Ideas are the basis and the rationale for the future to exist. Without an idea, there is no direction. It is quite strange how many times, we simply reject potentially good ideas, simply because they do not seem to make sense in the present!
I was going through a newspaper report that John Edwards, an ex-RAF electronics engineer, and the inventor of the mobile in 1960s was refused a start up loan for the gadget because the bank manager thought that the technology would never catch up - the bank manager thought that the idea was a nonsense, as he thought that people would never like to carry a phone with them!
In another way, Bill Gates in the early years of computer, thought that 2 MBs would be sufficient for anyone - and today, there are computer programs that are more than that size!
We can only say that it is our thought that limits us in our progress. Now the mobile phone is not just for the elites, executives or even reflective of status symbol. Now it is available in the pockets of the people who perspire to earn their daily living. It is now in the pockets of school/college going students, with the betel shop owners, vegetable vendors and even small shopkeepers as the cost has come down appreceably. The hoi polloi has truely been more intelligent than the bank manager.
In our country only since 1995 within two years, the mobile phone owners were about 7 lakhs. In 1998 it was around 10 lakhs (1 million). In the year 2000 it was about 30 lakhs. In 2002 it was one crore (10 million) and in the beginning of this year it was around two crores. I remember former DyPM L.K. Advani once said that his Govt’s aim is to provide ” Roti, Kapda, Makan and mobile for everybody in India.” A similar observation was made some years back by Dewang Mehta, the CEO of Nasscom - “we want roti, kapda, makan and bandwidth". We now find that broadband is gradually seeping into the country.
Every inventer , every idea - originator had to face public and other resistances to deviate him from his aspired goal. But wherever the inventor was convinced of his ideas, he overcame every adversity, failure and heartache to reach his goal.
Adversity brings with it the seed of success. Persistence to reach the goal is an important ingradient for success. Every individual is the master of his fate. A setback cannot hurt you if you learn from it and try again. It does not hurt you unless it stops you.