“We are on the threshold of substantial change. Innovation, combined with large-scale global trade in the knowledge sector, is creating wealth and new opportunities.”
(Kiran Karnik)
To many people, the arena of business is epitomised by Shylock demanding his pound of flesh - a world of greed, profiteering, and cold, inhuman calculations. In traditional Indian social stratification, the businessman is near the bottom of the hierarchy. A great deal of this negativity stems from the perceived role of business, which is seen as taking rather than giving a heartless pursuit of profit, based on using market dynamics to exploit people. Trading and services are considered 'transactional' and therefore, more prone to manipulation, profiteering and one-sided deals. These are seen as a zero-sum game, in which, gains of one party depend upon the loss of the other.
While this is, undoubtedly, exaggerated -a caricature as it was- there are enough real life examples to make the charges stick. The reduction of tariff barriers and the big increase in global trade - the process of " globalisation - have made this a particularly sensitive area, as whole countries (and not merely individual, firms) feel exploited and perceive themselves as losers in a zero-sum game. Thus, subsidies to a small number of US cotton farmers cause havoc to some African - 'economies and trigger farmer suicides in Vidarbha.
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