Page 70 - #letter to son

#SangamNiti EVENING REFLECTIONS
The funny thing as I have found is that conviction is identifiable,
indestructible and wholly transferable. Oh, the powers of conviction!
Our channel, Hindi Khabar, has faced several existential threats. Yet,
we have found that someone has always come forward and bailed us
out – through equity or through sound advice. They believed in the
conviction with which the venture was started. They believed in us.

We have often said that our channel is like the yagna and the sacred fire
is kept aglow by someone always being ready with the aahuti. How true
is this representation.

There are many instances of giant institutions that started life as a tiny
humble seed. Let me take you back to the forests here. Studies have
shown that a bamboo tree shows little growth for the first five years. But
then, in just three months, it grows more than 80 feet tall. All these years
were spent in strengthening the roots to achieve the eventual height.
Just like the bamboo tree, great businesses take time to build.

Take the instance of Tata Steel, the greatest Indian entrepreneurial
venture that was meticulously planned over 10 years. By learning
from the iron-making experiences of some of the stalwarts of that
time, the founders eventually figured that the only real and sustainable
competitive advantage lay in getting advanced technology, securing
coal and iron ore as key raw material resources, and persevering with
the venture over the long haul. Planning these took them many years
from inception to production. They invited foreign specialists to train
Indians in steel-making and in building organisational capabilities from
scratch.

At about this time, World War I happened that meant the English and
the French desperately needed steel. Tata Steel expanded capacity with
energetic planning and Charles Perin, one of the pioneers of steel-
making of the olden times, despatched to India a mind-boggling 700,000
tracings and 3 million blueprints between 1917 and 1920. Think about
that for a second. The far-sighted vision of the founders, meticulous
planning over the years and unalloyed passion comprised

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