Political leaders should inspire youth to act!
Expansion is the way ahead!!
India should fast forward economic growth by taking advantage of its youth. While the reins of the nation remain in the hands of seasoned politicians, Leadership of Action should be passed over to the young and the dynamic. We need not bank upon budgetary allocations to make our economy progress. All that needs to be done is to allow youngsters to explore new dimensions and tread new paths, wherein they are free to make use of emerging opportunities. No nation is ready to compromise on development, but all are facing scarcity of funds for developmental work.
Growth involves innovation. Once innovation is complete, implementation involves much more complex involvement. For the benefit to have a wide reach, we need to create large circles of implementation. Revenue circles should be more in number and scale.
Triangle to Vertical
Present economic circles are capitalistic and the model is just a triangle at the first level and a vertical at the next. Innovator, Investor and Business model are the three components in the economic harvest process. The investor supports innovator and later the revenue from the business is shared between the two. The initial struggle is for the innovator.
It is really a struggle for the innovator to make the investor understand the potential of his innovation. The struggle ends once the investor understands the revenue model. The next level is the stage of negotiation.
An investor typically acts as if the idea is not understood or attempts to convince the innovator that the idea is not as big as it is claimed to be. That process is to fix a lower price for the innovator and to create a better ratio for the investor. The business deal between the innovator and the investor happens at further stages. The innovator gets a sum for the innovation and eventually is eliminated from the scene. The reason for this elimination is the idea of the investor to extract a large benefit from the innovation without sharing it with the inventor/innovator.
What happens in this process is the same as uprooting a plant from the fertile land to plant it in the barren land. An idea is like a plant. It needs nurturing like a plant. An idea is like a painting. It needs to be painted properly in every detail. A painting initiated by an artist cannot be completed by someone who does not have any experience in that segment. Paintings in Sistine Chapel are dedicated to the artists and not to the then Popes who were in possession of those creative marvels.
Once the innovator is eliminated, the Triangle becomes vertical. Now the investor must take care of the business and make maximum money out of it. A Vertical cannot stand for long without its roots. It falls and dies eventually. The Investor must have made much more that the money spent on it. But there has to be a huge loss for the larger society when a tree of innovation is cut and sold as wood.
The price of wood amounts only 0.005 percent of the total value of a tree when it lives its true life. We have killed plenty of ideas in the process of making the triangle into verticals.
Triangle to Circle
The new model proposed is to develop the triangle into large circles by involving all the stakeholders in the process. Even the consumer is part of the large circle and transparency is the way to make it possible. One should observe the change in the Chinese approach to the business process. China once known as the cheapest production destination has now started to outsource. In many cases, production costs in China are more than elsewhere. We should fix the business processes and sharing the benefit of the economy with everyone who deserves a share.
This change in approach can help corporate houses to earn much more when they outsource most of their production process to smaller companies. We need to reach out to Indian villages and search for ways and means to harness economic advantage from such destinations. Definitely, by giving everyone their due share, the economy will be able to sustain for a longer period.
Media and Social Development
Media has a lot to do in the process of taking leadership in the transformation of society. In fact, Media should be the front runners and torch bearers. There needs to be large democratic participation in media much more than in any other field. Reputed people and responsible people should make themselves largely involved in media initiatives. Crowd funding is an idea but it should become a participatory process much different from the share capital back up. Invest money and time simultaneously for the benefit of the large masses. We should reach out to rural India and should help people to take advantage of the digital connectivity prevalent in the country and globalisation.
Spearhead Media is the media model to follow
The model of the Spearhead Media Group (Hperlink: http://www.spearheadpvtltd.com/) is very good. It started out small with a couple of investors who were also the innovators in the media space of a tier II city. It was an innovative media venture, because it focussed its digital media on the state as a whole and not on one particular city or dimension as most digital websites had done thus far. While the innovators are still on board, the investors have taken over, expanded the circle to include 43 investors, 22 staff and around 80 contributors from all parts of Karnataka. They have 5 products – two websites, one in English and one in Kannada, (www.newksarnataka.com & www.newskannada.com, an English monthly magazine Karnataka Today, a YouTube channel NK TV, and a graphic design house attached. They are editorially independent and focussed on positive journalism of the kind that will convert triangles into circles and speed up development.
Investing in business ventures may generate profit for the investor. But investments in Media ventures that are focussed on development can provide satisfaction, and returns. Giving back to society must be the major dream of every Indian. And Spearhead’s products are a viable and useful alternative to give back to society as India moves to become a 100% digital. Passionate media participation of Non-Resident Indians subject to prevailing laws on NRI involvement can transform the entire economy and standard of living of a large number of people.
Active Media participation of highly professional people like CA Valerian Dalmaida along with several others who have joined Spearhead Media who are professionals in the field of finance, Information Technology, Journalism, Business, Industry, Health and Hospitality, Transport, Automobile and Services can make a real change in their native social development.
We should create and make global villages of every village and city in India. Globalisation is the process by which the world is becoming smaller and smaller until it attains the size and dynamics of a village. But it should be the other way around. Every village should become bigger and better until it becomes the world. Villages should become true global villages by spreading their wings. People are the wings of every village and only through their participation can every village fly high in the sky.
Santosh Goenka, the author of this article, is the Executive Director of the Business India Group and Chairman of the Better India Foundation. He is mentoring the Spearhead Media Group on their journey to the next level.
