Why only 70’s and 80’s, Except for the past few years..(post Dr.Manmohan singh era)..ever since independence, our industries, small scale or big, had enjoyed subsideies or protection from outside competition. The intention was probably to protect our industries, allow them to stand strongly on their feet and produce competetive quality products before they were exposed to international competition. (openning up to the world was inevitable..you cant live in a shell for ever). However, things went the wrong way. Our industries, instead of improving the quality of products, took UNDUE advantage of the protection, and sold highly substandard products to our own people. Remember, the paranoia behind getting a new telephone connection?...waiting for months, to get delivery of a car called ’’padmini’’ or an ’’Ambassador’’..Except for a very few (you can count them on your finger tips.) companies ..none of our industries strived to produce a product, that would withstand competition of a simillar products available in the rest of the world. I think we deserved what we got...we were protected to improve..instead we took undue advantage of our monopolistic policies and supplied substandard products to our own people.
As for Harshad Mehtas of the share market, again I believe spoon-feeding from our government is the root cause..True the govt. should have been more alert..True, much much more should have been done not only to prevent such scams but once it was caught, to have the case decided at the earliest and see to it that as much justice is done to investors as possible ..in the fastest possible time...But one must not ignore the fact that purely on HEARSAY, if we start investing crores of rupees, in companies that have absolutely NIL worth, we must blame ourselves first, for investing our hard-earmed money without proper evaluation of the company’s standings. (I am also one of the fools who lost in BigBull’s time)..We often tend to blame the govt. for absolutely anything and everything.
We are living in this WORLD. and hence we must understand that we simply cannot shut our doors to the world. We have to live WITH the world..not aloof. Instead of harping on the protectionist poilicies of our past..it will be better if start to understand the ground realities and strive to improve our products and learn to compete. Many Industries in fields like comp-software, comp-hardware, construction, film, home-cosumables etc. have sucessfully not only withstood, but have progressed in the same world-competition.