I know most of us are overawed by the Indian growth story. There is no doubt about that India Shining thing but I have my reservations when it comes to the foundation on which our country is shining. Let me begin with a confused statement. The growth story in India didn’t happen soon. Rather it happened too fast. For people who are feeling that the intellectual fluid is coming from a broken head, be my guest. But be sure to take a look at it when you have overcome the intoxication of your success story typified by the gadgets and gizmos, the dream car and the dream apartment. Needless to say a fat paycheck which makes all this possible. When your loosened nerves are tightened, perhaps that day all of us would realize that though we had loaded guns we were using the bayonet.

When I say this, I ask myself are we using our full potential. Has the animation industry really come off age in India? Is India really the IT superpower? Have we really exploited the geographical advantages of Mumbai to make it the financial capital of South Asia?

The I Gen is gung ho about their recently acquired paraphernalia that the growing consumerism can justify. But think about it - Has consumerism in India become so big to pull the world economy as a locomotive. I say, we are still the small part that actuates the wheels in motion. We may be the ball bearings, but we are not the electric motor that rotates the blades in motion.

When I talk about growth in India, I talk about this growth. I dream of being in that league. When I talk about growth, I want to fire with my loaded gun and stash the bayonet away in my backpack.

We are one of the largest implementers of SAP and Oracles of the world. We are a giant machine which churns Buy and Sell side equity research reports for global corporate houses. We have our sunrise industry in India in the name of outsourced animation works in the country. But the hard fact remains. We are not SAP, Oracle, Bloomberg, Reuters or for that matter - Walt Disney. We are the sons and daughters of a large extended family. We are not the breadwinners. We certainly are not the head of the family. If I had to find an analogy for the growth story of India I would settle for this. From underprivileged and abused children we have graduated to be spoilt brats, with the daddies making our wishes come true.

I can see the eyebrows raising and people commenting on my blasphemy. Some would even say it’s the brainchild of a brain with no brains with the meaning as meaningless as a caviar made with quail eggs. What’s the point? It’s simple, I’m not asking Adam Smith to embrace Socialism, but accept that Socialism exists.

When I see the immense talent and potential of the workforce in India, I am convinced that we have the power and the resources to do something innovative that can be truly termed as a class apart. Somehow we haven’t attained that. I don’t know whether we are trying to do that or not. A school of thought emerges from one part of my brain, we have the talent, we have the resources, monetary and technical, but do we have the need? Our desires are so easily being fulfilled that we feel no need.

The only time we felt the need, our government was too caring to assume all the responsibilities of building the nation and breast feed us for the decades to come. Of course the mammaries of the welfare state proved to be too unproductive to satisfy our hunger and by the time realization crept in, it was too late. The global reservoir in the garb of the IMF was too pestering and opened its flood gates and we had to lift our barrages that shielded us for all these years. We had no time to innovate but very soon we identified where the opportunity lied. It was a bane which became a boon. It was a blessing in disguise. We could certainly be the workers who would man the machines and run the factory. Management was not our cup of tea.

Originality of ideas and innovativeness still defies us. Bazee.com came into picture only when eBay proved the viability of its business and later Bazee was too happy to give in to the offer of its holy matrimony with ebay. Mingle street sprang up only into action when Google proved the world with its open community of Orkut. A one stop shop for marketing, catching up with long lost friends, business, dating. My imagination will be as good as yours.

An original and innovative idea becomes a common sense over a period of time. We Indians have an excellent common sense which is quite uncommon in some other parts of the world. Our brains are good popcorn pop-ups, but somehow we have managed to stop the process of evolution and deny them the title of Incubators.

I don’t know how many of you agree or disagree. What I know that this article is making a lot of you uncomfortable. The technocrats would say to hell with it. They are the innovators in their own right. They got together and made the simputer which is a famous story of shattered dreams. We have a guy as a high school dropout who developed a cow dung powered battery which is highly successful. That guy is far from being labeled a technocrat, but an Innovator - damn he is.

Gone are the days when the techno savvy lad from the IITs and the disciple chanting management mantras from the IIMs were the blue eyed pupils of corporate India. Today all of us are riding the wave and we think we are flying too high. For this time let not realization creep in at midnight. We have followed the crowd during the wee hours of morning. Its time to take a lunch break and forget everything we had though. Let’s rethink. Its time to unlearn what we have been taught. Let’s start drawing our learning curve from today. I have thought over it sometimes, though it may not pass over as a deep thought. The fact remains, we are still lurching in the realms of Mediocrity. I would wait for the native talents to recognize their genius.