It is well-known that progress and growth of
a nation not only depend on economic factors but the political, cultural and
geographical factors as well. Additionally, it depends on many external factors
in which the country may not have any control. The last four to five years of
the Indian story is intertwined with both the global and the internal challenges.
Global meltdown & Eurozone crisis had well augmented to the coalition
political pressures that the Governments have been undergoing here. Further,
corporate greed, corruption, nepotism and collusion between executives and the corporates;
and the resultant policy paralysis had negated our forward movement
considerably. Industrial slow down, unemployment, and inflation too had added
to our agony. The year 2012 and 13 had been extremely bad for the country. It
is in this background that we are now exploring the opportunities to enable
India to surge forward.
Enabling
India
It is very critical to have a positive
ambience prevailing across, to enable growth. The confidence of the populace is
a major factor for them to get empowered. Though currently there is nothing to
write home about in this front, it is hoped that the impending national
election could turn things for the better. The country is seriously looking
forward to a stable, strong government at the center, to enable the nation.
While it is anybody’s guess, if the leading political parties of the country go
by their past experience in handing coalition, there would be good learning to
manage the political equations. It is imperative that we need to have a stable
government, if we have to grow as we did in the nineties and beyond till the
last three years. Experience suggests us to keep our fingers crossed!
Exploring
opportunities
While every difficulty brings down the
confidence of the nation, it poses an opportunity for us to catch on. What is important is to identify and tap the
opportunity. These opportunities may not expose themselves well to be seen and
therefore one needs to search for it and bring it out of the quagmire of
complexities under which it lay. It is easier said than done but the
indications would be there and an experienced eye could decipher it. In order to do so, let us look at the
following inputs and see if the inputs
help us identify the opportunities that we get to tap, for the country to progress
better.
India’s Demographic
dividend
No nation in the world has the level of
demographic advantage that India has and that is its youth population that the
nation possesses. India has more than 50% of its population
below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35. It is expected that,
by the year 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37
for China and 48 for Japan and still higher for America & Europe. That is the
people at their productive best. To get them into employment and
entrepreneurship is the major task. Not everybody is equipped with the skills
and knowledge for getting into employment and business. For a country which
lives in the villages, among our youth, large percentage belong to lowest
educational and technical skill level, for taking up meaningful employment.
Thus, skill development becomes the single most important means to enable
India’s youth. Our institutions meant for imparting skills loitered a lot
during the last 3 decades. Whereas countries like China had developed close to
five thousand distinct skills for its people to get employed, the Indian story
is very dismal. It has to be the top most national agenda for India to develop
and impart skills to the youth for making them employable.
Entrepreneurship
Undoubtedly, the corner stone of any nation’s
economic progress is the entrepreneurship that happens within it. Entrepreneurship is all about creating value
and through which, creating wealth and distributing the same, of course staying
within the ambit of our laws. The last two decades saw the start and
mushrooming good number of IT and software companies in India and it had
brought laurels to the country, not to speak of the high export growth we
achieved with it. Employment possibilities also increased in this sector. We
now need to replicate this story in other verticals; be it in service sector or
manufacturing. For a nation of more than a billion people, we still need many
more productive enterprises to cater to the needs of its citizens. While
enterprises are concentrating on meeting the requirements of the middles class
and high class categories of the society, it is at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP)
that the entrepreneurial opportunities abound. To many segments of Indian
society, which is predominantly agrarian in nature, entrepreneurship is a
taboo. Risk averse population looks forward to jobs than being entrepreneurial.
It is a cultural aspect that we need to overcome. Such cultural changes have to
be brought about by recognizing and celebrating entrepreneurship. From the
school level onwards children must be made aware of the possibilities of entrepreneurship.
They should read, hear from and get inspired by the stories of successful
entrepreneurs, say the Narayana Murthys of the world.
MSME &
Start-ups
The story of MSME is nothing but the
extension of entrepreneurship. Almost close 40 percent of the manufacturing in
India takes place in MSME and this sector is the largest employer in the
country, after agriculture. As most of the enterprises start-up in the Micro
and Small sector, adequate attention is required to MSME. Nurturing a startup
is the beginning of developing an enterprise. It has to be an ongoing endeavor to motivate,
train and assist people to start-up their enterprises. Funding and marketing
are critical for the proliferation SME companies. While financial institutions
speak a lot about giving assistance SME sector, in real sense, it is nothing
much. Separate SME centric policies, though exist now, the implementation of the
same is not done with the sincerity that it deserves.
Manufacturing
It has been the strategic achievement of rich
nations over the last several hundred years to create a high-quality
manufacturing sector in order to develop national wealth and power. As
indicated by the rise of the US, Germany, Japan and the USSR in the 20th
century, to the newly industrializing countries like Korea, Taiwan, and now
China; manufacturing has been the key to prosperity.
The most powerful nations in the world are
those that control the bulk of the global production of manufacturing
technology. That is, it isn’t enough to have factories that produce more goods,
it is important to have to know-how to make the machinery
that makes the goods. The key to power, therefore, is to make the means of production. About
80% of the world’s production of factory machinery has been controlled by the
great industrialized nations. The growth of manufacturing machinery output and
technological improvements in that machinery; are the main drivers of economic
growth. So in order to improve and our manufacturing capability we should
master the art making the production machinery ourselves and greater attention
needs to be put in this area.
Research
& Development
It must be clearly understood that future
economic progress will be driven by the invention and application of new
technologies. Research & Development has to be major area of spending, in
order to develop and drive the new technologies. Private sector firms are prone
to focus their R&D on applied projects, where the payoff in terms of profit
is likely to go only to them. Industry does not undertake broad R&D for the
general benefit of the nation. In contrast, Governments can sponsor the basic
research projects that seek wide ranging scientific understanding that can
impact entire industries. Globally, government research funding has been
critical to many technologies of everyday importance. Many of the
government-sponsored technological advances have been instrumental in driving
economic growth and raising the living standards for the citizens. It had created
new industries and high paying jobs that have benefitted a wide-range of
regional, state and local economies.
It is very unfortunate that the India’s role
in R&D and innovation has been dismal, particularly in the industrial,
technological, medical and agricultural front, notwithstanding the umpteenth
number of national laboratories that are operated across the nation. These
research centers today dwell as white elephants that consume the national
wealth without creating anything worthy enough innovation to benefit the
country and its people. There sure exist opportunities for India in
R&D. R&D delivers the knowledge
that is of highest economic value and the knowledge, that is otherwise called
as ‘intellectual property’, can go a long way in establishing leadership in
many spheres.
Agriculture
Agriculture in India is the means of
livelihood for almost two thirds of the workforce of the country. It has
been India's most important economic sector. Though the role of
agriculture as a percentage of our GDP is diminishing gradually and secondary
and tertiary sector are growing up considerably, it has to be understood that
great majority of Indians; particularly
those in the rural sector, which is considerably large in number, agriculture continues to be their means of
existence. Most of the agricultural land
is in the form of small holding owned by impoverished farmers who, even after
65 years of Independence, are still at the mercy of the Monsoons with no
scientifically implemented irrigation or water management policies laid out for
them. Access to credit is very poor and most of them are controlled by loan
sharks. Middlemen plays huge role in reaching the agricultural produce to
market, thereby taking away the real profits of the efforts from the
cultivators.
Women employment in Agriculture is high.
Looking from a gender perspective too, women and self-help groups formed by
them benefitting out of the agricultural activity, should be considered as true
empowerment of them. Really, plenty of
opportunities exist in the sector which has been yearning for good leadership
to come by to help them out.
Whither
India?
The attempt so far has been to bring out the
areas where opportunities exist in plenty. As mentioned, every difficulty
offers an opportunity. The planners and managers of the country in various
sectors may have to peer through the situations, in order to identify and tap
the opportunities that lie under. The country has to shake off its complacency
and indulge in positive policy making not only for the welfare of its citizens
but for the economic progress that every society need to achieve. For a complex
nation such as ours, the efforts and plan may have to be much more than the
normal, for us to catch up the opportunities that would enable and empower our
denizens. Let us remember, we are the creators of our own destiny and therefore
the dream, the thought, the realization and the efforts have to come from
within. Good luck to us!
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