Indian Growth Story!
I am narrating a small conversation (2.5 hrs) I had with couple of my friends at McDonalds 2 days ago. The discussion started around the topic of Indian growth and development and went on to all the issues pertaining to India economy, economic crisis and so on. This being one of favourite topics of discussion, I wanted to share some of my thoughts with the larger community.
Here it starts -------
Is India really growing? Are we really developing? Is the growth sustainable? What’s the right way to grow? Is the growth only for the upper class? Is it anyway benefiting the lower class of the society? There are hundreds of unanswered questions that come to our minds when we think about this topic – Indian growth story. There is no single correct answer to these questions, but there are different views and opinions about these issues.
In my opinion, India is growing and it has had a spectacular growth in the last 5-10 years. Infrastructure, IT, BPO, and other service and tech industries have been the main drivers of this growth. India has changed completely in the last 10 years. In my opinion, most of the cities have grown so much in the last 10 years that if a person returns from US after 10 years, he will not be able to recognize the city in which he would have spent most of his life.
Buildings, IT parks, Malls, Supermarkets, Hypermarkets, Metro rails, Specialized degree colleges, and CCD’s / Pizza Huts are some of the things, which have become integral part of all the cities including tier 2 cities.
A question of India becoming a hub for cheap labour for the MNC’s in short run leading to unsustainable growth in long term is always raised. Every change takes time and it happens at its own pace. Earlier, there were not many opportunities in India for the talent and talented guys were going to foreign countries in search of opportunities. It’s an opportunistic world and everyone wants to extract as much as he can from any opportunity. The opportunity lied in US, UK, Canada and they went there to harness the opportunity. In the last 5 years, we have had a radical shift from that never-ending phenomenon of brain drain, and now opportunities have started landing in India. India has now become a technology hub for the whole world. All the MNC’s have realized the value of Indian talent, and have started tapping this potential directly from here. In the current era the graduates from the best Indian institutes have started declining offers of higher education abroad and have directly started working here in India after their graduation. On the other hand, many Indian organizations like Reliance, Infosys, TCS, and Wipro have gained enough attention from all parts of the world and have generated a threat of Indian firms taking over the list of Fortune 500 companies as it took over the Frobe’s richest people list sometime ago. Someone arguing about not many Indian companies being listed as Fortune 500 companies, my suggestion would be that every radical shift takes time and we are stepping into the era where the fresh talent is thinking of declining the comfortable job offers and take the hard route of entrepreneurship and building businesses. It’s just a matter of time when there will be more and more organizations like Reliance and Infosys coming from India.
On the issue of only the rich getting richer and poor not moving from their levels, I believe, during this whole revolution of Indian service industry, the most benefited band of society is the so called ‘Aam Aadmi’ (lower middle class). Rich were always rich and might have become billionaire from millionaire, but yet their lives have not changed spectacularly. The Indian middle and lower middle class has leveraged the education and has benefited from it a spectacular way. This was the class who wanted to educate their children, and wanted to give them a stable career, a career where they will have enough earnings to sustain their lives and educate their children. This is the class from which many of us belonged to traditionally. This class had never expected branded goods or high-class living standards in life. This class drives increased demand from branded goods, luxury goods and other higher end products. Air travel, foreign holidays, resort stay were only in dreams for them and now it has become a daily routine for many. The living standard of this class of society has improved significantly in the last 5 years and has propelled the Indian growth story. Coming to the poor, I believe in the consumption model of economics and agree to the fact that overall of standard of the poorest is also increasing because of the demand for the low-end services. It might be the case that the this band has not moved in a big way, but overall trend for the poorest has also been upward because of the tremendous increase in opportunities. An analogy to this situation could be that, the whole development is a cake and everyone trying to maximize their share in the cake. Ultimately, everybody has got some part of cake, but some of them have managed to get a bigger share. Share of each party will keep on changing but the focus should be to bring bigger and bigger cake on table in long run.
Nevertheless, all the parts of Indian society have gained from this upswing of the economy.
Many more key issues related to this topic will be discussed in the coming posts:
1.Growth in Rural India
2. Role of government in shaping India
3. A greener desert!
4. Role of youth in shaping India
5. India v/s Singapore v/s Japan
6. Brain drain – Good v/s Bad
And many more!! Therefore, keep watching the space… :P
I am narrating a small conversation (2.5 hrs) I had with couple of my friends at McDonalds 2 days ago. The discussion started around the topic of Indian growth and development and went on to all the issues pertaining to India economy, economic crisis and so on. This being one of favourite topics of discussion, I wanted to share some of my thoughts with the larger community.
Here it starts -------
Is India really growing? Are we really developing? Is the growth sustainable? What’s the right way to grow? Is the growth only for the upper class? Is it anyway benefiting the lower class of the society? There are hundreds of unanswered questions that come to our minds when we think about this topic – Indian growth story. There is no single correct answer to these questions, but there are different views and opinions about these issues.
In my opinion, India is growing and it has had a spectacular growth in the last 5-10 years. Infrastructure, IT, BPO, and other service and tech industries have been the main drivers of this growth. India has changed completely in the last 10 years. In my opinion, most of the cities have grown so much in the last 10 years that if a person returns from US after 10 years, he will not be able to recognize the city in which he would have spent most of his life.
Buildings, IT parks, Malls, Supermarkets, Hypermarkets, Metro rails, Specialized degree colleges, and CCD’s / Pizza Huts are some of the things, which have become integral part of all the cities including tier 2 cities.
A question of India becoming a hub for cheap labour for the MNC’s in short run leading to unsustainable growth in long term is always raised. Every change takes time and it happens at its own pace. Earlier, there were not many opportunities in India for the talent and talented guys were going to foreign countries in search of opportunities. It’s an opportunistic world and everyone wants to extract as much as he can from any opportunity. The opportunity lied in US, UK, Canada and they went there to harness the opportunity. In the last 5 years, we have had a radical shift from that never-ending phenomenon of brain drain, and now opportunities have started landing in India. India has now become a technology hub for the whole world. All the MNC’s have realized the value of Indian talent, and have started tapping this potential directly from here. In the current era the graduates from the best Indian institutes have started declining offers of higher education abroad and have directly started working here in India after their graduation. On the other hand, many Indian organizations like Reliance, Infosys, TCS, and Wipro have gained enough attention from all parts of the world and have generated a threat of Indian firms taking over the list of Fortune 500 companies as it took over the Frobe’s richest people list sometime ago. Someone arguing about not many Indian companies being listed as Fortune 500 companies, my suggestion would be that every radical shift takes time and we are stepping into the era where the fresh talent is thinking of declining the comfortable job offers and take the hard route of entrepreneurship and building businesses. It’s just a matter of time when there will be more and more organizations like Reliance and Infosys coming from India.
On the issue of only the rich getting richer and poor not moving from their levels, I believe, during this whole revolution of Indian service industry, the most benefited band of society is the so called ‘Aam Aadmi’ (lower middle class). Rich were always rich and might have become billionaire from millionaire, but yet their lives have not changed spectacularly. The Indian middle and lower middle class has leveraged the education and has benefited from it a spectacular way. This was the class who wanted to educate their children, and wanted to give them a stable career, a career where they will have enough earnings to sustain their lives and educate their children. This is the class from which many of us belonged to traditionally. This class had never expected branded goods or high-class living standards in life. This class drives increased demand from branded goods, luxury goods and other higher end products. Air travel, foreign holidays, resort stay were only in dreams for them and now it has become a daily routine for many. The living standard of this class of society has improved significantly in the last 5 years and has propelled the Indian growth story. Coming to the poor, I believe in the consumption model of economics and agree to the fact that overall of standard of the poorest is also increasing because of the demand for the low-end services. It might be the case that the this band has not moved in a big way, but overall trend for the poorest has also been upward because of the tremendous increase in opportunities. An analogy to this situation could be that, the whole development is a cake and everyone trying to maximize their share in the cake. Ultimately, everybody has got some part of cake, but some of them have managed to get a bigger share. Share of each party will keep on changing but the focus should be to bring bigger and bigger cake on table in long run.
Nevertheless, all the parts of Indian society have gained from this upswing of the economy.
Many more key issues related to this topic will be discussed in the coming posts:
1.Growth in Rural India
2. Role of government in shaping India
3. A greener desert!
4. Role of youth in shaping India
5. India v/s Singapore v/s Japan
6. Brain drain – Good v/s Bad
And many more!! Therefore, keep watching the space… :P
