Free fall in rupee making scary headlines in print as well as electronic media, engaging our attention, triggering unseemly blame games and all that. Why as Indians, should be losing our sleep on it? It is not mainly because of our oil import which is a guzzler of our foreign exchange. There are other reasons too, we a nation of net importers and all these talk of improving our export performance has not resulted in any improvement at all. China has deliberately kept its currency devalued to reward its exports through value addition. We have utterly failed to export value-added products and services. If you calculate the huge outgo of foreign exchange on account of payment of royalty and technical fees that most of our maultinational subsidiaries pay to their parents for intangible intellectual property, you would be in for a rude shock. Pranab Mukherjee as Finance Minister lifted the earlier cap on this payment in 2009 and according to an ET survey a total of 35000 crore went out of this country on this score. Mind you this much was transferred not for any new inventive technologies but for use of brands which have been there for the last 20 years!

We boast of churning out engineers, scientists and all those people but there is not a single Indian global brand to generate reverse foreign exchange flow. All of us pay or made to pay foreign exchange for using foreign brands in almost any product you can think, from toothpaste, toothbrush, healthcare products and what not!!! If you look at South Korea, a small nation which is perpetually in tension with North Korea, you can see for yourself what commitment to excellence is. "Samsung" brand alone generates 20% of GDP of the country and I am leaving out its roaring success in the automobile sector. And our leaders are still busy providing food security!!!