CHALLENGES BEFORE INDIA , THE POTENTIAL ECONOMIC SUPERPOWER OF THE 21st CENTURY

Twenty first century belongs to Asia and India is potentially one of strongest contender for emerging as an economic superpower. This opportunity window is there for the asking but will it happen or not is the question, the entire Indian citizenry is holding its breath for. Happening of this miracle depends totally on the wisdom, vision, far sight and honesty of purpose of the Indian leadership. There is no doubt about the wisdom of the men at the top but sadly majority of their actions are guided by their baser instincts like lust for gaining power and sticking to it by fair means or foul. This more often than not results in their actions leading simply to vote catching rhetoric in stead of furthering the cause of India's march to prosperity and status of economic superpower.

The economic superpowers/giants of today are at that position not by a stroke of luck but because of the ability of their leaders to guide the destiny of those nations in the right manner.Mind you at the turn of the 20th century these countries were economically perhaps worse off than where India is today. This does not imply that it should take India something like five or six decades to realize this potential of economic superpower. As a matter of fact, India should be galloping on the road to prosperity  because it does not have to tread on the same beaten path of science,engineering and technology evolution unless and until it is foolish enough to experience reinventing of wheel all by itself.

There is many a slip between the cup and the lip. There are many pitfalls on the road to becoming an economic giant. India must learn from the experience of others and try to nip these pitfalls at the earliest. The challenges that need to be looked into and  overcome for realizing what is there for the asking.

• The first and foremost is curbing the menace of corruption and black money. In fact it is corruption and corruption alone which is blowing away Indian dream of getting prosperous.  The country must understand that corruption and black money is the biggest drag on its economy and is eating into all the good work being attempted by governments in a very big way. There cannot be a substitute for corruption mitigation and good governance - the biggest growth engines for Indian economy.
• The present economic downturn and melt down in global economy is a result of overdoing of social welfare by those countries and if they could not sustain with excesses of social welfare schemes  there is no way the Indian economy in its very infancy can pull off this miracle. In fact social welfare schemes have been the bane of many advanced economies of the world and these include allowances to jobless, pensionary benefits, health insurance etc. to name a few. There is no doubt that these are a must for any concerned government but all these benefits must be granted in a manner that they are self sustaining and in no case, at any point of time be a drag on the economy. India must learn from the horrid experiences of the western world and imbibe remedial measures to keep its date with the status of an economic superpower of 21st century.
• Reigning in population growth should be the topmost agenda of all Indian governments. In late fifties and early sixties of last century, everyone  was engrossed in the debate ' Is India Overpopulated ' and invariably one would come to the conclusion that India was certainly not overpopulated in the true economic sense as the land/mineral resources could certainly more than suffice for a population density of about 270 persons per sq. mile. Can we say the same with the present population density of about 750/ sq. mile. India is definitely on the verge of getting overpopulated if not already overpopulated. Today we talk of the demographic dividend but after a couple of decades this dividend is going to become a curse with more and more persons joining the ranks of pensioners and enjoying these benefits for very long periods because of increasing life expectancy as a result of good medical care and facilities provided by the Indian government. While the western world grew old after becoming rich, there is every likelihood that India will grow old before getting rich if the long term impacts of population numbers and demography are not taken care of now.
• Proper and out of the box management of water resources of India. comprising of perennial rivers, plenty of rainfall and underground water table. All civilizations and all prosperous geographies on our globe owe their very existence to the abundance of available water resource in their areas. Though India has been gifted by nature with a huge and well distributed water resource comprising of perennial rivers, plenty of rainfall and underground water table but the nation has not bothered to maintain it properly. This is amply seen in the snowline moving higher and higher and the groundwater table going deeper and deeper. This being a direct result of shoddy policies of the government emanating from quest for energy security through use of fossil fuels, deforestation because of pressures of growth in population and failure to harness any substantial amount of river water, in fact a major portion of this water is allowed to go to sea.
• Infrastructure is the core of all economic growth and index of a common man's comfort and conveniences and its importance is very well understood by the planners and economists. But simply raising the rhetoric is not enough. The nation is eagerly looking forward to some concrete action which is getting sacrificed at the altar of good governance. In fact India is plagued by bad governance in road and infrastructure sector.
• Energy security : If infrastructure is the core, energy security is the mother of all economic growth and much to the chagrin of all well meaning citizens of India is not only prey to bad governance but the path taken by the rulers and planners is directionless and not in sync with the futuristic realities of energy security scene all over the globe. India must draw strength from the fact that the oil rich countries have simply transformed their economies by getting the best out of their abundantly available energy source i.e. oil. Luckily for India, it has abundant solar, wind and hydro resources and in fact  many times more than the country's likely requirements by the turn of the century. The thrust in researches and technology development should logically come from India whose needs during the next decade or two for additional power are may be 5 times its present power production. With the pluses of resource availability, massive demand and almost nothing to loose because of obsolescence of high value investments in research, technology and manufacturing infrastructure for any other power production mode, India must seize this opportunity which can be the biggest catalyst in India's march to the status of a global superpower.
• All human beings are inherently wedded to the philosophy of getting short term gains, the gains that bring reward to the person in quickest possible time. The short term solution or patchwork may appear to be lucrative for the run of the mill polity but the long term fixes are a must for India, the potential superpower of the 21st century. Statesmen think of next generation and create opportunities, Leaders Seize opportunities that come their way, while Politicians think of next elections and fritter away these opportunities and dirty politicians simply mess up everything and this is what separates wise men from men, men from boys and boys from impudent louts in the realm of changing fate of a nation.

REFORMS IN INDIA ONLY SCRATCHING THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG Of GROWTH POTENTIAL

Of late government of India has initiated some reforms like the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in retail, insurance and pension along with a small attack on the subsidy bill which are likely to have positive effect on the fiscal health of the country. No doubt the country needs funds to control high current account deficit and investments by way of FDI and Foreign Institution investments (FII) which results in perking up Indian rupee visa a vis dollar. Rupee has appreciated about 8% as a result and this will reduce country's oil import bill by the same amount. The feel good factor about the Indian economy brought about by this and likely to be strengthened further through continuing of the reform process only can at best help in changing the course of GDP growth trajectory but cannot take it to the highs of a good double digit growth which is there for the asking in the light of global turmoil and the opportunity window that has come India's way because of low cost skilled manpower, right demography and a huge insatiable internal market.
The next gen drivers of  Indian economy i.e. infrastructure and human resource development, corruption mitigation and good governance, and Indian energy security have been actually left unattended and unaddressed. It is hard to understand the logic and wisdom of trying to develop India through service industry alone rather than through the hard core manufacturing and industrialization approach. No country on this globe has achieved prosperity through this route, least of all a country of the size and population density of 650 per square kilometer.Though a meaningful reform process is needed in all the sectors mentioned above, the following need attention on topmost priority basis if the intentions of the government are to make a sincere whole hearted effort to make India a prosperous country and catapult it to the status of an economic superpower in the foreseeable future.

• Corruption mitigation and bringing out black money whether stashed in banks abroad or packed in gunny bags and lockers in the country itself or invested in real estate or other asset classes  or businesses generating and thriving on black money is the first and foremost reform that is needed in the country. A concerted effort on a war footing in administrative, judicial and legislative reforms/measures  to achieve this goal is required. This can come through only when " Loyalty to the nation is the motto" rather than loyalty to the chair or party as is professed in power corridors now a days.
• Austerity in all government spending and cutting down all infructuous expenditures.
• Rationalization of subsidies (already existing and likely to be provided in the near future) and defining a clear road map for doing away with them. No doubt subsidies are a must in a poor country with a large population living below subsistence level but the country cannot afford to have them for eternity and it is the responsibility of the government to come out out with ways and means so that the number of beneficiaries decreases by at least 10 % each year. Subsidy in no case can be an open ended scheme. Simultaneously it is the responsibility of the government to see that there is no pilferage/ theft of subsidized goods and subsidy going into undeserving hands.
• Doing away with all discretionary powers vested with executive and legislative executive particularly for doling out favours of real estate, promotions and postings, post retirement jobs/extensions which are generally used for obtaining favourable decisions/rulings by who's who of the power corridors. After all there is no dearth of talent and experience in this country and people remain in the power corridors by virtue of their manipulative skills and ability to fit in the jig saw puzzle of the government.

INDIA ON THE PATH OF GLOBAL LEADERSHIP OR SELF DESTRUCTION

India on the path of global leadership or self destruction ? This is the basic question in the minds of majority of Indians as well as analysts all over this globe. On one hand is the golden opportunity window resulting out of drying up of growth and earning avenues in most of the advanced countries of the world. while on the other India offers a huge insatiable market of consumer goods, services, infrastructure, medical care etc.etc. along with a huge skilled low cost human resource of a demographic mix compelling for all economic and manufacturing activity.

The path of global leadership revolves around the statesmanship of its leaders and the lesser humans in the form of polity will not only fritter away these opportunities but will lead the nation to a mess all around.

Actual scenario:

• The economy is riddled with high inflation, rupee depreciation, high current account account deficit and high fiscal deficit and at the same time the government is riddled with the problems of lack of conviction and direction, indecision, compulsions of coalition politics and its own compulsions of not resorting to good governance and good economics. 
• Luckily the prime minister could convince his party that good economics is good politics too. But sadly enough the Indian polity,both of the government and opposition do not seem to be attracted to the maxim that good governance is the ultimate and can catapult the results of good economics to yield ideal good politics.

For the sake of march of India to prosperity, for the sake of poor and under privileged and for putting India on the path of global leadership, a sincere and earnest effort and thrust in the following key areas is required or else India is certainly treading on the path of self destruction.

• Corruption mitigation the first and foremost growth engine of Indian economy needs special attention from the government firstly through administrative measures and finally reinforcing these through legislative measures otherwise sooner than later India will move on the path of self destruction.This requires

1. Election reforms on topmost  priority basis as elections are the mother of all corruption in India 
2. The country witnessed 2G scam, Coalgate, Commonwealth games scam, Adarsh society scam and many others in recent times as a result of  governance which is motivated and guided by corruption and the governance has to get rid of this taint if India has to tread on the path of global leadership.

• Infrastructure and human resource development could be a game changer in the Indian growth story
• Resorting to renewable energy sources in a big way for use in  standalone mode and with micro and mini grids to start with covering more than 50% of the households in remote locations, small villages and towns. The expenditure in transmission and distribution, normally referred to as poles and wires expenditure and costing as much as the cost of electricity at the plant is not warranted. Simultaneously large scale power plants utilising in situ, free of cost, clean energy sources  like solar and wind with zero probability of catastrophic accidents should be developed on a war footing for providing energy security to the country.
• Reinforcing Monetary policy decisions taken by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to tackle the problems of rupee devaluation, inflation, current account and fiscal deficits with actual increase of goods produced, measures to bring in austerity in government expenditure and cutting down all infructuos expenditure of the State.
• Rationalisation of subsidy: Subsidies are a requirement in any developing nation but they have to be provided only to poor needy individuals and sectors with a cost effective and efficient distribution system with minimum cost to the exchequer and adopting procedures which do away with the thefts, pilferages and subsidy going into wrong hands. Diesel is a typical case in point. Diesel cars, fuel guzzler SUV's, top end sedans and luxury vehicles in the hands of rich and ultra rich of the land, factories, businesses and corporate sector are enjoying diesel subsidy along with the government itself and account for something like 50% of this burden. Similarly theft and misuse of kerosene and LPG cooking gas accounts for about 50% of the subsidy bill on these items and needs corrective action immediately.

The government has off late started with some decisions towards good economics and reforms in the policy. Further it is likely to come out with social reforms to allure its vote banks with various doles, freebies and subsidies. Unless and until these are carried out in an efficient manner and after devising a methodology to benefit only the real needy and target audience there is going to be a large unnecessary, wasteful drag on the exchequer. It is still not clear whether the reforms will stand the test of time in the parliament or not,for the Indian polity is very very volatile when it comes to taking a stand. In fact principles or policy considerations are the last word and everybody is looking for his pound of flesh in every vote for or against any issue that comes up for consideration. Even the two major national parties are guilty of switching their stand depending on whether they form the government or form the opposition as has been witnessed in the case of (Foreign Direct Investment) FDI in retail.

Indian Energy security - the next gen growth engine

With an enormous requirement of about 6-7 lakh MW of additional power in the next about 2 decades to cater for the country's energy security, the Indian energy security could easily be the next gen growth engine and the route adopted to realise this security could lead to the status of economic super power provided the polity and the government take nationalistic decisions without getting cowed down by the economic and political power of the advanced western countries. In this highly competitive world no country is a well wisher of any other country. Every body is looking after its own economic benefit first, the other may gain as a by product. India and for that matter no country that has a potential of jeopardising the economic super power status of advanced countries in any field of economic activity has to be doubly careful for the direct and indirect strings attached, visible or hidden to any  help that is being promised. Giving technologies to smaller countries like Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand etc. that too in inconsequential fields of garment, apparel, shoe making industry, home appliances, computer hardware,electronics and auto mobile ancillaries to save on their own manufacturing costs. The small population of these countries could be easily elevated beyond the poverty levels and  see some benefits of industrialisation and prosperity accruing to them.

We have been witness to the horrendous effects of dependence and reliance on the technology and consumable resources in all walks of life, energy and power generation being no exceptions. We have seen the effect of cartelisation by the oil producers who have made full use of increased global demand by increasing the prices of oil many many folds. In the last decade India tried to depend on imported coal for its power generation requirements and coal prices have been doubled up by the exporting countries without even resorting to any cartelisation. Imagine what will happen if these countries also form an OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) like body to squeeze maximum benefits out of their natural resources.Why is India forgetting its own old experiences of nuclear power plants. India had sunk in a lot of money in nuclear power plants during seventies and eighties of twentieth century but could never run them efficiently ( so much so even today we are running them at 50% of the installed capacity ) because of consumable and critical technology denials by the same countries who are now claiming to be willing to help India out with nuclear power stations. What are the safeguards against the same story not being repeated again either through denial or asking for exorbitant prices for consumables and critical components. Incidentally India is even now being denied  research tools that are available with some of their own universities even. In such a backdrop Is Nuclear Power Option a Wise Option or A Fraud on the Nation .In any case Indian Energy Security, through nuclear power route is neither the next gen growth engine nor the means to attain economic super power status for the country. It is definitely the route to maintaining the economic super power status of western world by letting them fleece an aspiring India through sale of defunct and obsolete technology which is out of sync with realities of twenty first century and in the process building up their strengths in the various fields of renewable energy to harness the economic prowess of eternal in situ available energies.In fact they want to make best use of the huge opportunity that exists in an energy starved nation of 1 billion plus. Can Indian politicians and government make full use of this colossus opportunity of becoming global leaders and an economic super power knocking at their doors and not waste it in raising the prosperity level of its masses by a notch or two.

Renewable energy is the answer for all futuristic Energy security not only of India but of entire world and that is why the countries with vision like Germany, Japan etc. are bent upon phasing out nuclear power option at a rather rapid pace and adding up solar at a feverish pace..The yearly additions of renewable energy particularly of solar and wind energy are growing exponentially in spite of fossil fuel and nuclear energy cartels trying their best with powerful misinformation campaigns advocating their importance for global energy security. The reasons can be summed up as follows:

• No deleterious effects on environment and thus ability to contribute in reducing global warming in the short run and taking it back to early twentieth century level in the long run.
• In situ availability
• Eternal availability in comparison to limited availability of all fuels.
• Suitability for standalone requirements as also micro,mini and large grid systems requirements.
• Immunity against inflation and other kind of price escalations as far as energy from the source is concerned.
• No infra and logistics spends required to gain access at the power plant site as is required in case of all fuels.
• With passage of time, power produced by renewable energy sources is only going to be cheaper and better through researches in the fields of better energy conversion, hybridisation, storage etc.

It is time to leave the beaten path and catapult Indian energy security effort to renewable and renewable energy sources alone to make best use of the opportunity window provided by enormous requirements of this energy starved nation of 1 billion plus to realise the dream of energy security in a reasonable time frame.

INDIAN CHANCE TO BECOME AN ECONOMIC SUPERPOWER

India   is  at  the  thresh  hold  of  a  huge  step forward to become one of the economic super powers of  21st century and the opportunity is there for the taking  if and only if the country's rulers and planners put their best foot forward rather than  moaning and groaning  about  the financial problems faced by world  in  general and the developed economies in particular. In fact if there were no problems in the developed economies of this globe this much talked about opportunity  window   would  not   have been available to India in spite of huge technical and management  human  resource,  an  awesome demography  advantage   coupled   with   an enormous demand for all kind of consumer goods, infrastructure, housing and healthcare needs even if one talks about extending  the benefits of development to a level of reasonably good living as per the European standards to the 1 billion plus population of the country. Add to this the need and inner desire on the part of all nations to shift over to renewable energy sources for energy security because of global environmental concerns and finite nature of all fuel based energy.

The Indian polity and planners must understand that prosperity and global leadership is something that they have to strive for and no other country of this globe will help them achieve this by jeopardising their own global leadership status.After all it is not wrong to presume that leaders of western economies shall work in the best interest of their own countries and economies and leaders of countries like India who are looking up to them for their salvation will end up with crumbs only.

Let Indian polity not wait for the improvements in global economic scene and work single-mindedly on problems that are dragging Indian growth. The two main present problems of Indian economy i.e. the inflation and rupee depreciation are both interlinked and require stringent and harsh measures on many fronts and cannot be sorted out with patchy controls by Reserve Bank of India (RBI). This has been seen in the case of efforts to rein in inflation through rate increases by RBI and the results are there for every one to see. The inflation menace has resurfaced after a small time correction and the negative effect on growth as surfaced with a big bang. Similarly, the efforts to control rupee depreciation has not lasted beyond a couple of days even. The real answer to both these problems lies in a path guided by good economics, governance and increase in productivity with politics taking a back seat for some time. If the fiscal deficit and current account deficit are managed well through austerity measures, control on imports, wise pruning of the Indian budget, corruption mitigation and management of energy resources through governance, ( India calling for nationalistic polity) the retrograde effects of policy paralysis could take the back seat.
Let the country understand that big dreams are realised through hard work,dedication and sincerity of purpose and not through mere wishful thinking and vote catching rhetoric as is being done by Indian polity at large. Otherwise the Indian dream and chance to become world leaders will end up in fiasco.It is now or never. Let us not waste this God sent opportunity.