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DEBASISH ROY
Life gives you two options: To be a salesman or to be an entrepreneur. If you are trying to implement something that you have not visualised or do not believe in, then you are a salesman. Again if you want only to carry out something that you believe in and do not want to listen to what others have to say, you are an entrepreneur. By this yardstick, Leonardo Da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, Yuri Gagarin, Archimedes, Tenzing Norgay, Subhash Chandra Bose, Marquis De Laffayette, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, George Washington and others of their ilk, were entrepreneurs.
Similarly, if you buy a car just when your neighbour has decided to buy one, it makes you a salesman. You are selling someone else's philosophy of life and not your own. That is life's chief rubicon. Some people who work as salesmen for companies are very good entrepreneurs in their lifestyle. Similarly, others who are small time businessmen are also good at selling other people's stuff.
Then we must know if it is bad to be a salesman and really cool to be an entrepreneur. I would say no, it isn't. Both are difficult roles to live by and must require grit to live by them. Earlier we had one more Fundamental Right in the Constitution of India: The right to property. It was taken away by a Constitutional amendment. Now if your property is taken away you have the right to free speech as another fundamental right. The right to scream when you are robbed.
Those were the times of socialist India before Dr Manmohan Singh. Those were the days when most of our parents were salesmen of Nehru's whims and nearly none of them were entrepreneurs. The Marwari businessmen such as the Birlas and the Singhanias were salesmen with large scale operations. They bought licenses from corrupt government officials and manufactured goods with the lowest common denominator of quality. Free markets have turned more and more Indians into entrepreneurs after 1991 as it is easier to pursue a dream now. Larger tax cuts have slowly encouraged people to act as consultants and the role of loyal 20-year-old employee is in decay.
The entrepreneur lives by his own dream. The salesman exists by another's rules. As technology such as the Internet and broadband flourish, each human will try to live the entrepreneur within.
We shall talk about two institutions: The media and The Film Industry. Both indicate the growth and decline of the spirit of entrepreneurship in some way or another. Thirty years ago, writing about individual companies in a newspaper was nothing sort of criminal. Companies and businessmen were evil. This blackguard called the trader or the manufacturer had to be fought by the white knight or messiah called the government.
Many Bollywood movies reflected this sentiment. However, slowly we learnt that there is nothing which is black or white. Evil resides within us in whatever we do. Now cinema cannot be bundled for the whole of India. We have different films made for different audiences made by individual directors who are entrepreneurs for their own ideals.
Simlarly, the media has seen newspapers developing from cracks in the process of churning out pages on this ministry and that politician. Now we have anything from technology magazines to porn pamphlets, all of which can be considered as genuine media. This calls for more discussion -- within.
DEBASISH ROY
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