Make in India by Saligrama K. Aithal

After listening to Prime Minister Narendra Modi talk about “Make in India,” Omshri Dhanvantri suddenly had a vision of India as the new land of opportunity. Several years earlier, he had left India and come to the United States in pursuit of health, wealth, and happiness. He could, of course, buy health insurance with Federal subsidy, earned enough money to buy a house on a thirty-year mortgage, and a car on deferred payment, and had nothing particularly to complain about, except that he found no way to make a million—the minimum amount required to live the American dream. It seemed that his original homeland now offered that opportunity. Luckily, he considered himself as an Indian American, unlike the famous fellow gentleman of Indian origin making his bid for the White House, and hoped he would be welcome back home with his “Make in India” project.

            Omshri put up a proposal to the Government of India that he had a formula for a powerful Ayurvedic vaccine to cure the growing disappointment, frustrations, and anger among the Indian public at the prevailing economic, social, and political conditions affecting their daily lives. People were particularly disgusted with their elected representatives who spent all their time accusing their opponents of corruption with or without grounds, exchanging insults and recriminations, disrupting parliament/assembly proceedings, whipping up emotions among the masses, organizing marches and bandhs, and going to the court on every possible issue, as if they were elected solely to perform this unpleasant purpose. Worse still, the electorate was blaming themselves most of all for their blindness and idiocy: they cast their votes while the candidates were unabashedly asking for support on the basis of cash, caste, and religion in the name of secularism and democracy, which election tactics should have alerted them of the distasteful things to come, if they had insight. When he let his fellow Indian Americans know about his plans, loans and donations poured in, and the whole Silicon Valley offered every possible IT help to make his venture successful.