"The world's been pretty good at coming up with new ways of doing
things."
—James Mirrlees (Scottish, 1936-)
Word for the day
Solecism (n)
A breach of good manners or
etiquette.
Any error, impropriety, or
inconsistency
Malice towards none
Honestly, with hand on your
heart, "Did you bet for France in FIFA finals"?
First random thought this morning
Past four weeks have been overwhelming for Indian sports lovers.
Soccer, tennis, badminton, cricket, hockey, gymnastic etc have seen major
events. India earned some glory in cricket, hockey and gymnastic.
Nonetheless, millions of people have remained busy following
numerous sporting events. People have been opening newspapers from backside.
New soccer stars have become household names, while TV channels have remained
submerged in Mumbai floods, Burari suicides, and rapes.
No one is discussing or highlighting any economic distress or
failing monsoon. All seems well and stock market continues to rise.
If you find it tough, well it is!
At the risk of sounding
irritatingly repetitive, I would like to reiterate that in past 7 decades we
have focused too much on our weaknesses and tried hard to overcome these by
importing technology, energy, intellectual property, capital, and consumption patterns.
The root cause of many economic problems, e.g., current account deficit, fiscal
deficit, energy deficiency, excessive dependence on external IPR & capital
flows, etc. could be traced to this misplaced focus.
In my view, just by focusing on
our intrinsic strengths, we can not only conveniently reverse the flow of trade
to pre British era but also be successful in achieving our secular goals of
sustainable and faster economic growth.
I have been suggesting that
implementing the programs like the few illustrated below, we could improve the
balance of payment substantially and structurally:
(a) Indians spend approx USD25bn annually on education and related
overseas travel. Creating 5 Special Education Zones (SEZ) with liberal VISA,
forex, taxation and real estate ownership rules, and allowing foreign
institutions to freely set up campuses could potentially reverse this flow.
Students from India, far-east, middle-east and Africa who find it difficult to
get VISA for US/UK etc. or find that expensive could also benefit from this.
Our politicians have often spoken about recreating Nalanda and Takshila. This
in my view is the easiest way to do that.
(b) It is common knowledge that India holds tremendous potential for
tourism. However lack of proper infrastructure and a holistic approach to
harness the potential has traditionally constricted the growth of this sector.
On the other hand Indian outbound tourists flow is rising. The government and
hospitality sector entrepreneurs will have to think really big to reverse these
flows and bring India on world tourism map. Developing some world class self
contained international tourism centers, e.g., on lines of Macau, Bangkok,
Dubai, Santorini, Las Vegas, etc. with liberal VISA, forex, taxation and real
estate ownership could be the first step in this direction.
(c) Vindavan, Tirupati, Varanasi, Gaya, etc. all have potential to be
as desirable, venerable and popular destinations as Mecca, Vatican and
Jerusalem.
Converting these centers of Indian
religion and culture into self contained special zones with international
airport, adequate number of high star category hotels, and annual event
calendar could add substantially to India's external sector.
For example, Vrindavan can have
two annual events Holi and Janamashtmi, when more than half million foreign
tourist can visit the holy town
(d) Considering the worsening demographic profile of rich countries in
Europe and Japan, the rising need for healthcare assistants can be hardly
emphasized more. Opening one world class nurse training institute in each state
with special emphasis on teaching foreign languages to the trainees, may do the
same wonders as ITeS did in last two decades.
(e) Operating special incentive schemes for building global consumer
brands may help in substantially enhancing the value of Indian exports. The
government, for example, consider providing special incentives (tax rebates,
promotion through government campaigns, etc.) for all locally developed
consumer brands that are able to achieve more than US$500mn in merchandise sale
in a year.
These projects also have the
potential to generate large scale productive employment opportunity for local
talent, besides contributing to economic growth and true globalization of
Indian economy.
I acknowledge some of these
suggestions may sound extremely difficult to implement in the current
socio-political narrative. But then who said running a government in India is
an easy task!
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