Is Swadeshi good for India?

Is Swadeshi good for India?
Some people have recently started a campaign to make India 100% swadeshi. They want that our industries, technology, education, healthcare, language, food, dress : everything must be swadeshi. Is 100% swadeshi good for India? Jago Party is of the view that insisting on 100% swadeshi would be disastrous for India. Reasons for this are given in the following dialogue between a supporter of swadeshi and that of Jago Party: Swadeshi: India has been a spiritual guru for the entire world in the past. India developed atma-gyan, ayurved, jyotish, vastu-shastra, artha-shastra, etc. Real happiness and peace can come only if we follow our spiritual culture. So why should we copy the bad materialist Western culture? Jago : We too respect great Indian spiritual culture. But, there are two aspects of this : individual and political. We think every individual should be free to choose his or her lifestyle (such as food, dress, religion etc). Even Indian culture never forced its ideas on any individual or nation in the past. As to political aspect, we have to discuss merits or otherwise of a swadeshi economy. Swadeshi : OK. Let us start with industries. We believe that no foreign companies should be allowed to operate in India because they are exploiting us by taking away huge profit from out of India. Jago : A company makes profit only if people buy its products at the price fixed by the company. So let people decide whether they want to buy such products or not. If these products are bad or inferior or expensive compared to goods manufactured by Indian companies, people would not buy them. Besides, foreign companies bring in a lot of capital, new technology & new management techniques; they generate a lot of employment; give better salaries to their staff than Indian companies do; pay huge amount of taxes. So, what is wrong if they reinvest it in India sometimes, while take away profit another time? Swadeshi : But why should we allow our money to go out of country? Jago : If every country thinks like you, international movement of capital, goods and services would completely stop, thus every country losing its advantage in specialization in certain sectors and depriving all other countries of its unique skill and product at lower price.  Secondly, now Indian companies are investing in other countries and they also repatriate their profit back to India. So repatriation of profit works both ways.  So if we follow you, we will end up losing whatever capital is coming to us. After lots of liberalizations, India has now come to rank 3 in terms of Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index 2010 after China and the US. Because of your obsession with swadeshi, India will lose this advantage and slip into isolation again. Swadeshi : You appear to be right on this. But surely our Gurukul system of education was the best. So why should we follow Western educational system? Jago : Modern education consisting of science, humanities, math etc started only about 300 years ago for the simple reason that before this, there was no systematic scientific knowledge on any subject. Besides, there was neither printing press, nor paper, nor books. Gurukul system was teaching mostly Vedic mantras and spiritual knowledge orally to a few selected students. There was no professional knowledge at that time like our modern day engineers, doctors, chartered accountants etc have. So, obviously the Gurukul system cannot meet the professional requirements of today. Of course, we can incorporate yoga too in our curriculum even today and keep it optional for students. Swadeshi : OK. But you would surely agree that our Ayurveda is the best in the world and it can cure all diseases. Allopathy on the other hand treats only symptoms. Jago : Let this be decided by people. If Ayurveda, Pranayam and Yoga can cure all diseases, the whole world would start following it. Why do you demand that government should ban Allopathic science and permit only Ayurveda. You just sell your idea vigorously : if there is a merit, it will be accepted by the masses. Then automatically, there would be more demand for Ayurvedic doctors and people will start studying your Ayurveda all over the world. Then allopathy would die a natural death. Swadeshi : You have awakened me today. Thank you very much. Jago : You are welcome!