A Consumer-Driven India?

Today, I decided to avail myself of a Subway pastrami sandwich for lunch, and discovered the following quote on the wall next to the register:

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.

The author of the quote was none other than Mahatma Gandhi. I immediately asked the Indian gentleman, who I assumed to be the proprietor of the store, about the quote and whether it was part of a larger economic vision of Gandhi. Initially, he thought that I was inquiring about Gandhi himself, which is not a bad assumption given the general American ignorance of history and international affairs.

Anyhow, my interest was piqued. The best that I can discern from a quick internet search is that the quote comes from a speech delivered in South Africa.

I continue to be amazed at how so many Indians, from Bangalore to Boston, have embraced the capitalist ethic, which is eschewed by America's domestic intellectual elite. Many have even made a concerted effort to enter the field of high technology, where American intellectual capital still predominates. The international division of labor will not protect American economic dominance, whether it be the offshoring of call-center jobs or jobs held by those who could be classified as "knowledge workers" or members of the "creative class." This helps to ensure that "populist" (read: nativist crank) TV journalists like CNN's Lou Dobbs will have plethora of material in the years to come.

The emergence of an Indian entrepreneurial class continues to be one of the greatest underreported stories of our time, notwithstanding the broad, often glib semantic brushstrokes of the New York Times's Thomas Friedman.

And one need only look to the National Spelling Bee to witness how remarkably Indian parents have inculcated the value of education in their children. There's another great story that has yet to be really unearthed.

The larger question is whether America will embrace the competitive spirit that has been its animating force since its inception, or instead adopt an "Old Europe" posturing that places an inordinate emphasis on the public sector. Given the current vogue of big government conservatism and the Left's continued embrace of what can best be described as faulty economic reasoning, America may embrace stagnation under the auspices of security over the Schumpeterian gales of creative destruction.

[Hat tip to The Official Mahatma Gandhi eArchive & Reference Library for the photo.]