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.

INDIA CALLING OR CRYING: RAILWAY MINISTER RESIGNS AT LAST: At last the railway minister of India, Mr Bansal resigns. The media is happy, the opposition is happy and even the ruling combine is happy...

NOW NUCLEAR POWER PLANT THROUGH SUPREME COURT JUDGEMENT

The government of India, a government sans governance and the ruling polity has always been objecting to the judicial activism of the Indian courts in all matters relating to governance and felt that it was intruding into the government domain even though it was absolutely necessary in the light of total inaction by the government in all matters of public interest and welfare. It was most surprising to see the apex court proclaiming that fear of nuclear disaster has no basis. It should be appreciated that science and technology is as bankrupt as it was fifty years back and tries to fix up the faults as are thrown up by accidents and occurrings from time to time. The safety teams are playing around with collation of statistical data of functioning of a multitude of components, mechanical behaviour and failure of structures and the materials and trying to overcome these through redundancy and reliability.

All these exercises were carried out before commissioning power plants at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima but as providence will have it some new unknown factors came into being and these catastrophic accidents occurred. Let us all understand that nuclear energy safety has been a false promise and will continue to be the same for all times to come. Humanity has suffered heavily because of ironic claims of 100% safety but we in India seem to be none the wiser from the experiences of others. These ominous words contained in the judgement "Nobody on this earth can predict what would happen in future and to a larger extent we have to leave it to the destiny" should not be taken lightly as the stakes are not the same as that of an automobile accident. The decisions must be weighed in the light of the quantum of risks of catastrophic accidents in nuclear power plants. 

There has got to be something horrendous in nuclear power play. We must try to analyse why even the so called masters of nuclear power technology are themselves shying away from this energy. No new plant has come up on the soil of USA since 1980. Germany and Japan have decided to phase out all nuclear energy. So much so even the French have decided to go in for reductions in their dependence on nuclear energy.

While nobody can deny the requirements of energy for the sunny future of the masses of India as brought out in a report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which highlights that to sustain rapid global economic growth, it is necessary to double the supply of energy and tripling supply of electricity by 2050. Further, it is stated billions of poor people need energy and other life-saving and job-creating technologies.” But today we have better alternates available to realise our aims. It will be criminal to bank upon a technology which is in an obsolescence phase because of thorns attached to it and not in sync with the vision and aspirations of 21st century. India does not need nuclear power for its energy security. Let us hope that wisdom prevails on Indian rulers and polity.

INDIA CALLING OR CRYING: COALGATE INVESTIGATIONS FOR PROTECTING NATIONAL I...: India has witnessed a host of scams during the rule of the present government. It is a pity that no investigation seems to be reaching the...

CORRUPTION BLOWING AWAY INDIAN DREAM OF GETTING PROSPEROUS

21st century belongs to Asia , the oft repeated words of Indian prime minister along with a host of other assessors and analysts of world economy and on paper India is perhaps the strongest contender. This global opportunity because of a combination of  factors like favourable demography, cheap labour, abundant human resource of all skills and levels and above all perhaps the right time for an impending change in global economic order because of slowing down of developed economies, depletion of their resources and gross overspending on social welfare measures.

The Indian nation and polity understands this fully but the polity chooses  to ignore comfortably the first and foremost condition of corruption mitigation and good governance for such revolutions to occur in the history of a nation. Not even a single day passes without the surfacing of a new scam or reports of large scale corruption by mighty and powerful of the nation. The apathy of the government is reflected in the fact that hardly anyone gets punished or money gained through illegal and dubious means recovered. On the contrary the whole polity divides itself into two teams, one vouching for that nothing has gone wrong and that the powerful are not involved while the other raises the rhetoric of  asking for the head of individual name involved. The mudslinging and rhetoric created goes on with complete understanding that the gains and losses must be confined only to the aim of getting votes. It is always ensured that no personal or financial harm should come to any individual.

The nation, citizenry and the common man is suffering because of corruption, bribe and black money generation and is well aware of the massive magnitude of these problems. But strangely, the total polity of the country makes an all out effort to undermine the extent, so much so that it is taken to be a minor aberration in the total financial activity of the nation. The most recent case of involvement of a relative of a minister involved in a bribe for the promotion of a railway officer is a typical eye opener to the extent this malaise is eating into the national wealth and hampering India's dream and chance of becoming world leaders. This particular officer's total earnings of the last ten years will not amount to the princely sum of Rs. 90 lakhs, the amount paid as the bribe. This throws open two basic questions. Firstly, the amounts that are being earned through dubious means in this country and secondly the scope of earning much bigger amounts with the likely promotion.

This is as far as the colossus bribe is rampant in Indian government and is a minuscule sample of what has come to light. There is another angle to this which is all the more shameful and deleterious to the growth of nation. The minister in question says that he has no business dealings with this relative as if corruption is a business and he wants the country to believe that all corrupt people have scripted business partnerships with their relatives, cronies and stooges for bribe and corruption money. The officer who paid the bribe was an idiot who paid the bribe without ascertaining that it will produce the desired result by reaching the person concerned.

The country is getting ruined in this game and corruption is blowing away Indian dream of getting prosperous. Corruption has given two separate and distinct methodologies for the functioning of executive and the legal process. Executive thrives on the motto of  'How not to do a thing instead of how to do it' and the legal process thrives on 'How to save a guilty rather than how to nail him' and this is such a win win situation for the persons who are mired in corruption. They not only eat, drink and sleep corruption, they breed corruption too. If such are the nationalists of this country, the persons working under oaths, persons subject to some semblance of controls and accountability, imagine the state of persons who are under no oath and are accountable to no agency.

WHAT AILS INDIA?

The whole world recognises the potential of India to become a global economic superpower in the next few decades 

• in the light of availability of global opportunities arising out of the problems being faced by today's economic giants because of 

1. Unsuitable demography
2. Improper mix of human resource
3. Extremely high wage structure not in sync with the commercial aspects of all industrial activity.
4. Over spending on social security and welfare schemes
5. Need to replace current nearly obsolescent technologies with newer revolutionary technologies in the fields of energy security, logistics and transport incurring huge replacement costs. 
6. And above all, depletion of conventional natural resource reserves which have been the strength of twentieth century industrial revolution.

India is most favorably placed as far the demography, human resource and wage structure are concerned. The other irritants can be taken care of with a judicious proportioning of expenditure on welfare schemes and industrial productivity. But strangely enough no big results are either forth coming or appear to be forthcoming in future. Aptly one is forced into asking, ' What ails India' and it is not very hard to find out the answer to this. The following come to one's mind if you try to dwell on this subject.

• Lack of Vision and far sight: In the history of independent India, the vision and far sight were seen only during two periods, firstly during Nehru's times in the fifties and sixties of the last century covering the first three five year plans and  secondly during the time of Vajpai. After Nehru's era India went into a period of what has been described as a plan holiday by several analysts and a similar condition has perhaps developed during the last ten years also. During these periods the Indian leaders have only concentrated on hollow promises, vote catching gimmicks and rhetoric and worst still all government decisions seem to be motivated by politics and corrupt governance. The decisions on two main pillars of any booming economy i.e. the energy security and natural resource management neither show any vision nor any concern for the poor citizenry of this country. When the whole world seems to be moving towards renewable energy sources for ultimate, ever lasting, and relatively inexpensive energy security, India is lagging behind and is perhaps is being guided by national and international cartels of industry, nations and even scientific and technological power centres. Indian geographical and habitation scenario is perhaps most suited to Energy security with solar and wind energy but is perhaps not being pursued because these energy sources are not owned by any cartel or any power centre or any lobby. Water resource management has suffered because of this lack of vision, so much so that a country bestowed with abundant water from perennial rivers, a lot of rainfall is in the danger of a water crisis with ground water tables moving deeper and deeper. On one hand every year floods cause huge loss to agriculture and property while on the other millions suffer because of famines occur as a result of severe drought in many parts of the country.
• The lack of governance is the other major ailment that is pulling down India. In fact Indian government is a government sans governance. One is astonished to hear from the government that India neither has proper laws to fight crime, bribery, corruption etc. nor has the requisite infrastructure for quick disposal of law cases.The government seems to be a mere informer to the nation and takes pride in that. Who will find solution to these ailments is not known? Day in day out the country is made to understand that no individual or leader alone can fight these maladies and that the people have to become honest and responsible. If that happens by any miracle will the country need these rulers to waste national kitty on them, a vast majority out of them are   goons and buffoons who are ruling/ruining India. A reminder to the ruling class of the country

Good Economics and Good Governance is Ideal
Bad Economics and Good Governance is A Compromise
Good Economics and Bad Governance is Undesirable
Bad Economics and Bad/Corrupt Governance is A Disaster

• The irony of Indian situation is that India has embraced the last of the above four options with utter disregard to the quantum of doles, freebies, subsidies and administrative expenditure an economy can sustain. As if that were not enough every action of government with regard to natural resources like minerals, water, spectrum, land etc. is meant to be to the detriment of the nation and benefit of polity, powerful bureaucrats, industrialists and their stooges and cronies. So much so that India has  ignominiously earned for itself the epithet of A land of scams.

INDIA'S ENERGY SECURITY : RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES

It was heartening to note that Indian government has finally seen  the reality of clean green energy and this was emphasized by none other than the Indian premier. While speaking at the fourth clean energy ministerial Indian Prime Minister pitches for subsidy to energize clean energy in the context of his opinion on the cost aspects of  power from new renewable energy sources in comparison to conventional fuel based energy sources. His assertions derive strength from the feed back from his experts which he has faithfully echoed . But as the head of the government of one billion plus and a visionary trying to catapult Indian march to prosperity he must understand that all scientific and technology experts also resist change just as any normal human being and additionally they tend to defend their expertise and technology for their own benefit and the benefit of their large following of scientists and technologists. Additionally he should have drawn his own conclusions in the light of the fact that so many global leaders and visionaries have embraced the renewable energy sources in a big way for ultimate energy security of their respective countries.

India is uniquely placed in this quest of energy security as it doesn't have to think that earlier investments will go down the drain as it has barely started its march towards this goal and our yearly addition requirements are much more than the replacement requirements of the developed world. Energy security through renewables is the only way ahead if India has to keep its date with the the great Indian dream of becoming world leaders.

India must think big and India must think with vision and far sight. Let India not follow the beaten path of energy requirement fulfillment as it came to mankind with the advancements of science, technology and material development. India must jump and skip some of the technologies to arrive at the ultimate goal of energy security. Gone are the days when big was beautiful and economic in Energy sector. Solar and wind power have the potential of revolutionizing this concept with their suitability and cost effectiveness in standalone, micro, mini and large grids. In the light of the fact that solar and wind are comparable if not cheaper when an all inclusive cost comparison including transmission /distribution losses and costs, logistics of raw materials, plant and grid maintenance and costs for reducing pollution and fighting global warming is made for cost to the consumer. Solar and wind power and are the only viable answers to the requirement of Energy Security not only for India but for almost all nations on our globe.