India Uncut

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Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Zero in the numbers

Ok, it's bizarro time. Kenichi Ohmae, a "management guru" who is apparently known as "Mr Strategy," tells Business Standard:
Indians are not good at manufacturing. Even if they do what we tell them to do, they always need to understand why they are doing it that way. They are more inquisitive than the Chinese. Maybe it’s because of their ability to find zero in the numbers.
This is laughable. As I've written in the past, India isn't a manufacturing superpower because of the many different kinds of restrictions placed on Indian industry by an oppressive state. It is ideally placed to dominate in labour-intensive manufacturing, and there is nothing about its people that precludes it from doing so. Mr Ohmae's statement betrays his lack of knowledge of both India and the Indian people, and the recourse to easy stereotype is laughable.

In the years to come, I hope he will be proved wrong.

Cross-posted on The Indian Economy Blog.
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