India : What role we need to play?
On the way back home from a Movie which showcased that its possible for India to do wonders in every sport (if supported with strong will), my mind started wandering into India’s past, present & future.I was beginning to gather meat for this post.
Loads of questions filled my empty mind.What’s changed,what’s changing & where is India headed?What could slow down or accelerate Her growth? Too many questions, too many answers – result-Confusion:) I gave up the thought of writing the post:) but a cup of coffee provided that much wanted trigger…so here is our attempt at highlighting how India has changed & a role that each one of us can play to make it the greatest nation.
Quick rewind – India’s journey
60 years: broken down into 2 phases (for simplicity sake) – Pre Reforms & Post Reforms
Pre Reform: An economy trying to gain some ground after Independence, trying to get direction.India became more inward focused, apprehensive about the outside world.Reason:150 years of rule by outsiders because of letting them in easily.Result: A closed economy with License Raj. Nehruvian Socialism took solid ground during this period.
Post Reform: The realization that India cannot remain isolated from the world economy for a long time resulted into the 1991 reforms.The power of freeing India’s Entrepreneurial spirit became evident.The Hindu growth rate was to become history.Across all sectors of the economy there was above average growth.With the Services sector’s increasing contribution to the GDP & its growth, it was evident that India will remain on the fast growth track (most economies have seen an inflection in growth when its services sector starting growing faster than its other sectors).Other favourable factors like Democratic form of governance, Large consuming class,Young population (50% of Indians are born after 1980), English as the primary language of official communication, External factors such as industries in developed economies feeling the pressure to cut-costs to remain competitive etc..made India an economy to watch out for.
The other side of the coin:
- A recent government report estimates that around 700Mn Indians live on a less than Rs.20/day income
- Poverty is pervasive with a huge number of Indians below the poverty line
- Growth is asymmetric.Some parts of the country are experiencing more growth while the others are still growth neutral
- Elections are still won on Secularist issues
- The state politics is still not driven by economic agenda.Thanks to FM & PM, this is beginning to change
- The reform process is yet to get its depth in sectors other than Services
- Infrastructural growth is not matching the growth in other sectors & it has already started acting as a bottleneck
We can just keep on elongating the list like a true Indian…
These are structural problems of the growing economy and with the two most qualified persons at the helm of its management, it would be really stupid of us to prescribe any solution to these problems.And for the same reason,we believe that going forward there will be more right policy prescriptions than wrong ones.However we believe that to compliment every good policy reform, there has to be a social reform.One without the other won’t work.To bring about this required social change, everyone of us
- must ask the right questions to our leaders (thanks to the democratization of media, this is a lot easier now)
- we should severely punish their every wrong moves
- throw out the ones who fail to deliver on the economic agenda &
- finally feel responsible for whatever is happening & will happen to India.It all starts with us as individuals!
India is at a critical juncture of becoming the greatest nation & we are lucky enough to be a part of it.Lets not loose this chance of our lifetime…
Happy Republic Day
