Lessons From China

Commerce ministries around the world are, according to Donald Trump, lining up to plead their case with the United States. Are we among them? Apparently we are not.

- Aakar Patel

A headline from the weekend quoted commerce minister Piyush Goyal saying: “We don’t negotiate at gunpoint.” This is the right way of looking at it, and I agree with it. Sovereign nations should insist that they be treated as equals and not vassals. China has retaliated firmly in a way that only Canada has so far, but in the absence of clarity from the Americans on what their endgame is, waiting is also appropriate.

There was something else, somewhat related to this, that Goyal said which got him into trouble. He said Indian new businesses were focussed on trade (dukandari was the word he used) rather than innovation. He compared the situation here to that in China, where start-ups were doing robotics and advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence. Goyal received pushback from entrepreneurs who pointed to many fledgling firms in India doing the sort of work he said they should be doing.

The history of business in India will show that the mercantile communities primarily were traders and bankers till the 20th century. It was in 1919 that the Birlas came into manufacturing, and before that it was a few Gujaratis including Parsis — Tata Steel came up around 1910.