*Parviz Karami

Now that the season of holding the Iran manufacturing festival has arrived it is suitable to talk about some of the obstacles of growth and bonanza of domestic production and especially knowledge-based services and products and revise precisely and carefully and see where the problem is that “O’ Iranian, buy Iranian stuff” remains just a slogan and doesn’t turn to a dominating culture.

None of us is doubtful in this issue that we should reinforce the domestic production. We all know that and dream about our country to passes the progress way rapidly and reaches the climaxes of growth and perfection as soon as possible. All Iranian even those who are European and American citizens for reasons now demanding their country’s honor and glory and become happy whenever they hear a news about the progress of Iran and Iranians. I mean that “Iran Manufacturing” is a national and public issue and is not related to the governments and its officials. If the government has become the benefactor to set this artistic, cultural, mainstreaming festival up is merely to open the gate for different groups and make the culture of paying attention to made in Iran pervasive.

Although it is the government that opens the gate, the main passengers are different groups of people. Students, employees, workers, teachers, businessmen, producers, consumers and all of the Iranian people, wherever they are, have to enter this gate because of loving Iran and set this culture as a fundamental and positive principle that Iran’s growth and development won’t happen without growing and developing national production.

However, although work is easy and sensational and accessible on paper, it is very hard and difficult in practice and faces a lot of obstacles. This is not a highway by which we can reach the destination easily and rapidly and safely but is a rocky road full of bumpiness and dangers. For making an instance I should say that all warning signs installed in roads so that the driver be careful like falling rock, slippery road, wild and domestic animals crossing signs and such things are all in the road of growth and prosperity of national production. I don’t want to frighten this road’s passengers and deter them from passing this road but to remind that for passing this road they need seriousness, hardworking, courage, faith, wisdom, caution and resistance. The hegemonic system won’t leave us alone because of many reasons and more importantly, for protecting the massive profits it achieves.

Those who have earned a lot of profits from importing goods won’t let us boom our domestic production. For about 100 years, they have been making this culture and worked on “our” mind and heart to turn this to a public belief that foreign people are wiser and more precise and more careful and smarter than us and whatever they make is better and more complete and more useful than what we make. Eliminating this wrong belief is not easy and setting a new word is not simple. Since Qajar times, they have seeded in our mind that foreigners are better and more complete than us and we can’t compete with them in any field especially in producing life needs. Because of this wrong and dangerous belief, foreign brands have become unique in domestic markets. Eradicating such a culture is difficult. If Islamic and Eastern thought resurrectors all asked people to rely on self-esteem in first place and asked people to change their definition of west, it was because they knew that as long as we underestimate ourselves deep in our ego and consider westerners extraordinary we wouldn’t be able to succeed and announce our presence powerfully. Sir Muhammad Iqbal (RIP) not only insisted to his compatriots but to all of the Islam world that the believer becomes pagan of beauty. (O’ Believer! Turn to a Pagan of Beauty Yourself). In order to bring self-esteem back to the Islam world, he and other resurrectors on his demand, however, were reminding glorious eras during which the Europe was sinking  in darkness of Medieval whereas the Islam world was ascending steps of advancement. 400 or 500 years ago, what produced in Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Morocco was so venerable and eminent that westerners looked at them with wonder and put of their hat from their mind to respect it. The Islamic Revolution broke their grandeur and showed the world that despite this tempting appearance, west’s inside is very fragile and unstable.

We have a golden history that will bring us back our self-esteem if we read it out. But overwhelming stop in this readout causes us not to understand the today world. The reality of current world is that westerners have dominated science and politics and technology and talk to others especially the easterners from a higher position. But since then, the west hasn’t been idle and wants to take back the glory into which breached. I mean that the national production has political hindrance and it is not that easy that we enter and take the market in the case of graciousness. Economic issues are serious as well. Because of both population and top geographical position, Iran is a place at which economic enterprises look as an affluent market. This market is so magnetic that for example Japanese are willing to produce black veiling to keep Iranian customers. Multinational companies, westerners, Chinese, Japanese and others have benefited from Iran’s market to the extent that they won’t give it up easily.

So they try to hinder us, they do thousands of legal and illegal actions to save this market with any price. There are too many obstacles to be listed. Social, cultural, historical and other obstacles.  But above all is a freaky obstacle existed in our hearts which is we think that the “Quality” of westerners’ products – whatever is it- is better than the quality of domestic product- whatever is it. This wrong belief cannot be eradicated neither by article and slogan nor by begging and stirring up. There is just one solution to remove this mental obstacle from the path of both consumers and producer and that is to emphasize on the good’s quality specially. I remember that some manufacturers write the name of other countries on their package fakely to prevent getting accused to produce unqualified products. For instance, color pencil was produced in Iran but because they were afraid that the consumer might think that product was without quality, they put the name of Turkey or Germany on its box. But this solution is wrong and results in nothing but stagnant of the domestic production market. The Iranian producer has to work on the quality of the good to the extent that he eliminates this wrong thought gradually i.e. we should try harder to show practically that the believer has turned to the pagan of beauty ourselves.

*Parviz Karami

 Consultant of the presidency vice president for science and technology affairs and secretary of the knowledge-based science, technology and economy culture development headquarter