labels: economy - general
Dr Jagdish Sheth analyses India''s needs at business schools meetnews
Our Economy Bureau
19 January 2005

Mumbai: "India must leverage its abundance of resources like human capital, land, minerals and even livestock to emerge as an economic superpower. Earlier, growing population was regarded as a liability, but today, it is a growth engine when leveraged with education and opportunities for entrepreneurship. This is even more significant in the light of rapidly ageing populations in the developed countries." observed marketing authority Dr Jagdish Sheth.

Dr Sheth was delivering the keynote speech at a workshop, "Will India ride the demographic wave?" organised by Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) recently on the Goldman Sachs' prediction that the GDP of the BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China) will overtake the economies of the prosperous G-6 countries by 2050.

Elaborating on the significance of the resource advantage which countries like India have and the need to add value to these resources, Sheth said: "The value addition to wheat is as much as 20 times when it is converted into a loaf of bread, while the value addition to a rough diamond is 40 to 60 times when it is cut and polished into a diamond. However, the value addition to human capital through education is infinite," said Sheth.

Sheth felt that a scorching pace of economic growth is possible only through exports of products and services. "No nation has become an economic superpower without strong exports and to succeed in the most demanding export markets, you must be globally competitive."

Explaining the conditions for competing in the global market, Sheth said: "It is necessary to be globally oriented first to compete globally. Then it is imperative to establish reputation for quality, increase productivity through robust infrastructure, leverage human capital, globalise public sector enterprises, invest in design and research, get access to low cost capital, organise the global supply chain and create a strong brand equity."

For this, Sheth felt that it is necessary to reengineer industrial policy by freeing it from ideology, globalising public sector enterprises like railways and telecom, providing incentives for quality, innovation and productivity, employment-led growth, development of IPR regime and enforcement of a sound environment policy. PSUs like BSNL or the Indian Railways should be provided the operational freedom to take advantage of economies of scale and expand to the neighbouring markets through take-overs, acquisitions and mergers, said Sheth.

At the same time, Sheth said that there is a need to reengineer national infrastructure, lay focus on international trade through selective convertibility of currency and encourage consolidation and quality initiatives in the domestic industry.

"The 21st century would be driven by economics and countries like India, China and America, which can value add and become hubs for other trade blocks (North & South America, EU & Eastern Europe, and Asia-Pacific region) will be the leading economies of the world in this century," Sheth said. However, he cautioned that the largest companies even in software in the 21st century may not be Indian.

The workshop, organised by the students of NMIMS, sought to delve into the pros and cons of the BRIC report of Goldman Sachs. Out of the 35 B-Schools and universities which participated in the workshop, four were short-listed for final presentation. The presentations were evaluated by an eminent panel of judges and the first prize was awarded to Megha Gupta and Nandini Davar of the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi and the second prize was awarded to Abhishek Mehrotra and Shraddha Phatak of the School of International Business, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi.


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Dr Jagdish Sheth analyses India''s needs at business schools meet