India News and Features Alliance (INFA) - Joining Developed Nations League:GET CRACKING ON INFRASTRUCTURE, by Dr. Vinod Mehta,17 January 2008

For almost five decades India was content to be known as a “developing” or a “Third World” country. Then in the last decade of the 20th century economic reforms happened and the growth rate doubled from around 4 per cent to 8 per cent and India came to be known as the “emerging” economy, one of the fastest growing economies in the world after China.

The developments of the past one and a half decade have brought a sea change in the thinking of some of our leaders. They all want that India should become a developed country in the next few years. It was the former President of India, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who in his book “Vision 2020” shared his vision of India as a developed nation.

This change in the mindset of some of our leaders is very important and gives the necessary confidence to the nation to achieve that milestone. The acquisition of foreign companies by Indian companies, the confidence shown by multinational companies in Indian managers, the enhancement of Indian engineering skills as witnessed with the introduction of the Tata's small car Nano etc. provides the necessary psychological prop to think of ourselves as a developed nation in a few years from now.

The average citizen has also started thinking in those terms. The date 2020 is not sacrosanct in the sense that on 1 January 2020 we would become a developed nation like Japan or Germany. The important thing is that we should start working in that direction and endeavour to achieve that goal say in the next 20 to 25 years. The timing is correct, what we need is a clear road-map to achieve that status. The Eleventh Five Year Plan could be termed as a beginning point for our journey towards a developed country.

Some people may think of it as a cynical idea. Even after 60 years of Independence we have not been able to ensure safe drinking water to every person or achieve 100% literacy so why talk about India as developed nation? Well this is a brute fact and should be recognized so, and efforts doubled to solve these issues on an urgent basis.

However, it is the vision which is very important. Nehru had a vision of India as a developed country over a period of time. This vision led him to set up institutions like the IITs, IIMs, Centre for Scientific & Industrial Research, Indian Space Research Organisation, Atomic Energy Commission. Defence Research & Development Organisation, Agricultural universities, AIIMS and even research in the field of social sciences and humanities.

People had at that time also laughed at him but today after 60 years the achievements by Indian scientists, engineers, doctors, managers, social scientists are known the world over. We are at a stage now where we can talk about and think about achieving the status of a developed country in the coming years.

The eyes of many countries are focused on India. The events and developments are being closely watched by them. There are some powers which would not like India to become a developed nation and so are engaged in pinpricking. It could take the form of denial of certain technologies or ill-treatment of software personnel, medical doctors etc. Therefore, keeping in mind that other countries would like to stall or delay our march towards a developed nation, we must have a clearly defined path to achieve the goal of becoming a developed nation.

As a first step, problems like illiteracy, lack of safe drinking water which have been with us since Independence need to be tackled on a war footing. Most of the diseases are water borne. If we can ensure safe drinking water to everyone the health of the population will generally improve and there will be less pressure on our hospitals.

As far as education is concerned it is simply not enough to have literate people but people with a qualification up to a minimum school level say 10th standard. If the country is going to use computers in almost every aspect of life, it is essential that the population is educated enough to handle and work on these gadgets. The Knowledge Commission has rightly emphasized the quality aspect of our elementary and higher education.

Having said that, let’s now try to build on our strengths. As we know, the process of economic reforms is on for the past 15 years. In the past one and a half decade many new first time entrepreneurs have emerged in the country such as Infosys, Wipro and many others. The process of economic reforms needs to be accelerated further so that we are able to complete this process in the next five years.

If the economy is competitive in the international market it will automatically become a strong over a period of time. Without a strong economy and a strong financial system we will not be able to keep abreast with the developed nations. The results of economic reforms are now for everyone to see; Indian firms are becoming lean and cost effective now.

After the reforms in the industrial sector we should now complete the economic reforms in the financial sector also. Steps have already been taken like the establishment of private sector banks, private insurance companies, setting up of Pension Funds, relaxation in foreign currency regulations and so on. But we must speed up the reforms in this sector and get rid of Non Performing Assets at the earliest.

However, we have yet to start reforms in the agricultural sector. This is an area which has a very big potential to make us a developed country. Till date, we do not have any agricultural policy worth the name. Our productivity of agricultural crops per hectare is much lower than the productivity in other countries. Though we are number one in milk production today it is due to the fact that we have a large number of milch cattle and not because the productivity of our milch cattle is high as in other developed countries.

The market for agricultural products is still under-developed in terms of infrastructure and access to international markets. Countries like Holland and Germany grow more grains per hectare than India and get more milk from limited number of cattle stock. Therefore, to make India a developed country we will have to bring the agricultural sector on par with the agricultural sector in the developed countries.

Technologies play an important role in making a country developed or not so developed. Why America is on the top today is because of the fact that it has the best technologies in the world. Indian scientists have also done well to develop technologies which can put India at par with other developed countries. In fact, many of our scientists and technologists working outside India have contributed to scientific research in those countries. If we can get our act together and consolidate our position in the technological sphere then we can claim to become a developed country.

There is also a need to change the mindsets of the people to bring them in tune with the one in developed countries. For instance, over a period time we should start reducing our dependence on concessional loans from various countries and instead start giving concessional loans to other developing countries.

When collaborating with foreign countries on research we should always insist of becoming an equal partner instead of a junior partner. For participation in international conferences we should stop taking any assistance from developed countries for our travel and stay by arguing that we belong to a Third World country. We should be able to pay from our own resources for participation of our academics in international conferences and symposia.

Finally, we also need to have a world-class infrastructure ready in the next 15 years. We need to set up a world-class communication system, transport system including good road and rail network. All these are minimum requirements for the emergence of a developed nation, which India aspires to be. ---- INFA