If Tata or Bajaj is manufacturing more vehicles with less number of people. One has to look at the number of people employed in manufacturing the vehicles in the industry. That is support industries also. Today both these companies are not manufacturing all these products. Bulk of the products are outsourced. So when counting the jobs created, you have to count total jobs in the industry ,not just in one company. Playing with figures anybody can do. We have to be careful with the foreign experts they have different agendas when saying particular thing. Crocodile tears
Stephen's outlook is clouded by the happening over a time frame and more importantly, by only two companies. The last 5-6 years manufacturing industry has restructured significantly, shedding flab. One needs to keep in mind that most industries had acquired excess labour for a variety of historical reasons, which needed to be corrected. One hears less and less about VRS schemes these days- I guess the industry has completed shedding the excess labour. Thus, growth from this point onwards should result in job creation. As the author has rightly pointed out, export is where the action is going to be. Particularly in Textiles, Pharma and Auto components In Textiles, the developed nations would lose close to 30mn jobs due to removal of quotas from Jan2005. Assuming even 20-25% of those jobs are cornered by India, we can add 6-7mn jobs. The pharma and biotechnology story is several times bigger than that in Textiles.
The government needs to focus on creating manufacturing jobs to reach the masses. As for the IT industry, it can take care of itself, much like it has since start, without government support.
The hypothesis is based on an incorrect assumption regarding Bajaj and Tata Motors.
The number of people who are employed by these two companies directly has come down. But what these two companies have done is to sub-contract many of their needs. This is widely evident from the large number of small scale vendors who have mushroomed in close proximity to the two companies.
I also do not agree with the message behind the article as manufacturing is the only way forward for a large part of India. Not everybody in rural india can be made to learn and speak english. Not everybody has the technical talent in computers. But manufacturing can be a solution to provide for the needs of the larger masses.
Hi, Going through this article, I feel that the focus of the Indian Govt. should be on our strengths and not the strengths of the investors/VCs/MNCs. The whole concept of copying the US market will be of no use for us since theirs been a capital market for decades and the processes and policy making will be of limited success for us. BPO's, Call Centres, R&D setup by MNCs will eventually be more benefited to the companies rather than a nation. Indian companies as such which are dealing with products do not have the "global presence" and hence will never be able to cope up with the International market and at the same time generate employment for thousands of people. Lets get to basics, agriculture becoming our main industry and all other industries being backed with good infrastructure provided by the govt. Agriculture needs to be streamlined, provided the basic infrastructure and employment to be created in large no.s and stop the unskilled labour from migrating to the city. Horses for courses/specific job profiles are needed. With internal squabbling, red tapism, bureaucracy and corruption, I think India will look down the barrel if there are more 9/11 kind of disaste
Ok. Next time you write an article, make sure you don't quote foreign columnist. I suspect media here is US has EVER quoted an Indian columnist. Come up with your own ideas and support them with your own arguments. Don't be a parasite. stand on your own feet. good luck.
I would totally satnd in favor of Abheek's remarks to Stephen Roach's verdict.Roach's view about the Indian manufacturing industry shows his incapability to read the Indian market.Remarks which Roach has put on Indian growth is the clear reflection of the American fear of India's growth and his high potential of becoming a vast economy in coming years.American's themselves were not able to cpaitalise the manufacturing revolution which China did.The way shown by Barua of clusterisation would also strenghen the indigneous capacity of Indian industry and raise the infrastructure available to the industry.
There is one more basic fallacy in just checking out two mfg companies at two particular points in time. There has been a large scale outsourcing as well as good development of ancillaries in the auto industries. The adoption of programmes like single-sourcing and vendor reliability mean that manufacturing moves out of the four walls of the company, but to places outside - probably within the same city. This keeps the mfg labour employed, though in a different company. It is here where the mfg labour is expected to be employed and jobs generated. And in the service sector, growth is not limited only to the IT / BPO, where the author talks of "niche high skilled people being employed". Retailing, Hospitality, 3PL services (which provide the logistics of movement between all these outsourced ancillaries) etc all provide opportunity for employment of a good amount of labour. While there may be some merit in the overall trend, the drop in figures as suggested by Roach's comparison is not that dramatic.
"The Job creation" that Mr.Barua addresses can be tackled in many ways.Imagine for example that ,the current BPO Enterprises abandoned their buildings and became "Virtual" overnight to split their jobs among thousands of families ,or local self managed groups of neighberhood families ,across the country.Outsourced Jobs may be in areas 1)Programming 2)Data Processing 3)Handling any of the business processes 4)Animation and art works 5)Clinical and lab tests or even R&D!This also results in possible employment of the rural educated,apart from strengthening family values which are currently under tremendous strain as women are forced to work overnight in such BPO shops.
Another well known way to create jobs is to create entreprenurship.Indian entrepreneursip ,barring few Mittals and Ambanis is outright stunted due to the negligence and harrassment from governments due to myriad laws and regulations helping the "Economics of Bribing" the corrupt officials. Also,easy and risk tolerant credit and emotional support from the family is what a new entrepreneur is looking for.Can we do something urgently on creating climate for the same?
Unfortunately, in India, certain people are considered above the law. When such people are arrested, there is a general sense of outrage as to how such an arrest was carried out at all.
Let us all not forget that Jayendra Sarsati and other so called 'seers' are all humans. Its all of us who have deified these people. At the bottom of it all, they are all humans suceptible to temptation, greed etc...
If the TN police have arrested and are levelled some fairly serious charges against the Kanchi Swami, they must have evidence to support their claims. Let's all therefore, keep our counsel and allow the case to proceed.
If at the end of an impartial proceeding, he is found innocent ( which is what will happen) then we start on a clean slate. If he is innocent, why is anybody worried? If I was Jayendra Saraswati and if I were innocent, I'd simply keep quiet and allow proceedings to continue to a logical conclusion.
I do not agree with author.India is having large potential of increasing jobs but unfortunately we do not have vision.We always compare ourself with western developed countries actually we should compare ourself with our eastern side countries like japan,singapore,Korea & now china .What is applicable for developed country will never be applicable to country like India.Unfortunately all economist or Management graduates are influenced by american & european authors & try to force these ideas in india. There is one sector which is altogether ignored by our economist ,industrialist, & politicians & that is shipping.We have long sea coast,huge manpower unfortunately ship building & ship repair is almost zero.In India we think shipping means passenger ships.All our eastern side countries developed because of shipping.Here we require goverment policy to help industry.Stupidly we are developing China by sending Iron ore so they can supply finished product to india . even our ships goes there to get repaired & in future we will get ships made in china.This is worst than Britishers done to India. There is high time we should open our eyes.but here is no vision & no mision.
