A FEW WEEKS BACK, ONE READ ABOUT THE launch of a 20,000 square feet Indian Cultural Center in the Silicon Valley. A good, noble thought followed by some good, noble action. I am awaiting the next inevitable step—that is quite natural for this venerable race—the launch of a New India Cultural Center, built over 21,000 square feet, serving exactly the same purposes. No, don’t laugh it off. This is a serious examination of our very cultural fabric.

Examples are strewn around worldwide, wherever a group of us have managed to put down roots. While competition is necessary—and healthy, if directed towards noble deeds—it is a dangerous tool that could turn into greed and scythe us down in a single stroke. Coming back to examples, let us take a few. Business is a good one. In the early eighties, one smart small-scale manufacturer of shoes went to visit his relatives in the U.K. and accidentally met up with an Italian contemporary on his flight back. A small order for his shoes was given by the Italian. By mid-eighties, leather was a huge export business. Did we all work together in capitalizing on this potential? No, we simply carved up the pie in demonic greed, that left the buyers laughing all the way to the banks. We cut prices, outbid each other till there was no profit, and rang the death knell with lightening speed. Remember shrimps? And then garments? You know what I am talking about. O.K., so business is free trade, and competition is healthy. How come manufacturers from China don’t suffer from this syndrome? Push a vendor at the Hong Kong trade fair for a price below a point, and he’ll simply smile and say he will revert back to you. Because he or she belongs to a strictly convened business association—the HKTDC—which sets out the basic rules of business and pricing. BPO is big business. I am waiting to see how we carve up this pie.

No, this isn’t within India alone. Have you walked down Devon Avenue in Chicago? At last count, there were 85 Indian grocery stores, shouting down each other across glass-paneled store windows, offering low, lower and ever-lowering prices. In contrast, the Chinese shop in well-stocked, well-kept Ranch 99 Supermarkets. One store, one low price, and the chain knows that any move towards monopoly would simply make the consumer go away. Makes more sense, doesn’t it?

Then there are these hundred and more charities. Now don’t go off the handle and flame me before hearing me out. I attended a dinner of one of these noble institutions, and guess what, many of the attendees came from 4 other such institutions, and compared notes on what they were doing. Some even found that they were working on the same projects. Why can’t we simply pull all forces together and work with more money, more resources and more effectiveness that this groupism would bring?

Independence day. The glorious, historic, memorable day of our country. Only that two groups fight it out in public media about who has the right to conduct the parade. And finally, U.S. legal authorities had to intervene and sort it out for them. Why? Simply because the pie-carvers didn’t want their shares going away, or work together on a common parade. Back home, between the months of September and January, the presidential road—Janpath—is clogged up by the three armed forces holding their parades for Air Force Day, Army Day and Navy Day. I suppose it isn’t prestigious enough to hold a single parade for all the three services.

Take our own industry—publishing. As the Internet boom brought more of our countrymen into the U.S., the number of magazines grew four-fold. New ones began with the simple idea of carving up thinner slices of the advertising dollar pie. Of course, with the tightening economy, the worthwhile ones survived, while the pretentious pie-carvers closed shop. In the hey-day, the content was pretty much the same if you opened four different tabloids. Not for a minute am I encouraging unilateral composition of markets, but market slicing should deliver value to the consumer.

We could take some lessons from our history which we are so proud of. In the early tenth and eleventh centuries, civilized India was constantly being fragmented into smaller kingdoms, as devious vassals and their cohorts broke away to stake their claims on tiny pieces of the land. A bunch of nomadic horsemen from beyond the mountains rode in, ruthlessly routed the thousand and more kings and took over the country. In time, even they fell into this culture trap, and a few men who came in a boat saw the vast country rife with unrest, pettiness and greed. It didn’t take them long to build their empire in the land and we all know what happened in the last two centuries.

Our gripe has always targeted the greedy politician, who seems to be the only one to blame for our state of sorrow. Why should we? Isn’t he a natural product of our cultural fabric, carving the political pie the same way we did the others? What wrong did the politician do? Form a hundred and more parties with ever-shrinking following, so that when he or she attempts to form governance, we send him or her to the parliament with no clear victory?

Why do we need so many groups within this community that has grown into a worldwide presence? The last time I was in Dubai there was the Indian Sports Club, the Sindhi Society, the Tamil Sangham and so on, each coercing one to attend a dinner for a fee. My neighbor, an American, used to go up to the Hard Rock Cafe, watch football, chat with friends over a pint of the bar’s best, and come home. He belonged to the American Association of UAE. Amen to that!