Over the years the governments both at the centre as well as in the states have failed to provide the basic requirements of the people related to power, water, education, and even the healthcare and sanitation. And it is worrying, as it is insensitive and encourages the cover-up sectors, many with vested interests and mean mindsets. Both individuals as well as companies have to generate their own power, provide their own transport, dig for their own water and invest substantially on coaching and training to become employable or make the graduating ones employable. Interestingly, it is not only the government but the private entrepreneurs are also failing. For example, in higher professional education sector where the private institutes produces almost 70% or more graduates and a major percent of the lot, about 50% according to one estimate are unemployable. It has given a necessity to add one more layer of cover up education through finishing schools of all sorts for making them employable. These finishing schools or institutes, some by even the government or social entrepreneurs, are hardly any guarantee for getting employable even after payment of huge fees. Let us have a review of some of the sectors:

Power

According to a survey by a big power company, ‘power outages nationwide cost Indians a staggering Rs 100,000 crore – enough to put up power plants with a capacity of 25,000 MW of electricity, or almost 20% of the present generation level’. India additionally spends Rs 30,000 crore every year maintaining and operating inefficient back-ups like gensets and inverters, which substantially increase the carbon footprint. The study claims back-ups release an additional 1.9m tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. According to one projection, the value of the lost opportunity due to outages in 2008-09 was Rs 2, 89, 000 crore. The Prime Minister talks of austere measures but doesn’t act against the ministers failing to reach the targets set.

Education

As the government schools have failed to meet the demand, the private education for K-12 has become a $19, 6-billion business that will grow to $40.3 by 2018. It starts at preschool stage with private tuitions, goes on for getting selected for entry in the professional colleges and continues even after coming out from the colleges even after paying huge capitation fees and other charges. For example, the company such as Infosys Technologies, India’s second-biggest software services exporter, turns trainer for the nearly 30,000 students it recruits from top engineering colleges every year to fill the gaps left by inadequate college education. As reported, Nasdaq-listed Infosys spent $175 million on training and education in the year to March 2009, at a time when an economic downturn crimped margins. So do the many companies and many social entrepreneurs to provide additional fill-ups. Can it be a quality first time cutting the waste of resources and time?

Drinking Water

As the quantity is not sufficient and the quality of water supply from the municipal and other government agencies is hardly worth consuming, people are paying to buy water, the basic needs of every one. Water filtration systems of all sophistications have grown as a big industry worth multi-crore business. The bottled water industry is now estimated to be worth around Rs 1,000 crore and is growing around 40 per cent per annum. Interestingly, even the governments have started thinking in this term.
The Andhra Pradesh government plans to install a water treatment plant costing Rs 2 lakh in each village and habitat having a population of 1,500; and every person will be given a 5-litre bottle of drinking water per day. Free of cost. I don’t know if the leadership change in the state will affect the plan. year.

Healthcare

Hardly anyone from even the middle class goes to the government hospital. The private healthcare constituting doctor-led nursing homes and clinics, trust-run tertiary care hospitals and corporate multi-specialty hospital (MSH) chains such as Apollo, and Fortis are mushrooming in every corners of the urban India. Perhaps the government healthcare centres will be visited and remain reserved for the BPL families.

Let us hope something better will come out of this.