Nilgiri
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Hi @Nilgiri
My point was pretty simple and that if we did not have the kind of private giants we have, then the situation would be something else. However we repeatedly failing to fully leverage the capabilities of our private sector is the main concern here.
Yes I am just expanding upon why that "failing to fully leverage" is happening in a broader attitude that infects Indian bureaucracy (that you also correctly bring up earlier).
You see, what many of us have forgotten is what living in a closed economy was like. When we were learning our trade, as managers, that ultimately meant people management, although I was supercilious and condescending about it when I encountered it in Ramesh Bhasin and his type. On the systems side, we had IBM 1401s, the last of which, at Hyderabad Asbestos that later became Hyderabad Industries, improved its main memory through titanic R&D efforts by Armonk to 16 kB (yes, Victoria, kB). They used paging to get anything done. They also fooled a batch computer into thinking it was doing batch jobs by using CICS, something that only the IBM people understood. Those were water-cooled machines, and the water was imported (from a purification plant in Australia). We also had Unit Record Machines, with a priestly hierarchy presiding over the Computer Room. Even management could only go in there with permission in triplicate, and the people inside had the breezy informality and casual attitude towards hierarchy that only elite formations possess.
That is when L. K. Jha broke open Indian industry.
Next installment follows.
Will have to pass this on to my dad (he worked at a telecoms PSU till he got super frustrated at very much the phenomenon you are describing here. He was one of the best mainframe specialists that graduated from IISc, even went to France in his early career days for some more training under Alcatel @Vergennes ).
I never lived through (at remember-able age anyway) the closed economy stage of India...my earliest memories of relevance are post 91 (and I suppose there was still much leftovers then too, it doesn't all just magically go away). So what I know what I do on that era's "real"stuff ....at more anecdotal level....mostly from my folks (my mom worked at a bank, so that stuff is pretty interesting too).
Can't wait for the next installment!
I've always wondered what my life would have been like had Indias 91 reforms came say just 5 years earlier...given my dad packed shop in the end (and made his career overseas) because he saw no hope in the stasis wrought there by the complexes/attitudes/environment...it was just 3 or so years before 91. If the timing was just a bit earlier, I likely would have remained in India (and be contributing to it so much better)....and destiny might have been very different. My dad also told me if he got a good job at TATA (and he was setting up for it), he would have stayed no matter what...he so wanted to honour jamshedji's name... he knew the value of what that great man did...the statue there in IISc speaks to it. But alas it didnt pan out.