infringements and a survey by Statista shows that the States involved in them in 2019 include Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Haryana, and Assam with Jammu & Kashmir leading with 23 registered cases. They are all representative of pulling down the wonderful concept of made in India to a level where trust in honest commerce refrains from being sustainable anymore.
Awards are not far behind in this race of readiness to pay for short-lived fame and applause from crooked minds. It is not just individuals but even organisations, colleges, universities, and politicians who love to tell the world that their services have been recognized. I am not talking of those who have spent their lives doing selfless service or deserving colleges and universities who are anyway awarded by credible agencies. There are hundreds of fly-by-night operators who ask for ‘donations’ for a chance to be awarded for ‘exemplary service’ who sully the impression of the ‘Make in India’ concept.
The concept of ‘Make in India’ surely does not encourage people to sell Wangler, Buta, Noalgin, Luees Vitton, Rolax, or Mebeline to unwary customers. Not even look-alike electronic gizmos that sell at a fraction of the price of the original but stop working in a few days. No, not even clothes and fabric that shrink to half their original size after the first wash, eatables that make a person sick, or any of those things that are so blatantly adulterated.
‘Make in India’ is a concept to transform the country into an atmanirbhar country and should not be linked to cheating in any way.
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Arvind Passey
12 March 2021
