Tools don’t make an expert, knowledge does, and if one has the knowledge and also knows when and how to use that, one can command the price. 

I heard a story many years back and it still stays fresh in my mind. 

The story goes like  that once there was a steamer ship boiler that had failed and its owner after trying with many expert hands, with disappointment, finally called some local old mechanic who had been dealing with boilers  since his childhood. This old man carrying his tool box with him and after enquiring with the owner and his engineering team went into the boiler room. He closely inspected the machine with his hands and after listening to the pulse of the defunct equipment with his ears, he pulled a small hammer from his tool box and tapped at some places and to everyone’s surprise the boiler started responding and it awoke from slumber. There was much jubilation on the steamer ship but the owner was surprised and became angry as soon as he saw the bill of $1000. The old mechanic was questioned and asked to revise the bill to which he agreed and sent in the revised bill that  blew the mind of the owner. 

The  revised bill had mentioned $1 for the tapping with hammer & $999 for knowing where to tap. 

This is exactly what our Prime Minister is doing. He exactly knows the key levers and drivers for the nations growth, progress, turnaround and is tapping them well and the response can be noticed when we see how CEO’s of Global IT organizations are endorsing his ambitious Digital Program that would bring India technologically at par with the developed nations. 

The recent visit to Silicon valley by Mr Modi, first in last 3 decades by any Indian PM, has set the glide path for India’s growth trajectory that is also capitalizing on the demographic dividend of the country. Mr Modi understands that a stronger bond with  Silicon valley, that has traditionally helped Indian companies to scale up,  can fuel abundant investments, knowledge transfer and can build a stronger  innovation bridge between the two, leading to a greater and faster transformation. He knows that the world around us is rapidly changing with business and technological trends and with  comprehensive digital transformations like smart computing products, internet of things, products and platforms, cloud computing, mobility and analytics can fasten the pace of change and leveraging this ahead of time will be in the best interest of India’s growth and given that we are  becoming home to new breed of startups can further augment this and facilitate the vision of becoming a 20 Trillion economy even faster.

The response to this action was highly encouraging and rewarding when CEO’s of Google, Microsoft & Apple in one voice applauded our Prime Ministers vision and found Modi’s call strengthening their ambitions for hunting treasures in the rural India. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella went ahead and committed to partner with Indian government to bring in low cost broadband connectivity to 500,000 villages in India. This undoubtedly, if coupled with cloud computing intelligence, can fuel creativity, innovation, efficiency and productivity.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple also looked very positive and mentioned India fitting into their long term plan. Foxconn, which is Apple’s largest manufacture, has decided to set up a manufacturing base in India.

This is called tapping at the right spot.

After many decades, India has got a real good political engineer, who knows the mantra to re-engineer the nations growth towards the top. Wish him all the best.