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| Businessworld Feb23-2004 |
| Analysis 1 |
| Create demand |
| This new demand pattern would have a cascading effect on society, producing a different kind of talent and deploying ways to identify real talent |
Preety Kumar |
| SINCE liberalisation, India's GDP growth rate has been mostly between 4.5% and 6%. Though moderate, the growth has been sustainable and the overall impact on our economy positive. However, if the same performance is reviewed on a global scale, the scenario may start looking different. India's share in the global export market continues to be just about 1-2%, where the real and disproportionate growth has been through IT services. |
| Our total productivity factor has not shown signs of growth. International patenting output, which indicates technological and intellectual output, remains very low. This means that the factors which drive a nation to compete globally are not in place. At this stage, cost arbitrage is our key driver. What we need is value building and long-term global competition drivers. Clearly, as a country, we still need to figure out our 'unique value proposition' for sustained growth. |
| This brings to the table the fundamental issue of lack of support to entrepreneurial activity in India. Until the last decade, only a few professions like engineering and medical services were coveted. Now this list also includes management and information and technology. But we,as a society, love to define the privileged ones and have narrowed down that definition to Indian Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Management graduates. This helps fine-tune a system that produces the typecast professionals. |
| None of these professions and their current paths lead to entrepreneurial activity. Most Indians desire the managing director's post with 'fancy faucets' in their houses! This has a bearing on the entrepreneurial spirit that drives innovation, how paradigms change, passion and commitment to work, and the number of people who take bold and unprecedented risks. No wonder, we have become a cookie-cutter nation, where the academia, parents, society and employers all have the same objective - to produce a young generation that can work in companies which seek performance within set parameters. |
| Sadly, the successful entrepreneurs do not promote this spirit in their companies, instead they follow the more classical corporate model that is full of privileged 'cookies'. There are just too few successful examples for them to be an inspiration. The ability to emulate entrepreneurial success is difficult as it is not systemic. Also, our inherent tendency to avoid competition and a preference for a protective and privileged space to perform in is difficult to do away with. It is competitive activity that forces us to focus on quality, innovation and customer orientation, and hence there is no demand for a different kind of performance and people. |
| Another important point is that the core value around pride of work is missing in our society. The overall tendency to look down on certain professions like teaching makes these jobs lowly paid. Consequently, this attitude dilutes the quality of talent that these professions attract. It blocks the broadbasing of the employment market, so the freedom of choice an individual may have in seeking a profession according to his interests is also restricted. For example, how many car racing teenagers actually get to become car rallying professionals? I have seen some of them become engineers - a diametrically opposite career path! Lately, sporting and acting careers have become attractive money wise, but the path to be successful in these professions is still so obscure and unstructured that most parents do not want to risk their child's future. |
| Finally, at the national level, we have to deploy clear measures to improve our competitiveness in the global markets. These measures could include the parameters of total productivity, innovation, quality, design and technology deployment, among other things. We must, as a nation, focus on building our capacity to innovate by nurturing entrepreneurial spirit. This capacity to innovate will lead to productivity enhancement at the national level, driving our economic and corporate framework to behave differently and, hence, demand a different kind of output. |
| We hope that this new demand pattern would have a cascading effect on society, producing a different kind of talent or deploy different measures to identify real talent (as opposed to the current measures, which are purely intellect-based). |
| All these measures will lead to an overall national prosperity that will reflect in a higher real GDP per capita. This will enhance prosperity across different professions and broadbase the 'haves' in our society, which has more 'have nots' today. I strongly believe that the pressure has to be top-down and economics-led. The bottom-up agenda, purely social, is definitely more difficult and more challenging. |
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