Energon,
There is not the slightest of the doubts in my mind that the way to move ahead has to be to take a hike the industrial revolution way or else in times to come we will only keep talking about missed opportunities, as has been a habit with us in the past.
Looking at the much talked about IT industry what one forgets is that the sector employs a mere million people out of a 1,160 million populace of this country and as a % the contribution to gdp remains quite measly, though the thing it has helped in is that it has helped in do an image make over to that of a tech savvy country from once perceived as the land of snake charmers, no wonder a movie like slumdog which happens to be a reality staring our faces irritates most of us since it tends to hurt this new found image and status.
For solutions we need to look at the way the prc was able to move out millions and millions out of poverty, a country which when it started its economic liberalization stood just a step ahead of us.
we need to move our growth model from one of consumption based to one of more export oriented, much like what the prc did quite successfully, what it does is it creates huge labour intensive industries, along side the focus has to be on at least 10years of formal education so that the youth passing out is of employable nature, just a mere talk of 80% literacy rate (the supposed figure for 2010) wont help the cause in any which way, and to an extent we have been successful in moving ahead on this front at least since the time UPA-I took to governance for there has been a growth in exports compounding at the rate of over 20% annually and it is hearting to see that even with the increasing base YoY there is no drop in the growth rate, other than a fall out during the global economic meltdown. What is more heartening of course is that if we head in the same direction at that steady rate of over 20% (something that the prc was quite successful in doing), we could be standing at precisely the same export levels that the prc today boasts of and having done that, as a % of gdp we would still not be depending on exports as much the prc depends.
What stands very crucial for this sector is the labour reforms, and if we cant address the issue soon enough, rest assured we will soon scare away a good chunk of investments and I have not the slightest of the doubts that we might already be scaring away a lot of perspective investors away due to this neglected reform and the fear of militant labour unions that our country has, which all benefits some other.
The other thing we need to quite clearly focus on is the agriculture, especially given the fact that a huge 50-60% of our labour force works in this sector, and in here the per hectare yield has to shoot up quite dramatically, again much like what the prc has done where they stand at more than double the per hectare yield than ours at a time when a big chunk of their labour force has moved from agriculture to be a part of industrial revolution.
PS – good to see you post after quite a long time, be regular and keep posting mate.