Moldova's Mukesh?

I just finished a great article in Newsweek about the head of Mukesh Ambani (July 17, 2006), certainly a little known name in the US, but he is in fact the wealthiest businessman in India. His company, Reliance Industries, has had amazing growth in areas where growth takes effort: refining, textiles, agriculture and retail. You can’t have a funny idea, post it on the internet, convince thousands of people to visit it and make money in the petrochemical industry – you have to hire large amounts of skilled and unskilled people, buy billion dollars worth of equipment, work closely with state and local governments, and have a good mind for economic strategy. The article claims that this man and his father have created something out of nothing: a oil refining industry in India where it did not exist before.

Something out of nothing… that must take some effort.

His quotes make him sound like a man with a plan and a vision, someone who enjoys the challenge as well as the reward, and has no qualms in taking pride in either. Speaking of a plan to bring large supermarkets to poor rural India he says “there will be mistakes, but we are not scared. We will correct our mistakes fast and move on”. He talks in terms of “conquering markets”, even though he’s proud of the fact that he’s providing a good service that will help people. He wants to get into the rural energy industry, something that most countries have subsidized through its early development, selling bio-mass generators in thousands of remote villages, all “sold and serviced by Reliance’s rural network”.

Sitting here in rural Moldova, I sometimes forget that lots of people work because they want to achieve something. Lots of people work to get ahead, not to get someone else behind. Lots of people work so they can earn what they deserve, not deserving to work in order to earn what they need. Here, most people work for all the wrong reasons, and those without work use all the same excuses.