Indian Farmers: New Breed

Posted on March 20, 2010 by indra

Perhaps my rural origin excites me with the good news of changing India, and so I try to share my feelings when I get some.

Today’s Crest that Times of India publishes on every Saturday has an inspiring story about how some hard core urbanites shifted to their roots and are happy with their endeavours in farming. They did not only find peace but also even prosperity, among the melons and the bees. Farming with a mission and perseverance can succeed.

Kailash Mehta started out with barely Rs 25,000. After many years when he scarcely raked in a penny, his application of logic (growing what agreed with the soil and climate), and method (drip irrigation, 90 per cent manure – 10 per cent NPK fertilizer; turning weeds and dry grass to compost; alternating between high and low extraction crops; eschewing ploughing for digging holes) earned him an income of Rs 5 lakh last year, of which he managed to save Rs 2 lakh.

Amrish Patel established VIGO Bio-Tech Dairy Pvt Limited, bringing out a brand of cow’s milk called Zeal, from an ultra-modern ‘tabela’ in Nurpura village – Asia’s largest 80-unit rotary milking parlour. 700 Holstein-Friesian hybrid cows are milked using Irish technology, and bathed the traditional Indian way, in ‘neem’ water. Late last year, the Ahmedabad-based Anil Group – a food and bio-industrial conglomerate – acquired a 90 per cent stake through a deal estimated at Rs 25 crore. Now Patel is about to make money out of honey.

Michael Aruldoss Ratnam: “I’ve gone back to farming methods 80 years old, when people grew what the land was amenable to and did not force an untenable crop on the soil. Back then they wanted to make food from the land, not money, as they do today.”

Ashok Kumar in his farm at Kottapalayam village, 60 km from Tiruchi, now raises watermelons on a 2.5-acre patch, and musk melons on a 1.5-acre area. He buys only hybrid seeds and uses technology like drip irrigation and sheet mulching for higher yield. “These sheets maintain moisture in the mud as well as warmth around the plant. At least, 80 farmers visit my farm every week to learn my techniques.” This year his third crop has been pre-booked by a Delhi-based trader. Ashok plans to buy an additional 20 acres and cultivate niche crops like sweet corn and cherry tomato.

There must be many more in India with similar success stories. I wish media cover them to inspire those who endeavoured to get into farming that many feels are fast becoming unviable.

I feel I didn’t have that fire so I sold all my rural landed properties in two of the remote but fertile villages of Bihar. Sometimes, I envy such people with fire, as a fire can only make one succeed.

I wish the story will provide inspiration to many more join the group of the few urbanites who have preferred a difficult rural life and change the fate of rural India. Unfortunately, the government didn’t consider Former President’s PURA concept that would, in all probability, have resulted in sustained changes in the rural India.

There are another lot of Indian farmers who have become affluent as byproducts of the expanding urbanization. The recent story by Jim Yardley on March 18, in New York Times about the India’s newly rich farmers is one.

I wish the Goddess Lakshmi would have smiled on those who could use it well.

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My Reasons to Seek a Long Life

Posted on March 19, 2010 by indra

I am already above 70 years. I don’t know how long will be my life span. But the body that undertook the pain and agony of heart trouble and surgery psychologically may not last the very best that I wish.

But let me tell why I wish a long life. My liking of food and drinks can’t be the reason, nor do I spend a lot of time in travelling to exciting destinations. I do also neither live in a big happy joint family.

But still I sometimes wish to see 2039 when I shall be 100 years of age. Do you know the reason? It’s because I came across a book ‘India 2039: An Affluent Society in One Generation’ edited by Harinder S. Kohli and Anil Sood, and published by Sage Publications. I dream to see with my own eyes an affluent India. Surprisingly, the prediction is doable but for the integrity of the politicians. And this can happen with a growth rate of about 8%, and the task becomes easier and faster with double digit GDP growth rate that the economist Prime Minister and his finance Minister promised in course of India Budget Speech 2010.

India has already strong fundamentals: neighbourhood effects of Asian growth, increases in savings and investment rates, growth of manufacturing, demographic divides, increasing urbanization, the middle class fuelling consumption and entrepreneurship and changes in values. And even the constraints in infrastructure, health, education and governance can be debottlenecked.

According to the book, India can easily reach a per capita income of $5,500 in 2039, and an overall gross domestic product of $8 trillion. However, a determined India can also take India to a per capita income of $22,000 in 2039 and a GDP of $36 trillion.

Is it not exciting enough reason to live a life of 100 years?

But even at 80 and 85, I can expect to see a great India and a country with excellent manufacturing strength. Manufacturing had been my weakness. And so the CII-Boston Consulting Group report made me wish to see year 2025. According to the report, India can match, and even surpass, the best performing manufacturing economy in recent years-China. The report provides roadmap for India to become the fourth largest manufacturing economy in the world by 2025 from the current ranking of 13th.

And if I go by media reports, many things are happening to make it possible:

The world’s largest truck maker Daimler on Thursday promised to invest Rs 4,400 crore over the next five years to set up a manufacturing plant on 400-acres in Chennai with an initial capacity of 36,000 units in the first phase that will be scaled up to 72,000 units finally, and almost all big commercial vehicles manufacturers are setting up their shops. And other auto manufacturers from Japan and Europe are coming in India.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/03/12/stories/2010031253360701.htm

The continued buoyancy in the country’s industrial production in the current fiscal has got appreciation from the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). In its latest Yearbook of Industrial Statistics 2010, the Vienna-based UN body said in 2009 India overtook developed countries such as Canada and Mexico and emerging economies such as Brazil to move up to the ninth slot among the world’s top-10 industrial countries.

Even, the government is trying to do it best through its policy.

And so there is lot of exciting reasons to live a long life. Kapil Sibal has given me one more reason. India in 2030 will be most educated in the world.

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Growing India, Rising Hopes

Posted on March 12, 2010 by indra

Corporate India is expected to invest $250 billion over the next three years.

India Inc will create 9, 17,000 new jobs in 2010-11.

The index for industrial production has risen 16.8 per cent from a year earlier in January, after expanding by 11.8 per cent in November last year.

With an annual production of 2.3 million units, the Indian automobile industry is the ninth largest in the world.

With a high saving rate of 33 per cent, low urbanization levels and a young population, India will consume a lot more than all other economies and this will sustain growth in the labour force, capital stock and productivity over the next decade, says Credit Suisse, and the per capita income will triple from $1,050 to $3,400 by 2019.

India’s consumption is a mere $700 billion, leaving enough headroom for growth. (US consumes $10 trillion worth of goods and services, China consumes $1.4 trillion.)

India is expected to be a $4-trillion economy by 2019.

Real GDP growth is expected to average 8 per cent per year from 2010 to 2014 and 7.5 per cent per year from 2015 to 2019.

The Indian Government is planning to pump in $100 billion into infrastructure development.

The manufacturing sector’s rate of growth has shot up between 9 and 12 per cent in recent years.

The consumer electronics sector has grown by 10 per cent. Refrigerators and washing machines have grown by 17 per cent in terms of volume.

The auto industry today employs around 13 million people in direct and indirect jobs. As estimated, the Indian automobile industry will create another five million direct and indirect jobs by 2012 and will employ around 25 million by 2016.

NASSCOM estimates that the Indian IT-BPO industry is slated to record 5.5 per cent growth and reach $49.7 billion in the year ending 2009-10.

India is expected to add about 15,600 hotel rooms in 2010. And by 2011, 40 new international hotel brands will be operational in India. Add to this, close to 415 projects or 68,480 rooms are under various stages of development and 41 per cent of these projects may start adding to existing inventory from 2010.

Hospitality in India is likely to generate $121.4 billion of economic activity by 2015 and will earn $24 billion in foreign exchange. By 2018, the market for the hospitality industry is expected to double in size.

Over the next five years, the cumulative demand in the residential sector will be about 75.43 lakh units.

India has the largest student population in the world with 13.5 crore children in primary schools. The country faces a shortage of at least two lakh schools.

Health-care has been growing at 15 per cent. By 2012, medical tourism is expected to contribute $5 billion in foreign exchange earnings. Healthcare employs four million people at present.

The healthcare industry was $38 billion in 2008-09 and is expected to be close to $76.4 billion in 2012-13. By 2012, it is expected to generate employment for 9 million people

In the coming years, over one million beds need to be added to reach a ratio of 1.85 per thousand. Over the next five years, $1 billion is expected to be invested in the healthcare sector.

If the industry is to achieve a doctor-patient ratio of 1:1,000, it would need six lakh doctors and one million nurses. And if the industry continues to grow at this rate, it has the capacity to create employment for 9 million by 2012.

With all the hopes rising sky high, how can ‘the three real idiots’ hold the country behind? Where is the need of reservations of any type? Let the barriers and restrictions of castes and communities get broken. Let us save for the nation. Let the investment increase and capacities expand. Let everyone get education and skill. Let everyone from a janitor to a scientist participate in innovation innovate. Let everyone positively contribute in the task of taking the nation ahead and out of poverty by hard work and not by loan waivers and subsidies.

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Women Empowerment: Education Only Answer

Posted on March 9, 2010 by indra

In my Presidency college days, I found gradually the girl students surpassing boy students in topping various honours courses in humanities as well as science subjects. Unfortunately, in IIT Kharagpur at our time there was no girl student. At that time, engineering and technology was not the preferred interest of girl students. However, as informed, there are today about 36 girl students for 100 boys in engineering and other technical branches of education. The number of girl students per 100 boys is at its best about 90 in medicine today.

I am seeing this happening even in my own family itself. The girl children of my cousins in the extended family are performing excellently. Kushboo after engineering is already in job with multinational and recently got married with an engineer. Jyoti has joined Master in HR. Babli for whom I was doubtful has also taken admission in a private engineering college in NCR. Boys also have done well. But the performances of the girls are better as on today. It really excites me and I wish Emma and Anvita to raise it to higher level.

Unfortunately, the overall literacy in India still remains pretty low. Women’s literacy is around 60 per cent now. Over 200 million women still can’t read and write, the largest such number in any country in the world.

The traditional belief has changed. Women are joining workforce in every sector. Girl education even in rural India has improved. Enrolment in elementary education is almost equal for boys and girls, dropout rates are also nearly the same at primary stages, and the proportion of girls passing Class V is fractionally higher than that of boys. Girls match boys in academic performance, to the extent it can be measured by our examination system.

However, a recent NSSO survey found that by the time they are 19 years old, 41 per cent of girls drop out of school. This is apart from the 19 per cent who never attended school, compared to just 9 per cent of boys.

The primary reasons given by girls for leaving their studies are, essentially, that education is not considered necessary by elders in the family. Surprisingly, even many educated parents also are equally biased against the girl child.

My brothers-in-law are financially better off. One of them was with me in Hindustan Motors. Unfortunately, none in the family could do well in education. Perhaps they were content with whatever they were to get in inheritance. I helped one of the engineers of my village from one regional engineering college to get employment in Hindustan Motors. Unfortunately, he couldn’t encourage any of his many children to get properly educated. I feel so bad about it. The story convinces me that education or affluence of the parents don’t assure necessarily that their children will do well in education.

It is because all the programmes of adult education have miserably failed. If parents don’t appreciate the need of education, how can they encourage the girl child for higher education? So, even the girls in so called forward castes and community of the society don’t get the necessary support for education, particularly for higher education.

A lot of effort is on for education, but perhaps more massive campaign may be needed.

Can we hope that the women reservation bill will usher in a new era for the girl education too in the country? Will the elected members appreciate the need of good and universal education, particularly for girl child and work for it?

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Prospective Indian Car Manufacturers

Posted on March 4, 2010 by indra

India has just one passenger car manufacturer now with dying Hindustan Motors that manufactured Ambassadors for many decades and at one time monopolized Indian market and almost extinct Premier Automobiles that produced Padmini that were the only public taxis in Mumbai.

It is unfortunate that the third generation of the family owned Hindustan Motors that pioneered car manufacturing and helped building the infrastructure of auto components manufacturing messed it up. It still manufactures some Ambassadors in its parent plant near Kolkata. The management of Hindustan Motors never wanted its name associated with its manufacturing Mitsubishi cars at its Chennai plant. Hardly few in the country know that Mitsubishi Lancers are Hindustan Motors built cars. Many who were associated with the projects and the plants may feel bad about it but can hardly do anything. This is the way a family company runs and meets the end.

Tata Motors came from behind in car manufacturing but today it is at the third place behind Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai. It has a place of pride in the Indian manufacturing sector and is almost set to be a really global auto manufacturer with its range of products from Nano, Indica, Indigo and Sumo besides being the largest commercial vehicle manufacture of the country. Nano has all the potentials to be the world’s only ‘people car’ in real sense. Its forthcoming launches with higher end technologies, as well as the diesel and electric/hybrid version in the markets world over will be worth watching with increasing consciousness about the effect of passenger cars on climate.

In country as big as India, there would have been some more domestic players in car manufacturing, but somehow very few dare to enter this business because of its competition. India has few potential manufacturers who can enter the sector.

Mahindra is trying for many years to be a significant player. It started with Ford, and today manufactures just one model of Renault, Logan. It has all potential, but its intention to focus on car manufacturing is not very clear. It will have to decide about its collaborator and its own role in that collaboration.

Bajaj Auto has already gone ahead with its promised launch of an ultra low cost car that may compete with Tata’s Nano with some real differentiating technology. I don’t know if the Gen Next CEO will really get into it seriously and soon, though he still keeps a date in 2011. The project has the blessings of legendary Auto Czar Carlos Goshn who is very much sold about India’s superior frugal engineering.

But there are two more players whose names keep on coming for starting a project for car manufacturing: Hinduja’s Ashok Leyland and Munjal’s Hero Honda. Nissan recently showed interest in building its cars with Ashok Leyland. I don’t find the two players showing a real zeal to enter car manufacturing. But both have money power and potential to get into it, but as car manufacturing requires much more than money power, perhaps it is too early to make any guess.

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Innovating India: Hope in Air

Posted on March 3, 2010 by indra

Indians have started innovating. It’s not only Nano, the ultra cheap car; Ace, the mini-truck; or Swach, the cheapest water filter from Tatas. Indica is also not the same with which Tata Motors entered the car market years ago. One can see the innovation in the evolution of Tata’s Sumo over years. Mahindra’s Scorpio and then really smart and tough looking Xylo are visible Indian Innovations.

Go to nearby market and look at the consumer products in any shop, you can notice the exponentially increasing varieties, good enough to confuse the decision. India has joined the rat race of consumerism and innovators in all sectors are working hard.

I, for one, still will like to see India excelling in manufacturing. Some of the Ashoka Lemelson Fellows from India recently showcased their innovations that got good public attention.

1. Pradip Sharmah’s latest innovation about creating solar battery operated ricksaws. It got included even in Pranab babu’s union budget speech on February 26.

2. Dr Amitabha Sadangi, CEO of International Development Enterprises (India) or IDEI, has reached over 8.5 lakh marginal farmers with a low-cost manually operated pedal pump (costing around Rs 1,200-1,500) which allows farmers to manually pump out groundwater. ···About an hour’s pedaling on the pump is sufficient to take out water sufficient for the daily need of a one-acre vegetable farm. I wish it can get solar.

National Innovation Foundation (NIF) with Prof Anil Gupta as vice-chairman is going great job to scout for, document and sustain “grassroots green innovations”. One can see some media reports about its innovations from nook and corner of different states.

1. Chintakindi Mallesham from Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh has created a machine that has mechanized the most tedious part of Pochampally or ikkat weaving – the tying of threads and dyeing them in selected colours, a process called asu. Weavers can now produce three times the number of saris and better design and finish.

2. Mushtaq Ahmed Dar from Anantnag. Kashmir has devised a walnut-cracking machine that can process 80 kg of the hard nut in an hour with minimum damage to the kernel against 10 kg per hour possible if manually done. The machine is being refined with help from Kashmir University. Dar has also created a pole-climbing contraption that he hopes to sell to electricity boards around the country.

3. Dharambir in Yamunanagar district, Haryana made a low-cost processing machine-cum-extractor that can crush and extract juice or oil from herbs and fruits like amla and mango.

There are others innovating some pioneering products. Ramesh Sojitra, 44, has come up with a mapping software described as “revolutionary” by none other than former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman R. Madhavan Nair. The software is not only a big help to the Indian armed forces but is also making the task of governance, by mapping India, easier and cheaper.

Many MNCs’ India divisions are innovating new products that will go into global market. GE India is also one experimenting with ‘reverse innovation’. GM Technical Centre in India employs 700 people who working on various fronts including petrol and diesel engines, manual and automatic transmission, besides hybrid and electric cars.

The Durgapur-based Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI), a unit of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), has developed and is all set to test its ”Autonomous Underwater Vehicle-150” off the Chennai coast next month.

A team of scientists at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research in New Delhi has developed a technique to create transgenic tomatoes that do not become squishy even one and a half months after being plucked. As reported, researchers at IIT, Mumbai, have developed

a handy kit that uses a drop of blood to detect heart ailments and predict a possible attack. Called ”iSense”, it is an outcome of research in nanotechnology by Institutes Center for Excellence in Nano Electronics.

An IIT-Delhi incubated startup called EnNatura developed a printing ink which emits no volatile compounds and is washable. And the overall cost of their solution will be significantly less than all present compounds when produced at scale.

The stories of many innovations originating in India inspire others and are answers to the skeptics about the local talents. However, India can compete globally in manufactured products only with innovations with message reaching to all who matter.

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Budget 2010:Kautilya Remembered, But Not Kosi

Posted on March 2, 2010 by indra

Kautilya still remains favourite with the Finance ministers. Pranab also did that:

“Thus, a wise collector general shall conduct the work of revenue collection… In a manner that production and consumption should not be injuriously affected… Financial prosperity depends on public prosperity, abundance of harvest and prosperity of commerce, among other things.”

Unfortunate, none of the finance minister or for that matter the prime ministers have seriously thought about overcoming the misery of the people of Bihar.

Everyone in India has heard of Kosi causing devastation with its flood every year without any forewarning for centuries. The problem and its solutions were known in pre-independence era. It’s known even after independence. Very recently in a conclave of scientists, the former president again detailed it. However, the problem keeps on skipping the attention of the bureaucrats and administrators of the country. It can only be a shame as well as a conspiracy to keep the region in stark poverty and misery for perpetuity.

Pranab Babu remembered his home district and home district:

I am happy to inform the Honourable Members that schemes on bank protection works along river Bhagirathi and river Ganga-Padma in parts of Murshidabad and Nadia district of West Bengal have been included in the Centrally Sponsored Flood Management Programme. I also propose to provide budgetary support for drainage scheme of Kaliaghai-Kapaleswari Baghai basin in the district of Purba and Paschim Midnapore, and Master Plan of Kandi sub-division in Murshidabad, West Bengal.

However, Pranab again forgot the need to do something about Kosi menace. It’s unfortunate that Kosi problem is not getting consideration as a national challenge to the capability of engineering talent of the country.

It has been happening only because Bihar could not produce a political or a social leader tall enough to attract the attention of those who matter. Nitish also has failed like all others till date.

And unfortunately the people of Bihar are either too good or too ignorant that they don’t rise for a massive protest against the injustices done to them for decades, that shakes the country and those who have been responsible for its neglect.

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Union Budget 2010: Promises and Outcome<

Posted on February 28, 2010 by indra

Why should the government make promises, if it can’t keep?

As usual, in this budget speech too, the finance minister made some promises:

Government has targeted construction of national highways (NHs) at the pace of 20 km per day. I wish Pranab Mukharji would have given the number of working days that would have been used to calculate the total road length that the government will build in its tenure.

Interestingly, the government had earlier promised a slum free India in five years. However, the finance minister intelligently replaced years by a phrase ‘at the earliest’ while allocating fund for the purpose in the budget. No one can now pin down the government for failure. (The Government’s efforts in the implementation of RAY would be to encourage the States to create a slum free India at the earliest.

Further, along with the RBI, the finance minister promised and pronounced the government’s decision to provide appropriate banking facilities to habitations having population in excess of 2000 by March, 2012. If it happens that will be a great achievement. It sounds like the targets of Bharat Nirmaan that had a time frame for each of the infrastructure given by the prime minister himself. Where is the commitment to meet the promises?

And now let us note the biggest of the promises. “To provide timely delivery of justice to all, the Government has approved the setting up of the National Mission for Delivery of Justice and Legal Reforms. The objective of the mission is to help reduce legal backlog in courts from an average of 15 years at present to 3 years by 2012.” I wish the Missions, Councils, and Taskforces start performing.

Normally, the government never provides the outcome in the budget, it allocates the money for all project. For example, it never says so many kilometers of roads will be built in a particular period. Perhaps, it is intentional to avoid accountability for outcome.

Why has the government not given a target date of the completion of the dedicated freight corridor, the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor project that has been taken up for integrated regional development?

Many a times, all these exercises including budget preparation and presentation appear to be getting carried out mechanically with no accountability factors built in them.

I don’t understand why a time frame has been given for the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission where an ambitious target of 20,000 MW of solar power by the year 2022 has been set under the mission. Is it because of the global pressure coming from Copenhagen Summit?

Will the government start acting on implementation now?

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Union Budget 2010: Inclusion of An Unique Innovation

Posted on February 27, 2010 by indra

With in-between power outages, I kept on watching Pranab making his budget speech. I am doing this for many years. Perhaps it started in 90s when I was working for the corporate project planning in Hindustan Motors, as I was expected to know the budget’s impact on the project costs.

Pranab Mukherji impressed me with his reference to an innovation and his support of that:

The humble cycle rickshaw is now being acclaimed as an environment-friendly means of transport. CSIR has developed an innovative product called ‘soleckshaw‘ to replace manually-operated rickshaws. It runs on batteries which are charged by solar power. I propose to provide a concessional excise duty of 4 per cent to this product. Its key parts and components are also being exempted from customs duty.


I wish he would have named the hero, behind the innovation, Dr Pradip Kumar Sarmah from Guwahati, the real brain behind this project. I don’t know how and why Mr. Mukherji selected to refer to this sole innovation. Was he impressed by the innovation or CSIR approached him for excise relief?

I came to know about Dr. Sarmah’s innovative ventures recently through media.

Ashoka Lemelson Fellows from India along with over 100 entrepreneurs from across the globe, converged at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, recently to showcase their innovations that affected social change under the aegis of Tech4Society.
One of the innovations was that by 47-year-old veterinarian, Pradip Kumar Sarmah of the NOIDA-based Centre for Rural Development, who has innovated Deep Bahan – a lightweight cycle rickshaw priced at around Rs 10,500.

Pradip Sharmah collaborated with IIT Guwahati to design this rickshaw called Deep Bahan. Sarmah’s rickshaw is 20 per cent lighter than the traditional 100 kg one, but sturdier. The same Sharmah is currently collaborating with Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute in Durgapur, to create solar battery operated rickshaws.

But more unique is the business model of Mr. Sharmah. The rickshaw comes gift-wrapped with a loan from Sarmah’s Rickshaw Bank as well as vehicle insurance, licences and uniforms and even Hawaii chappals for the pullers. The ‘pullers’ become the owners of his vehicle in just 18 months at a nominal repayment of Rs 25 per day. As claimed, the owners earn up to Rs 500 per day, after paying the daily loan installment. Deep Bhahan has improved the lot of nearly 5,500 rickshaw pullers in 12 cities including Guwahati, Varanasi, Allahabad and Lucknow.

Interestingly, as reported, the IIT Guwahati-designed and CSIR-supported Deep Bahan is now all set for a world class makeover, with a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) design team working on it to make it even stronger, lighter and more user-friendly.
It is the same Sarmah who is carrying out a pilot project on solar battery-operated rickshaws branded as Soleckshaws. Nine such rickshaws already ply in Delhi’s bustling Chandni Chowk and get their charge from solar panels installed atop the Delhi Metro railway station. If they run successfully over a period of time, more Soleckshaws will hit the road.

This social entrepreneur’s voice has finally reached the government.

Pranab Mukharji has tried to further encourage R&D across all sectors of the economy. He has proposed to enhance the weighted deduction on (1) expenditure incurred on in-house R&D from 150 per cent to 200 per cent; and on (2) payments made to National Laboratories, research associations, colleges, universities and other institutions, for scientific research from 125 per cent to 175 per cent.

Currently, any payment made to an approved scientific research association is eligible for weighted deduction. The income of the approved scientific research association is exempt from tax. Pranab Mukherji has expanded the scope of the benefits. The ‘payments made to the approved associations engaged in research in social sciences or statistical research would be allowed a weighted deduction of 125 per cent. The income of such approved research associations shall be exempt from tax.’

Will the provisions motivate Indian companies to invest significantly more in R&D in the India’s ‘Decade of Innovation’?

I don’t know if it’s mandatory to report on the R&D work in the annual balance sheet of the company. I wish it is made. However, the companies do get the tax benefits. Unfortunately, the private sectors except for some have hardly focused and contributed on R&D and product development as much as it is desired by the competition because of globalization encompassing all the sectors.

Will the government report the impact and outcome of the incentive and provisions of the budget to the companies, institutions, and associations for accelerating R&D?

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The Economic Survey 2010 Reveals Good, Bad, and Ugly

Posted on February 26, 2010 by indra

Good

The Economic Survey 2009-10 sees India growing the fastest by 2013-14, provided it is able to overcome infrastructure and bureaucratic constraints. http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/india-to-grow-fastest-at-85-in-2013-14/386904/ Will those running the government overcome ‘if’?

India would bounce back to a high nine per cent growth in 2011-12.

Gold Reserve: The nation that pledged its bullion two decades ago to pay for imports, in 2009-10 became the world’s 10th largest gold-holding country. The government’s purchase of 200 tonnes of gold from the International Monetary Fund took its total reserves to 557.7 tonnes. Some claim that the gold purchase provided a healing touch to the nation’s pride. If the survey could provide the data on the total gold in the country, the world would have known that India is the richest country in the world.

Education: Around 96% children in the age group of 6-14 are now enrolled in schools. A total of 10.11 lakh teachers were appointed under SSA and another 21.79 lakh were provided in-service training. Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) now aims at the objective of achieving 75% enrolment for classes IX-X. The ultimate aim of RMSA is to achieve universalisation of secondary education by 2017.

Saving and investment: The 32.5% savings and 34.9% investment (of GDP in 2008-09) put India in league of world’s fastest growing nations.
Gas output is up 52.8 per cent to 50.2 billion cubic meters with RIL starting production.

Telecom: India is the world’s 2nd largest wireless network with 525.1 million mobile users. Virtually every second Indian has access to phone

Good or Bad

Farming: According to government estimates, small and marginal farmers, which owns less than five hectares of land each, are about 80 per cent of the about 60 crore farming population in the country. The MSP of paddy (rice) has been increased to Rs 1,000 a quintal (including Rs 50 bonus) for 2009-10 from Rs 560 a quintal in 2004-05. Similarly, there has been about 72 per cent hike in wheat MSP in last five years and currently stands at Rs 1,100 a quintal. However, India’s yield is poor. The farmers are getting disenchanted to carry on with the profession. Can further fragmentation of land be stopped?

Exports in April-December 2009 are down by 20.3 per cent, and imports are down by 23.6 per cent.

Doing Business in India: India ranks 133rd in the world as against Singapore that ranks 1st, Malaysia 23rd, and China 89th. It takes1,420 days in India to enforce a contract as against 150 days for the same in Singapore, 300 days in the US and 406 days in China. Even for closing a business, the time taken is nine months in Singapore, 18 months in the US, 20 months in China and seven years in India.

Projects Overruns: The percentage of projects with time overruns goes from 60.7% in power and petroleum sector, 95% in shipping and ports and 98% in railways, to a well-rounded 100% in health and family welfare. http://content.magicbricks.com/construction-project-delays-keep-adding-to-costs

Undrawn Sanctioned loan: India’s undrawn external loan from multilateral agencies for many of the infrastructure and other projects amounted to Rs 95,487 crore till March 2009.

Ugly

Inflation: Retail prices are rising at a rate 10 times faster than that for wholesale prices. Food inflation has refused to climb down from levels in excess of 17% for over a month now after testing almost 18% in the week ended January 30, the highest in 11 years.

Human Development Indexes: Life expectancy at birth in India was 63.4 years in 2007 against 80.5 years in Norway, 81.4 years in Australia, 74 years in Sri Lanka and 72.9 years in China. On literacy rates, too, China and Indonesia fare much better. The adult literacy rate in 1999-2007 was 66 per cent in India against near-100 per cent in most developed nations, 93.3 per cent in China and 92 per cent in Indonesia.

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