“If it were not for Gandhi we would have made much more progress.” These
were the provocative words my Dad often mentioned in jest, when I was a child growing up in Bombay.
He realised that employment had to be created at home so that there were
jobs, industry and commerce to go around. Only he spun it (pun intended again)
into the Be Indian, Buy Indian routine. Not only did he encourage Indians to
boycott British goods and buy Indian goods instead but he practised what
he preached. Ie. He only wore what he spun. What a great leading by example,
marketing by practice, using a symbolic device (his spinning wheel) to hit where
it hurt. He realised that you had to strike at the economy of the Empire to get
a reaction.
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| The Man - The conviction |
So, let me start by saying that I am quite neutral to Gandhi. As a rebellious teenager growing up in conservative India, I was more concerned with reining in my hormonal horses before they ran
astray, shocking my middle class, South-Indian, parents.
But I digress.
Coming back to Gandhi, it is only as I watched Attenborough’s Academy Award
winning Gandhi for a second time last week that as a mature middle aged woman (who
is at heart a teenaged science fiction geek of course) it struck me that this
man was quite simply a phenomenon.
For once the west was right. Check out the courage of conviction - the
sheer audacity of this man. He walked the walk and spoke the talk. Sure he was
a canny marketer. But he had a great 100% proof product. Himself. It’s not like we Indians, would have ever had the weapon technology
to overcome the occupiers by force. So he played on the sense of fair play (pun
intended), appealed to basic human conscience and use non-violence ie. passive
aggression instead of nuclear warfare.
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| My favourite scene from the movie |
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| Doesn't Jobs' profile look like the Mahatma's? |
The reason I talk about this, is when I read about how that most
American of symbols and my most personal of possessions ie. my Ipad is actually
manufactured in China; and that if Apple were to manufacture its products in
its home country of the USA it would still leave
the company with a healthy profit margin and would create hundreds of thousands of
manufacturing jobs in the US. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/23/bad-apple-employ-more-us-workers?INTCMP=SRCH
then my mind boggles.
Did someone lose a trick somewhere? So if atleast a few of the American
companies who currently outsource production were to move their manufacturing
back to the USA, well it would actually resolve some of America’s problems, right? And
I get that from a cost optimisation standpoint, you go where the labour is
cheap to maximise profits. But it seems this is often a short term win
at the cost of longer term repercussions... like the economy.
But, wait a minute, does that not go against the very truth of
globalisation? And I am the first citizen of this new multicultural global society
after all. So I have to say that this left me feeling very confused, in terms of what
I actually agree with. The only thing I am still sure of is that like Gandhi, if I have the
courage of conviction to follow my true path, and believe in myself, well then things
would be altogether a lot simpler for me; in this life atleast.
What do you think? Do you think Gandhi got it right and that the
solutions to the world’s problems perhaps lie in Gandhinomics? (Dad,
hope you don’t read this.)
