From Brokers to Builders: Why India Needs a Producer Mindset for Real Progress

India’s most stubborn obstacle to real progress isn’t just within our corporations—it’s etched deep within our schools, colleges, and every layer of our culture. We hail brokers over builders, reward obedient networkers over audacious creators, and cultivate a law of obligation instead of a true win-win spirit.

From primary classrooms to top-tier campuses, networking is praised as the route to success. Connections are frequently valued above competency. The formula is simple: “You take care of me, I’ll take care of you.” But when this turns into a pervasive system favoring mutual comfort and obligation over innovation and merit, it risks society’s very potential.

Our classrooms reward rote memorization and conformity, squeezing curiosity and entrepreneurship out of students. Grades become currency for negotiation, and school life is increasingly dominated by social alliances, not the cultivation of problem-solving or risk-taking. Creative thinking and challenging the status quo are rarely encouraged — students learn early that it’s safer, even more rewarding, to please influencers than to build something original.

This mindset follows graduates into the workplaces of giants like Infosys, TCS, and Wipro. These companies, celebrated abroad, have mostly been sophisticated body-shops, thriving on selling manpower rather than crafting transformative software. Even as the world races ahead with innovations like ChatGPT, many Indian IT giants remain risk-averse, chasing safe SaaS projects or leaning into services instead of producing genuine intellectual property.

Compare this to America, a society where salesmanship, business development, and the producer mindset are woven into the culture. Americans are taught—from lemonade stands to Silicon Valley—that survival means knowing how to sell, create, and scale. India, meanwhile, struggles with the crab mentality: an inferiority complex that spurs envy, resistance to others’ growth, and the urge to pull rising stars down rather than to climb alongside them.

The outcome? We’re nurturing generations who believe relationships are the currency of success, not creativity or enterprise. The wins may come in circles, but national progress stalls. True development calls for a stark shift—a movement to honor producers, builders, and business developers, from our classrooms to our corporations.

India will not flourish until it transforms its core mindset. Our schools and colleges must rethink their mission: foster relentless curiosity, encourage bold experimentation, and celebrate those who create real value. Only then will India move from a culture of obligation and safe networks towards an ecosystem thriving on innovation, risk-taking, and genuine growth.