The East India Company set foot in India in 1600 as a trading enterprise. The company was permitted by QE1 to do trade with India – import things like pepper, indigo dye ( a vegetable dye in yesteryears for cotton & denim ), saltpeter ( ingredient in cooking & in making gun powder) etc.  The first factory was set in Machilipatnam. Slowly they increased their tribe and by using management principles of deceit, divide & rule etc..  went on to govern parts of India by oppression from 1757. British Empire took over governance only in 1857, after the Indian sepoys of EIC  revolted against the oppression.

The rule had its own benefits & ills. Indians paid taxes of their labour to a foreign government, lost all freedom. Most of India’s wealth was plundered and taken back as trophies. A beautiful island of Andaman was strategically seen as a unescapable prison & lost its rich teak reserves. More Indians were tortured, humiliated etc…

On the positive side, Indians got good roads, trains,  lot of airstrips in small towns during WW2    (Rajahmundry, Tuticorin etc..) , better civic amenities, better buildings ( used initially to house Britishers & her offices), a better civic governance etc.. etc.. Fort St George (Chennai ) & Fort St. William (kolkatta) were actually factories.

The single most important benefit – English language fluency –is largely responsible for a large Indian diaspora settling all over the globe.

I & we do not really know, what it is to be without freedom. So far so good.

Chinese manufactured Indian flags are on sale in some places in India today. Chinese have started taking over Diwali in Mumbai. Most of the paper lanterns with Goddess of Laskhmi on it are now from China. Chinese firecrackers are increasingly visible. Hotel furniture, mattress  in small town Nellore etc, are from China.

The burgeoning Indian population needs more electricity. There aren’t enough rivers to set up many power plants. Sea water is the only effective economical water source for running these power plants. So all new power plants ( many, many ) have & are coming up all along the coastal region – from Bengal to Gujarat.

It is this coastal power plants that is giving me good business and feeding me.

All the new-gen power plants - , including the Tata’s - in the Indian coast use Chinese boilers and Chinese power generating equipment. This means Chinese personnel are also there to erect, operate and maintain it. Chinese engineers & personnel are now all along India’s coast. They too have come from the East & have begun their stint as businessmen in India.

The Chinese are evolving as   East India Company Version 2.0.

The current day Indian Maharaja’s – those putting  up the power plant have been lured by economics of trade by the Chinese over BHEL.  BHEL, a Maharatna company is unable to respond to the challenge of cost economics– inspite of the transformation this opportunity can make to them, to Trichy & to India. Hope Chinese progress stops here

Chinese goods are novel, cheap & always look attractive and better. But they are likely to be manufactured in shop floors with very poor labour conditions & with long, long hours of work as we hear news about the conditions at Adidas, Apple & Xaomi production’s facilities. It is getting proved time and again that cost economies cannot be achieved without slavery.

Ambuja  and all our classmates having visited or dealing with Chinese, may have a positive outlook, on account of numerous friends & their warm experiences there. I am also equally optimistic, but cannot ignore my uneasiness in seeing the Chinese all along India’s vulnerable coast line . Chinese opportunistic support to Pak, continually probing & testing in Arunachal, only increases the uneasiness.

Governments campaign of Make in India has the capacity to stop the EIC V2.0 behemoth from rolling us down. It is our key to survival and growth & needs to be implemented with all earnestness