Lazy companies

India Inc must learn to compete with foreign rivals

In an unfortunate recent trend, many dynamic Indian companies in several sectors have explicitly or implicitly sought protection for their sectors from the government. In many cases, this is not because of unfair trade practices from abroad, such as dumping, but because other participants in those sectors have received funding from abroad. The argument is that such funding makes it difficult for “Indian” companies to compete. This claim was made most recently by the chairman and managing director of SpiceJet, Ajay Singh, in an interview to this newspaper. Mr Singh, who has earned considerable respect for his energetic efforts to