By The Editor

As you might have been hearing in news that economy is back in booming business, the ball is rolling, signs are good and things are falling in place after a calamitous mismanagement of previous government in past decade. But in order to sustain this growth India would have to look for new ways to boost its financial foothold. Throughout our economic history we have depended on big corporation with big money for economic revival. Whether constructing a dam or installing a manufacturing plant for motorcycles, it was either government or business families, on whose shoulders rested the responsibility of providing employment, setting up workshops, building infrastructure. Even in IT sector, a regular “Bharatiya” engineering graduate, fresh out college looks up to giants like Infosys, TCS, Wipro for his bread and butter.

The problem with this model is that we have too much dependency on success of some major organizations competing at world stage to keep our stoves burning. It’s jingle all the way when they make profit but disaster if things were ever to go sour like it happened in case of Satyam or Lehman brothers. Manufacturing is one way to go but if you sell to clients overseas, your economic heydays depend on wallet of your customer. If he fell to bad times, he won’t be spending on things with “MADE IN INDIA” label. We have a billion people in our home than why look outside for consumer markets outside when our own people are capable of paying the bill.

There are various ways to economic self-dependence. First and foremost would be giving the power to ordinary people by eliminating the red tape. There are at least ten different sort of license, permits, paperwork and kickbacks under the desk that you would need to do in order to open a pharmaceutical shop. Imagine if you are a budding entrepreneur wanting to start a company, you cannot imagine even a file getting signed smoothly or without you running desk to desk pleading for your upstart business. Until this red tape will be abolished businesses won’t thrive in India. Thought it might have some logistic challenges to implement a workaround but desperate need requires desperate measures.

Second would be to encourage formation of small businesses, it is these small enterprise by ordinary folks that resulted in giants like Apple, Amazon or E-Bay. This is what American government tries to give, an environment where small companies can compete with big wigs. It not only creates jobs but also kicks up the competition necessary for business development and innovation. A good example is a business incubator where fledgling companies share printing, electricity and other business costs with ready access to venture capital funding and other necessary resources to help the business grow. The concept is to revive economy locally, where costs are lower compared to bigger cities. Stanford University provided cheap land leases for semiconductor companies in 50’s and 60’s which resulted in Silicon Valley.

Third, people, Indian students are the second largest group behind Chinese who go out of their home country to learn the ways of the world. This particular group contributes in major areas of development and gets recognized around the globe except in their own home. Chinese government has been incentivizing its student abroad to come back and contribute in its nation building efforts. The result speaks in itself, China is years ahead rom us. Other example is Japan whose students and entrepreneurs learned technologies from other nations to build a giant in electronics industry and helped make an island nation into an economic superpower that doesn’t even have any single natural resources to speak of.

We have to opt unconventional ways if we desire to play in big leagues, our financial might should be proportional to our size and population. It will al end up on the farsightedness of our leaders, if they are prepared to do what is necessary for a better future.