Society at large is experiencing a contradiction between open and closed environments at the individual and industry levels. Digitisation of technology has made life easier even as it has created linearity across society, commoditising all products and services in the happening open environment.

Take a look at how you have been groomed in your personal life. The education system expects you to write and talk English better than Britishers and Americans. Your family would rather you came first in class, take up a ‘decent’ job, and ‘settle down’ to a respected family life. All this comprises the opium of your closed environment. It makes you practise prudence in professional life, satisfying the boss becomes a critical activity, and making decisions is no longer your problem. The trend is to tote up the money you make and the job offers that come your way, or wallow in your job stock options.

In earlier times, security came when you clinched a government job for your whole life. Since the 1991 economic reforms, the young generation is flirting with jobs. In each new position they are again cocooned in the same kind of culture, as though they are in the closed family environment. People are averse to the discomforting risk of becoming an entrepreneur. MNCs applaud this as they can hire people communicating in English here, which is very difficult in China.

So statistically, after China’s 1978 economic reforms and policy change in 1987 that opened up private enterprise, the number of individual new businesses grew 11.04 million from 1989 to 2004. In contrast, as per India’s Ministry of Corporate Affairs, from 1992 to 2006, the average number of companies formed per year was 33,835, thus taking the 15-year total figure to just half a million new companies.

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