Recasting India Read Online Free Page B

mutiny but—that curious reality TV term—a makeover.
    But who are these mutineers? Consider this: India’s 7,000 biggest companies employ only around 7 percent of its workforce. The remaining 93 percent come from what is called the “unorganized sector,” a euphemism that straddles all the worlds from a roadside tea shop to a small diamond-polishing unit. There are about 30 million such units in India, each employing an average of seven people. This is the backbone of the Indian economy—reflected not in the stock markets but in the kitchens and keenness of aspiration in millions of homes.
    There are those who still hope for a China-style mass-manufacturing revolution in India. That is unlikely for many reasons—from disjointed, disparate landownership in India to family-run firms that lack capital or manpower to scale up. But something else is happening in India. Its village economy, which is home to 68 percent of the population and which brings in 50 percent of the GDP, is transforming. What was an income pyramid in 2010—with 50 million people earning more than $5 a day at the pointed tip, 350 million making between $1 and $5, and 400 million scraping by on less than $1 a day—is estimated to chisel itself into a diamond shape by 2020. This means 150 million people earning more than $5 a day, a fat rhombus middle of 500 million people making between $1 and $5 a day and 250 million taking in less than $1 a day.
    This means 150 million first-time consumers of everything from more nutritious food to better soaps. This means 150 million first-time consumers of “brands” in a country where most of the poor and especially the rural poor buy “loose” unpackaged goods.
    Already most people working in village or small-town India do not get their income from agriculture—only 40 percent do. The rest have found work in everything from local retail to local banking and small-scale manufacturing. In a sense, millions of people have found, and are finding, new enterprises. The best definition I have heard of an entrepreneur in my ten years as a business journalist came from a village teacher in the dusty district of Alwar in India’s western desert state of Rajasthan. I met him about two years ago during a stop at a tea stall in the middle of nowhere on the road from Alwar to Delhi. I am ashamed to say that I do not remember his name, but what he said has echoed in me ever since. “An entrepreneur is not only a businessman as all you town people think,” said the school teacher. “Anyone who makes his life and the place, the world around him better is an entrepreneur. We have millions of women in the villages of India who keep the villages going. Each one of them is an entrepreneur. It is because of them that nothing collapses. They hold things up.” 5
    It is because of them that nothing collapses. They hold things up.
I had never heard a better description of the ideal entrepreneur. Back in Delhi, I went to meet Pradeep Kashyap, who has built India’s finest rural research organization, MART. When we met one September morning at his quiet office in the middle of Noida’s industrial zone, amid factories and ferries just on the outskirts of the Indian capital, he seemed angry. “There is an explosion in work and consumer demand in rural India and yet at the same time there is a raging Maoist revolution that runs through almost a third of the country—doesn’t that sound crazy?” said Kashyap.
    It is that odd truth about India—ostensibly the same demographic, a broad swath of rural India, is revolting and retailing at the same time. In fact, some of the Indian states most affected by Communist rebel violence are also some of the fastest-growing economies in India. This is a war for, and not against, prosperity.
    Were it not for the steady increase, however modest, in prosperity and aspiration—as desolately tragic as some of the