Economic reforms in India – the relevance

“India is the fourth largest economy in view of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), according to world development report, published in September 2001.”
For many of us this piece of information is good to hear. But this is our remnants of the so called golden bird, India. From ages back, as early as 2500 BC, we had been the center of trade and commerce for the other civilizations. The minerals, cotton yarn, leather goods, gems and jewellery, agricultural products had been the export items. The lucrative resources available here attracted the British to do business hence swiftly rule over it. The industries and transport system got a input of foreign blend of knowledge and expertise. Later on after the economy got exploited completely but left over with the determination to revive the economy.

Obviously the challenges were there before our economists, where they choose out the import substitution after developing own production units and industries. This thing actually got the push when second five year plan based on model of Prof.P.C.Mahalnobis ( then Director of ISI Kolkata). The formation of the industrial infrastructure was supported with the proposal of the mixed economy based on socialist principles. The former got boost but not the later which gave rise to income disparity. In villages the high income group is also the lower percentage of the people. In towns the difference between the highest to lowest income is even much higher. By the year of 1970, we had almost all of the commercial establishments within the country. The materials needed to be quality conscious and world class. By the time the foreign capital started depleting fast. The need of the time was to liberalize the foreign capital investment into the production as well as service sector in India. Hence from 1991 the foreign investments were invited and the Indian economy was liberalized, this ultimately made India a competing economy in the Asia-pacific region. The industrial growth and world class products helped to contribute the 70% of the GDP from private sector.

To contrast, the factor of 70% population still involved in the agriculture related works, become the small part of contributor, which is around 26% in the GDP. Needless to add, there exists a sharp valley between the 1/3rd of the population, who live below the poverty line and the upper class who keep the large piece of cake.
Another contrast do appear where the manual labours who do routine jobs and also remain seasonally unemployed. Their daily earning is low and the highly skilled technical and managers’ earnings are the world class salaries.

There is a saying in Hindi which should not be taken as levity.

(The agrarian work is the best, medium is business, being servant is forbidden and to beg is inexcusable.)

Neglecting the agrarian works is not good symptom of the economy. What ever business we do, that becomes related as well dependent on the resources available from the nature: Agricultural, Mining, Water force and Sun rays and so on..

India is said to be one of the prominent market in the Asian region. The market, to be exploited by MNCs. Hence business becomes the main point of attention. In the long run the purchasing power of the maximum of the people is not upto the mark.

The service sector, which is also called as the cheap labour available is India increasing the life standards of the individual labours but ultimately the next generation need something of own instead of the traditional service provider only.

Now to make these economic reforms make meaningful, along with revitalizing the lost golden economy, entrepreneur skills are needed to be encouraged to tap up the largest manpower pool, the cutting edge technical and managerial personals, the innovative brains and the vast natural resources. The biggest asset we have is the willingness to succeed with limited resources in the reviving economy which need to be explored.