70 Million Employable Indians: Strategies for Competitiveness

The below post is part of the presentation which we gave at a competition organized by AIMA (All India Management association) in the year 2007.
The subject was " 70 million employable Indians: strategies for competitiveness"
We focussed on few sectors which we thought formed as pillars of our economy and shared few ideas to bring about a change in those areas

A country so rich in resources in every term has taken a rather slow trajectory to growth. Why it is that while the world is today looking at India as a lucrative business destination it still struggles with issues like poverty, lack of education, unemployment  high Mortality Rate.

AGRICULTURE:

18 percent of total GDP in India originates from agriculture but growth rate is minimum. When overall growth rate of India is 9%,but growth rate of Agriculture is only 1.5%. Though India’s 70% population is rural and depending income from agriculture. India exports only 7% of agricultural products.

In India most of the agricultural land is fragmented, Due to this we are not able to employ new techniques, machinery and advanced methods of farming. A result of which is the low quantity and quality of output, which gives tough competition to our agricultural products in world markets.

If we develop a system where, corporate consolidate all the land held by individual farmers into one big area n carry out the farming procedure. The land will still be owned by the individual farmers who would get returns according to the amount of land holdings.

They would also be trained and employed for the farming process. This will increase the productivity of the land per hectare and also improve the quality of the output and thereby increase the demand of our agricultural products in the world market.

Since it will be corporatized, a totally new avenue will be opened up for the educated and skilled section of employable people in the form of manufacturing setups or export firms.

Another approach would be encouraging initiatives like E-Choupal by ITC or project shakti by HLL.

Another avenue for development of farming in India could be done in the form of agricultural co-operatives. The focus of such co-operatives would be on education and upliftment of the farmers with equitable sharing of profits giving them the autonomy, similar to the dairy co-operatives e.g. AMUL developed by Verghese Kurien.

This will also solve the problem of migration to the cities in search of employment, thus leading to an equitable development of the country.

TOURISM

India with its diverse cultures, landscapes, climatic conditions, sports, spirituality, religions, food, festivals, wildlife, and history provides an ideal destination for tourism.

New avenues wait in form of adventure sports or village tourism.

Medical tourism can be broadly defined as provision of 'cost effective' private medical care in collaboration with the tourism industry for patients needing surgical and other forms of specialized treatment. This process is being facilitated by the corporate sector involved in medical care as well as the tourism industry - both private and public.

It has lead to availability of cheaper medical facilities compared to other developed nations like USA or UK.

In order to drastically change things in favour of India, it needs to focus especially in providing of the high quality expertise of medical professionals, backed by the fast improving equipment and nursing facilities, and above all, the cost-effectiveness of the package

Problems in tourism development lie in lack of awareness about India in rest of the world and infrastructural facilities in our country.

We need to market ourselves efficiently in various world exhibitions and trade fairs etc.

One more major factor that is crucial for the development of tourism is development of infrastructure in terms of roads, connectivity, hotels etc.

OUTSOURCING:

India is now shifting up the value chain from BPO to KPO by focussing on knowledge based outsourcing. The trend is towards high skilled jobs ranging from legal services, chip design, engineering design, tele-medicine and financial analysis.

The wide pool of young talent available in our country should be trained through university and industry partnership

ENTREPRENEURSHIP:

India needs a change of mindset from job seeking to job creating in order for development.

The government should provide appropriate environment conducive for entrepreneurship. Government should reduce the bureaucracy and red tapeism prevalent that acts as deterrent. Provide incentives in form of tax holidays or rebates and easier regulations.

One of the major setbacks that people face in entrepreneurial ventures is financial support, which can be provided by banks and financial institutions.

Woman entrepreneurship should be encouraged.

Now we see the answer to why has India been not able to achieve the development we ideally should have by now.  They appear as bottlenecks on the form of

Bureaucracy, corruption, lack of transparency and accountability, legal framework

 The future lies in the educated and skilled youth. Economic development of a country in its true sense would only be achieved when there is an improvement in the standard of living of the last man standing. This approach may not be grand enough to be called a strategy but it is what India needs to improve on its competitiveness.

Golmaal hai bhai sab Golmaal hai

http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/PeEeoZDtYuSt0AuQnKBkQN/Fiction-made-from-dodgy-data.html

http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/LCjcIzT0AY3nDdDnIT3x5I/Rebuilding-the-map-of-economics.html

The recent articles mentioned above about the erroneous claims by noted macroeconomists took me back to my blog post regarding the credibility of the data being used for the purpose of policy making.

http://complexityisthefatherofsolution.blogspot.in/2011/07/few-answers-and-some-more-questions.html

however my questions still remain unanswered. Some of these question were raised in one of the articles.

The inflation which we are facing today is not a completely demand led inflation and which cannot alone be resolved by changing monetary policies inorder to curb demand. The entire system needs to be looked at and requires a serious overhauling.I tend to believe that it is a supply driven inflation which needs to be addressed by focusing on the supply side of the economy. There is a serious need to relook at our food distribution channels for the various loopholes. Or else, is it possible that tonnes of grains are rotting away in a country which is facing steep food inflation and quite a considerable segment of its population is below the poverty line.

Excerpt from one of the articles:

An unfortunate case of such denials and misreading of facts is the case of inflation management. Despite evidence that inflation in food prices was structural, using monetary policy to curb inflation has not helped inflation management in the last four years but has certainly affected investment and growth because of high interest rates. The problem in India today is not only a policy paralysis but also the absence of an honest assessment of what is wrong with the economy. This can only happen when facts are interpreted objectively and not based on the priors of the government of the day.

 It is a very sad but true state. Our economic policies are based on such dodgy data. The markets come crashing down based on the news regarding IIP data, RBI’s monetary policies etc.

 But how accurate are these decision and on what kind of sound research have these decisions been based upon…

I doubt if I will ever find answers to my questions but there is one thing which keeps the world going.. and that is HOPE.