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November 10, 1998
ELECTIONS '98
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How Readers responded to Pritish Nandy's recent columns
Date sent: Thu, 05 Nov 1998 11:15:27 -0500
It is not at all clear as to how multinationals contribute to Mafia raj in various places. Nandy just quotes statistics. From that he concludes that big MNCs will lead to Mafias. Where is the correlation? There are some stupid conclusions/analysis. For example, he says that 90 pc of the world does not have access to phones, and combines this with the statement that telecom companies have been growing at a lick. What is the conclusion here? Are telecom companies responsible for lack of communication facilities to 90 pc of the world's population? For example, is AT&T responsible for the lack of telecom infrastructure in India? The US is a prosperous country with maximum number of MNCs. Does Nandy imply that Mafia raj is very active in the US? Is he saying that there is an organised crime racket in every place in the US? Or is he implying that the US multinationals will lead to Mafia rajs in other places in the world? Countries like India have been ruined by politicians and criminals. These politicians and criminals were not created by multinationals! May be all Indians are responsible for it!! Or may be, adult franchise was responsible for it. Don't make the MNCs scapegoat for all the problems the world is facing today.
Date sent: Sat, 07 Nov 1998 10:03:03 -0500
I have been visiting your site for one month now. I find the travel, news and sports sections exceptional. One of THE BEST Web sites on India. However, I must add that I found the last 3 columns by Nandy -- with all due respect to this Padma Shri winning poet, designer, painter, photographer and politician -- ludicrous. Wages of sin: Bottomline, Salman bad, Salim good. Three pages of wasted print! How about some insightful and researched columns on Indian wildlife and the forest department's efforts to protect it? Anything other than this emotional, glamorised hype masked as journalism. Mafias vs MNCs: Nandy takes a research study, skims some interesting stats from it, and once again, very craftily, tries to concoct a Mafia angle to this story. Baloney. As a reader I would have been better off if Rediff just provided links to the Economic Times or the Washington Institute's Web site. Here in the US, we have a "journalist/columnist" such as Nandy. His name is Rush Limbaugh. While unlike Nandy, Limbaugh caters to the rightwing populace, the common trait I find between the two is that they both seem to sensationalise every piece of news to benefit their own agenda. In the case of Limbaugh, it is to increase his viewership and get a huge fan base going so that he can hawk books, tapes etc etc. In the case of Nandy, I don't know. I'll let the readers decide for themselves. Padma Shri winner or not, it seems to me that Nandy's present skills would better fit in the Bollywood section of Rediff. It is not important that you have celebrities write for you. What's important is that it should be an insightful, well researched column, one that you can read and learn. And I have read a number of such interesting columns at Rediff.
Date sent: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 13:30:57 -0600
Dear Mr Pritish Nandy, Your article is thought-provoking and does give substantial information to the common man. Whether one likes it or not the corporation is a reality and here to stay. Time will tell if it has any potential to do good for the masses. I read a very good book recently by Mr Arie De Geus of the Royal Dutch Shell group, titled The Living Company. I feel that reading this book will contribute a lot to the understanding of MNCs. It is a "must read" for the policy makers of the whole world if they wish to understand this modern creature called MNC. Hope to read more of your articles. Abhijit Joshi
Date sent: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 11:06:00 -0000
This was sensible enough. Well, the statistics are presented in a convincing manner. I too am very worried about an MNC-driven nation but I don't think there will be anything for them to swallow. For, we are in a continuous process of being swallowed up by politicians, by corrupt bureaucracy, by spiralling price rises, by communal disharmony and what-not. As far as an average Indian is concerned, whom Pritish is worried about, who amidst all these avaricious monsters is still trying to survive, it doesn't really make any difference if he is swallowed up by an MNC or the very Indian Mafia which is omnipresent in India. Gautham
Date sent: Wed, 04 Nov 1998 05:56:00 PST
Mr Nandy makes a lot of sweeping generalisations. These are the sort of things that detract from a valid, if flawed, viewpoint. Mr Nandy starts by asking "Why so many clever, educated young people" migrate to a life of crime? Is that really the case? How many are "so many?" Yes, we do have a large crime/underworld problem in India. But to say that large numbers of young people are migrating towards it is too sweeping -- there are plenty of honest, hard-working youths in India who function on the right side of the law. They would be most insulted by Mr Nandy's statement. Second, after providing us lots of figures on how the top 200 companies in the world have an undue amount of influence, Mr Nandy attests that none of them is "interested in making the world a better place." I don't know what kind of world Mr Nandy is talking about, but the fact remains that Microsoft has donated money to provide computers to inner-city schools in the US, that AT&T has donated lots of money over the years to set up networking infrastructure in schools and colleges and that other big MNCs generally give some portion of their income to some form of charitable cause. I am not suggesting that all these companies participate in philanthropy, but take a look around any big museum or library in the States or Western Europe. Corporations are the often the biggest contributors. No one is going to give the world's poor handouts -- a corporation's goal is maximise shareholder value. We have to look to the public sector to ensure adequate infrastructure to foster economic growth. India's problems are not tied to how MNCs will exploit us; they are tied to developing this lack of infrastructure. Further, these 200 MNCs will never be able to command absolute power over the world because there are checks and balances in place to curb their ambitions. You have to remember that these corporations are run by individuals -- they do not operate in some sort of vacuum. Real people man these enterprises, Indians among them. Moreover, there is nothing implicitly wrong with the notion of shareholder value. More than 50 per cent of Americans are shareholders in one form or another because of the mutual fund revolution in the personal finance industry. In India, stories abound of the corner panwallah who struck it rich by investing in stocks. The idea is that the market works for everyone, regardless of economic standing. If you've got some money, invest it. What needs to happen hand-in-hand with capitalist expansion is fostering of a civic-sense in all people. In India, alas, we lack it in such a fundamental way that we refuse to take responsibility for our actions. Our poverty is being fostered by us because we have no vision, not because some MNCs are preventing us from getting rich.
Date sent: Tue, 03 Nov 98 16:06:52 -0500
Give me a break! Now we have to take lessons in economics from a writer/politicians like Pritish Nandy! Do we need to cheer the Mafia because they will be India's answer to MNCs? I believe our country has enough talent and expertise to offer to MNCs, instead of offering muscle power and crimes.
Date sent: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 13:52:04 -0600
Where have I heard this kind of crap before? The same thing was said by Lenin in the early 1900s. People have been saying the same thing for years. For India, the issues never change. The challenges have always been and will continue to be staggering. How do you put in place an efficient market that fulfils the needs of 250 million to 300 million relatively affluent people and over 700 million not-so-affluent? How can India sustain a population growth to over 1.7 billion by the year 2030 (source: National Geographic October 1998) and still maintain a decent standard of living for its citizens? Conspiracy theories will not help. What is needed is a practical strategy for survival. We cannot hope to offer the lame excuse that 200 companies control the world; therefore India cannot prosper. It is do or die time and people like Pritish should learn to be more practical. Krishnan Narayan
Date sent: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 11:49:29 -0800
Pritish: I normally agree with most of your writing. But in this column, you have fallen victim to the illusion of numbers. You make the statement: in the top 100 economies, there are 51 companies. Well, in the top 1,000 economies, there WILL BE 900 companies. Do you see the problem with using numbers this way? Just because some collection of people calls itself a country, does it mean that companies should not have sales bigger than this collection of people? Should the largest company, by law, be smaller than, say, the GDP of Liberia? Also, if Toyota or Honda worked hard and earned a lot of sales, does that violate some natural law or justice? You also mention: the telecom companies are increasing profits, yet 91 pc of the world does not have phones. Well, can Indians blame AT&T for us not having phones? If AT&T even attempted to provide phone service in India, would we ever let them? If they came in and lectured us on how to efficiently provide phone services, would we not scream racism/colonialism/capitalism etc? So what is AT&T supposed to do? Yes, the world is unequal, and yes, we Indians are at the bottom. But, honestly, do you think we HAVE to be so poor, if we put our house in order, and reformed our society and our economy? Your argument is essentially too close to blaming the rich world for our problems, and unfortunately, either we can keep blaming them or we can do something about it ourselves. After all, we also have Tatas, Ambanis, and Birlas who can create those world beating companies, which will exceed the GDP of, say, Switzerland. So should Swiss people campaign for a world law to stop this? Sridhar
Date sent: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 23:13:25 EST
Having lived & worked in the US for over 30 years it seems to me Mr Nandy is ladling out the same old drivel the communists & socialists fed us Indians for the last 50 years. These are the same people who prevented the Indian economy from taking off by trying to control the free market through a regime of licence & bribery. Please remember Russia was a Communist country & China still is and that is why they still have problems. South Korea had the same per capita GNP in 1958 as India. The only difference is that Korea followed a free market policy. As far as America is concerned, Mr Nandy should study the crime statistics there. It is down significantly due to the scrapping of the liberal leftist policy of reduced punishment.
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