First-gen Founder : Loved the DACOIT-y article and video. Have been saying similar stuff but this government is not a good listener.

Me : Yeah, they are sleeping at the wheel while we are being colonised.

First-gen Founder : Aptly called out, Raghav. It’s really tough. Irony is that they keep saying they want a Google and an Alibaba to come out of India!!! I’ve said this to the face of everyone including the PM (politely) but they don’t get it because the obsession is FDI in the short term.

For obvious reasons, I shall not disclose the identity of this bright young man!

IAS Officer : Read your very nice piece. Agree with large parts of it. Not all. And you forget Arun Shourie’s famous line – you need to first get elected before becoming a reformer. No party can alienate the traders with 12 mn establishments. Thus it will also be salami tactics, slow poison. Not a direct confrontation. BTW this PMO has been seized of the issues you mentioned and has been working on it. Albeit slowly. You should see positive changes soon. Problem is Flipkart and others have not played it well. They have hired wrong lobbyists, highlighted wrong issues. Do you have something deeper written on each issue and solution which you can share with me?

Me : You don’t need very deep, complicated guidelines. Those become rent seeking problems, which force people to act in strange, illegal ways. Set people free. Trust the markets.

IAS Officer : Agree. But there is a political economy angle. And some of the things you mention, there is a valid alternate view too.

Me : The policy-makers should stop micro managing, trying to control winners and losers. Their job should be to ensure fair competition, not become the arbiters of who can do what under which rules! But unlike you, other IAS officers are deeply suspicious of freedoms. And politicians couldn’t care less. That’s the core problem.

IAS Officer : I agree with you. Problem is in many cases, not all, they are unable to ensure fair competition either!

Me : Then leave it to the brutality of markets. Far better than creating rent seekers.

IAS Officer : Give me 3 months …. (after this, he meandered into specific details which I cannot anonymise, so I shall lop it off here. But you get the drift).

To Pass Modi’s Nationalism Test, Mug Up these New Words & Phrases

Mr Statistically-Suspicious IAS Officer : Sir, we must ensure that a start-up does not become a proxy/front for large foreign or domestic shareholders. Therefore, we should stipulate “that no single shareholder shall invest more than 10 percent in the equity capital”.

Mr Structurally-Suspicious IAS Officer : But sir, you know how these large corporations can create layers of ownership behind a corporate veil. So we should add “directly or indirectly” in the definition of a “single shareholder”. (Gosh, by inserting just this “innocuous provision”, our do-gooder officer has made it virtually impossible to certify the “parentage” of an investor. This poor fellow will have to file a bunch of biographies, whose authenticities will need to be security checked, from Sacramento to Sitamarhi!)

Mr Small-Fetish IAS Officer : And sir, can we really call the second venture launched by Flipkart’s founders a “start-up”? After all, they are dollar billionaires now. So we should add a “second proviso” that these benefits will be available “only to the first venture of a first-gen entrepreneur”.

(Now go figure this one out – who is “first gen” and what is his/her “second venture after a successful first exit”. As you can see, by now the policy has become utterly unimplementable.)

Mr Final-Nail-in-the-Coffin IAS Officer : Sir, we must distinguish between start-ups which add to the tech/innovation ecosphere, as opposed to somebody setting up a “pakoda” (fried potatoes) shop. So sir, these concessions should be made available only to those start-ups which are duly certified by the Inter-Ministerial Board set up under DIPP to identify an “innovative business operation”.

There you go again! Even before the ink has dried on Prime Minister Modi’s instruction to create a “21st century paradigm to equip Indian entrepreneurs to take on the world”, his elite IAS brigade has created devilish rent-seeking powers in the hands of the Station House Officer (SHO) of Sitamarhi, Bihar (and perhaps also at the Precinct of Sacramento, but we can’t be sure about that). So I can betcha that come Modi@5, in May 2019, not one approval would have been processed!

4 Years of Modi Government: Digital India Colonised!

After four years of Modi Rule, India’s digital economy is disheartened. That strikes a hammer blow at the Prime Minister’s core promises – Young India, Digital India, and Make in India (Smart Cities, anybody?). No wonder the panic at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is rising.

Two of my recent articles/videos went viral and touched a raw nerve with readers and policy-makers. In the first one, I coined a catchy acronym – DACOIT, ie Digital America/China Colonising and Obliterating Indian Tech – in the hard-hitting style patented by Narendra Modi. It punched through India’s flawed, discriminatory policies that were forcing our first-gen entrepreneurs to capitulate, making our digital economy a vassal/colony of America and China (The Times of India asked for permission to republish it in their main editorial slot.)

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Topics: Make in India Raghav Bahl Narendra Modi government

Published: 26 May 2018, 2:46 PM IST

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Modi @4: Digital India Colonised, by IAS!

The Quint’s Founder, Editor-in-Chief gives us the lowdown on India’s digital economy under Modi govt.

Read Latest News and Breaking News at The Quint, browse for more from opinion

Topics: Make in India Raghav Bahl Narendra Modi government