It is amusing as well as annoying to see some silly comments on social and mainstream media by some of our Indian brethren taking a dig at Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan launched by PM Narendra Modi.

While the world was fighting the two world wars with almost every major nation involved through the first half of last century what were we doing specifically from 1914 to 1919 the first world war and from 1939 to 1945 six years of the bloodiest Word War 2 ?
In both these wars India’s army was used by the British rulers to fight for them against their adversaries. Indian manpower and British hardware, some of it manufactured in India too through ordinance factories established by the British rulers to serve their end during the two world wars. Their cannons and our army men as the cannon fodder would be the crudest but the best way to reflect the situation. Our civilian population had nothing to do with this and was blissfully oblivion of what was happening on the other side of the globe.
During these World Wars Europe was destroyed to a large extent and Americans also brought their boots on the ground and had their skin in the game including their military hardware in support of the Allied forces.

Though these wars were devastating and a harrowing experience for the people where every single man, woman and child tasted blood and misery, they emerged as battle hardened nations. Political leadership also emerged from such tough dedicated, patriotic and disciplined people who by now had commitment in their DNA.
It also served as a crucible of incubating technology. Radars, Communication, Avionics, Aircraft, Submarines, Aircraft carriers, large battle ships, Rocket science, metallurgy, electronics, mechanical and automobile engineering, quantum physics, medicine and even nuclear technology had to be created during these two major wars at a breakneck speed.

America is emerging as a superpower

Let us look at the United States of America- which emerged as a super power even before the Second World War and it still is- as a case study to see how it became an economic and military power which no one has been able to match till date. This is a question lurking in the minds of many of us. We ask ‘How and why is America such a massive power?’
Since the year 1871, the modern United States has continued to sustain its position as the world’s most powerful and the largest economy. In 2019, in terms of Gross Domestic Product, the U.S economy stood at (approximately) $ 21.44 Trillion which is a huge number!

How it all began

The industrial revolution acted like a volcanic eruption of opportunities and prosperity for American people. For supporting this they required a strong central political and administrative guiding system and therefore the ultimate power got vested in the federal government. And it has remained so since then.
For an economy to boom you require a good infrastructure and this is what America did in all earnestness from the beginning of the 19th century. Along with the government several businessmen worked towards this. Railroads, waterways and shipping got a shot in the arm.

Making a smart move and understanding the ultimate demand several businessmen worked vigorously to improve its infrastructure. To facilitate the trade through water, Cornelius Vanderbilt a business tycoon worked dedicatedly to make the shipping business effective. Businessmen built the largest railway network. Highways and road connectivity was also developed in sync.
The first billionaire and an oil businessman John D. Rockefeller saw a great opportunity in the surging demand of oil as most Americans were using oil based lamps as source of light. He took advantage of this and expanded his business and started a company called Standard Oil (SO- ESSO). The most important about American business houses and American Attitude is that they do everything on a huge scale which is reflected in their Highways, skyscrapers, ships, Cars, tanks and guns. MASSIVE is in their heads.

The first biggest game changing invention was that of an electric bulb conceived and invented by Thomas Edison. This gave a booster shock to electricity and made it a necessity to be taken to every home!
He created General Electric one of the super giants of a business corporation. With the invention of the electric bulb and its commercialization, the United States witnessed a significant hike in demand for electrical appliances that further provided a backbone for economic expansion.

It became a house hold name and became the main ingredient as building material. With this steel as its base, US started building Sky scrapers. This shows how quickly one invention lead to another and this ‘move on domino attitude’ took America places. All such discoveries and inventions helped Americans to gain an edge in industrial output during the 1890s. It went ahead of Great Britain too. As the years passed the baton of innovations got handed over from some entrepreneurs to others.

Howard R. Hughes was an American business magnate and investor. Hughes formed the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932, hiring numerous engineers and designers. He spent the rest of the 1930s and much of the 1940s setting multiple world air speed records and building the Hughes H-1 Racer (1935) and H-4 Hercules (the Spruce Goose, 1947), the latter being the largest flying boat in history and having the longest wingspan of any aircraft from the time it was built until 2019. Again Big was at the centre of his business philosophy.
Henry Ford was another great business thinker who changed the face of the four-wheeler industry by initiating mass production of vehicles. He came up with the idea of assembly line in 1908 to optimise the output of a workforce in a manufacturing plant.
America was thousands of miles away from the European continent and in a way insulated from getting involved directly into a conflict with any country in European continent. First World War started in 1914 and America which was not keen to join the war had resisted for more than two years but finally got drawn into it in Sep 1917 due to prevalent Geopolitical conditions of those times.
American armed forces were ill-equipped for a full-scale war and the nation did not have the capability to produce much military hardware. America as a nation state put itself into a crippling situation in this respect. After the First World War, the administration decided to mend things in a big way. An Army College was established and for the next two decades they created a strong military might for themselves, especially creating a massive inventory of military hardware. As soon as Second World War started American Congress allotted large sums for war preparations. Beginning with half a billion dollars in 1939 it scaled it up to eight billion dollars in 1940. That is how American entry into the Second World War changed the course of history for the Allies.

Between 1850 and 1950, the GDP of the United States witnessed a sharp spike up. During 1950, it had a 60% share in the industrial output of the entire world. With the start of the 20th century, the economy of the United States had gained the position of the biggest economy in the world!
After the 1950s the U.S. turned its focus on other sectors such as service and technology. Although the industrial revolution of the United States went on throughout the time of World War II, it led to massive loss and destruction in European nations such as Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and France. On the other hand, the United States reaped heavy benefits.
Yes! Where European countries were busy with war and bloodshed, the United States was aiming for a jackpot.

During the World War, it supplied necessary weapons to a number of European nations to fight the war. Before the World War, America was going through a Great Depression since 1929. This went on for almost a decade. But a War at that scale provided a merry situation for the U.S. They found a desperate and big market for their weapons. The export of weapons to European nations during World War II pumped a huge capital into the U.S. economy and the U.S. was out of the Great depression. World War II crippled the economic condition of most European nations but amid all these United States rose with flying colors!

The High-tech Revolution

After conquering the industrial sector of the world, the U.S. turned its focus to the ever-growing technology sector. Tech giants such as IBM, Apple, Microsoft, etc revolutionized the IT world of America taking the technological revolutions to new heights. They created the Internet which was a backbone for scaling up business and business- it made the word flat. Death of distance and time was now a way of life. Social media and online shopping, E mail changed the way people worked, the way people communicated and the way people did business. This was a quantum leap forward and American inventors and the Silicon Valley was at the forefront of this info revolution.

The U.S. has been a melting pot of immigrants from all over the world! In fact, as per the statistics of 2017, around 5 million people were immigrants. These immigrants bring not only their culture but their intellect and talent too. America is a place where talent is respected and paid for. Their presence and innovative approach of entrepreneurs added to the overall productivity of the nation. The U.S. has faced recession a couple of times in recent times too, but its business-friendly environment and presence of capital in abundance have always kept it going.

Philanthropy enables prosperity and people like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and in recent times Warren Buffet and Bill Gates etc who acted as the pillars of the development of the United States also made significant contributions towards philanthropic works.
The amount was donated towards education, innovation and research programs. The money contributed by businessmen towards sectors like education, research, etc again supported the growth of the United States.
Sadly, India lacks in this regard. There is almost no philanthropy done towards the research and innovation in our country!

America was able to transform its global presence after the 1800s due to continuous innovation and hard work of generations! This innovation has always been supported by technology, high-class infrastructure and availability of natural resources.
Ultimately, it became an economic superpower! Most importantly it was the attitude of being self-sufficient, self-reliant and hard work to build their nation.

Americans had their share of poverty, misery and hunger too. They suffered the Great depression for almost a decade but never begged never wanted things for free. The attitude of freebee was not there in most of these people.
That is one major difference between them and others who are still struggling to find their feet.

What lessons for India?

While the world was fighting two great World Wars, people of India were yet not free from the British Raj. Wars as I mentioned carved out resilient battle-hardened attitudes out of ordinary people. The battle-hardened, were being led by the battle-hardened soldiers turned politicians. Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Eisenhower were all military veterans. Out of 45 Presidents of the United States, 29 were veterans! Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush to name a few.
Let me take a quote from History to illustrate a point about attitude.

On May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. When he met his Cabinet on May 13 he told them that “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” He repeated that phrase later in the day when he asked the House of Commons for a vote of confidence in his new all-party government. The entire population of Great Britain accepted it as a reality and there was not a whimper of protest. No one said ‘Winston Churchill Hai Hai’ or ‘sadda haque aithe rakh’.

In our country if a politician promises you free electricity, free food, free vaccine, free transport and lots of false promises only then he gets voted to power. The voters also know that he is telling a lie but would love to listen to that lie and vote. I bet if any politician gives you the true picture of ‘Toil, tears and sweat’, he will never get voted to power! Indian voter lies to himself and then for the next five years again lies that the lies he told to himself have not become the truth and curses the Politician.
Let us face it we have missed at least a century of hard work, sweat and blood which spans our previous three generations. We never faced a bloody war like the Europeans or Americans.
You need to turn the clock back? You cannot.

A Chinese anecdote goes like this

How the Chinese learnt to roast pork. ‘A house caught fire and the pigs in the house got roasted. So every time they wanted to eat roasted pork they put the pigs in a new house and set the house on fire.’
You don’t have to start two world wars to learn it! But at east realize that you missed these.
Mahatma Gandhi started Atma nirbhar campaign in 1930 with a ‘Charkha’ or a spinning wheel.
He ingeniously deployed the charkha as an important tool for political emancipation, by using it as a metaphor of ‘ancient work ethics’ and as a symbol of economic and social reaction to the British Rule. He believed that “It is in the daily life where dharma and practicality come together and the spinning wheel was the realization of this possibility.” Idea was that each person should make his own cloth and need not depend on British goods. But this philosophy was not for economic boom. That could happen only with industrialization of textile industry.

As an independent nation our leadership thought of creating public sector units to kick start big industry as there were no rich individuals who could start such big plants. The idea was good but execution lacked the spirit. Government invested in Hardware ie the fixed assets in a big way but had poor management with political interference and bureaucrats heading most PSUs. After a few years they should have handed it over to private parties to operate which was never done. These became dinosaurs and money guzzlers- a safe haven for non performers. It can be called evolution of a new corporate sub culture- PSU culture.
Coming back to toil and sweat, today’s youth need to look at the current situation with a century old backlog. Developed and economically strong nations have toiled and sweated it out for so long to become Atma nirbhar. Their current generation is riding a wave of comfort given to them by their ancestors. You got to earn it. You got to earn it. No one will give you on the plate and no one can give you on the plate. So stop crying and stop lying to yourself that the government will make you the next America.