Kapil Sibal could harvest the demographic dividend

Twenty years back when we left India, Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi used to consider India’s exploding population as a major national liability. Their successors, P V Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Dr Manmohan Singh converted this liability into a global human capital. How could this happen and that too virtually overnight? The reason was simple, the Gandhi’s were modestly educated, unlike the three scholars who followed them as Prime Ministers of India. Gandhi’s of India, excluding Mahatma Gandhi, were political animals with a short-sighted vision of India. It was Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao who completely changed the destiny of India. Even today the sycophants of Nehru-Gandhi cabal would hate to admit the fact, but then who cares? The fact of the matter is that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi got a unique mandate in 1985 but squandered it on petty politics. India is lucky to have a window of relief from this political dynasty and grow to its full God given potential.

Kapil Sibal, a Master’s of Law from Harvard Law School, has been appointed the Minister for Human Resource Development by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, replacing a dogmatic and infirmed, Arjun Singh. Sibal has already indicated his willingness to open India’s educational sector to foreign universities and thereby provide vastly expanded higher-education opportunities to millions of Indians. This has the potential to further enhance India’s growing human capital. India is on its way to become the world’s largest English-speaking liberal democracy. Currently, 30 million Indians are fluent in English language and 60 million more are somewhat functional in an English speaking environment. There seems to be a unanimous opinion around the world that India would have 300 million English-proficient workers by 2020. Besides being fluent in English, these Indian workers are likely to be better educated and trained compared to their Western counterparts and would cost only half to one third of their competition. Just THINK about its global impact!

The best part of India’s story is its demographics. India has the youngest population in the world, unlike China or the ‘Western World’. According to Vijay Srinivasan, “Nearly 31% of the Indian population is less than 14 years old, and approximately 58% of the population is less than 25 year old, which translates to over 600 Million young people. As the Western nations age and even China ageing fast due to its “one-child policy”, the future workers of the world would be coming from India, it seems. The GDP growth of India itself would absorb most of these young workers, if only India manages between 8 and 10% growth annually for the next 25 years. This is entirely possible, and India could well become the only country in the next few years to reach a double-digit economic growth rate. China would experience an inevitable slow down, possibly dropping down to no more than 5 to 6% growth rate.” India is likely to provide low-cost legal and health-care services to the world for decades to come. Indian design and culture has the depth and breadth to fire the imagination of the world. Young people around the world are likely to follow India in this century!

Can you imagine an India of 1850?

Just THINK about it! There were no aeroplanes in 1850. The automobile was not yet invented and therefore there were no buses at that time. There were no railways in India in 1850. The only mode of transport was a horse and a bullock cart for short distances. Electricity was not yet invented and India did not have the telephone or a telegraph in 1850. There were no paved roads at that time and worst of all there was no national language for common people to communicate with each other across different regions of the Indian subcontinent. Indians were strangers to each other!

The only form of communication on the Indian subcontinent before 1850 was the word of mouth or the Indian Postal Service. The British East India Company established some form of postal service in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras in 1764. The service was confined to the internal activities of the East India Company. Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India, made the postal service available to the general public during his 10 year tenure from 1773-1785. Today, Indian Postal Service is the largest postal system in the world with 155,333 post offices around the country.

It was not until 1851 that the then Governor-General of India, Lord Hardinge, initiated the railway system in India that transformed the whole subcontinent and its history. The first freight train was introduced in Roorkee (now in Uttar Pradesh) on December 22, 1851. This was followed by the first passenger train service between Bori Bunder (now in downtown Bombay) and Thana (now Maharashtra) on April 16, 1853. The total length of this track was 21 miles. By 1880, the total rail network in India covered 9,000 miles, mainly connecting the three British Presidencies of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, all major port cities. Indian Railways cover 40,000 miles of tract today.

If only I had a $1 billion of my own…

My vision for India might go unfulfilled because I am never going to have $1 billion of my own! This does not stop me from outlining my hopes and aspirations for India. If I had a billion dollars, I would have taken out $610 million out of that and created one million dollar corpus fund in each district of India. This $1 million corpus fund would have been invested in the local economy of each district and could have earned a very substantial income every year. From the income, I would have bought enough land to build a large warehouse to protect the crops of that district, provided transport to the growers and in time, provided processing facilities for the local horticulture. Does it sound far-fetched? Not to me! My grandfather, Lala Jaswantrai Churamani, did something similar in 1943. He owned Jaswant Sugar Mills and a paper-straw board mill in Meerut District. One fine day in 1943, he sold-off everything and formed a charitable trust and created two million rupees corpus funds, one in Meerut district, Uttar Pradesh and the other in Hissar, Haryana District. He had five sons, all are dead now but the corpus fund survived. These funds built two charitable maternity hospitals, one in each district. These ‘Maternity Hospitals’ served the poor women of those two districts very well for at least 50 years or more.

What I am tying to say is that there is no private sector connection between the 610 districts of India. The only connection is a central bureaucracy that pretends to unify the Union of India in some form of a democratic nation. People of North India have no clue about their fellow citizens of South India and vice versa! Similarly, how many Indians from Eastern parts have visited the environs of Western India? This is a dangerous situation for a liberal democracy like India. I would like to see a ‘Reliance Petrol Station’ and a ‘Reliance Fresh’ grocery store in every single district of India. My dream is to see an NDTV bureau or an ‘Apollo Hospital’ in all 610 districts of India. If only we could have a Barista Coffee Shop or some ‘Indian Drugstore’ in every state and every district, India would be a different place and a secured democracy. Coming back to my very own billion dollar empire, I would appoint a part-time blogger with a reliable ‘Mobile Phone’ in all 610 districts. There job would be to take pictures every single day and upload them a couple of times a day with a report of things happening in their district. We must know what is happening any where and everywhere in India in real-time so that our national enemies are scared of being detected and brought to books at the drop of a hat. Just THINK about my vision!

India is a land of the Baniyas!

Everything in India is measured with money, how much do you earn, how much do you save etc. etc. It is the Baniya mentality that has kept the rate of savings so high in India. But then it is also the Baniya attitude that has left our infrastructure starved of investment. This ‘Baniyagiri’ could one day jeopardize our national security! Baniyas are basically traders, they buy cheap and they sell at a margin. Profit is all that they understand. National security is not the business of profit and loss; it is a matter of our survival. Six weeks have passed since the seize on Bombay ended on November 28, 2008, no investment has been made in any equipment or the infrastructure. Bombay is as vulnerable as it was before 26/11. Just THINK about it!

Mahatma Gandhi was not only a pacifist, he was also a Baniya. He often appalled the other leadership in India with his compromising statements. Do you THINK we have changed since? We talk and talk and talk till we drive the whole population crazy, but we do not act! Pakistan understands that and for that reason Pervez Musharraf (the rat) came out of his hole and scolded India. We should have the capacity to pick him up from his hide-out, bring him to India and lock him up in the bathroom till he promises to behave himself! My brother did that to me as a kid and see how I turned out? Seriously, we need to grow up and conduct our foreign policy such  that the world would believe us. The current gang of four does not inspire much confidence!

Baniyas also claim that they were the ones who taught the Jews how to do business, it is time we learn something else from the Jews of Jerusalem. The Jews in Israel have been pounded with bombs and bombers for the past 60 plus years, but they have learnt how to deal with unreasonable neighbors. India has a lot to learn from Israel and the Jews. We should stop being coy about our affinity with Israel and seek their expertise in dealing with our hostile neighborhood. Palaniappan Chidambaram, the current Union Minister of Home Affairs, could have allocated $1 billion towards the purchase of one million AK-47s and the state of the art bullet-proof jackets for our police force all over India within 7 days of taking over. Instead, he talked to Shekhar Gupta (Noted journalist and Indian Express Editor-in-Chief) about intelligence, coordination and management. Substance or lot more of Baniya talk?

Walk The Talk: P Chidambaram with Shekhar Gupta

Palaniappan Chidambaram new Home Minister admits security lapses

500 new airports in India?

Earlier this year, The Economic Times reported that the Civil Aviation Ministry in India has issued a document called ‘The Vision 2020’. This report has set a target of developing 500 operational airports in the next 12 years. India currently has 448 airports, but only 80 out of these are fully functional. These 80 airports are equipped to handle scheduled commercial, charter and defence services.

What happened to the remaining 368 airports? According to Kapil Kaul, Chief Executive Officer (India & Middle East), Centre For Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA), these 368 airports are just landing strips. Out of these, 156 belong to the defence or semi-defence sectors. 63 airstrips are owned by the private sector.

The Civil Aviation Minister of India, Praful Patel has asserted that in the foreseeable future, all 604 districts of India will be connected to an airport. The airport infrastructure is taking off in the hinterlands. 200 small airports are expected to mushroom over the next ten years. The Airports Authority of India (AAI), which owns and manages 127 of the 448 airports is planning to give several functional airports a makeover. The Airports Authority of India was created on April 1, 1995 by combining the International Airports Authority of India and the National Airports Authority.

India Abroad, June 20, 2008 has published an interesting article, ‘Small airports set to dot India’ by Sudipto Dey and Kunal N Talgeri, on India’s coming aviation boom. The authors state “Modernisation is not the big story in small airports. Building airports from scratch is. For the first time since Independence, greenfield airport projects are set to bloom. At last count, 59 new airports across 17 states are at some stage of proposal or execution. For many of these mofussil towns, an airport will be their passport for national identity.”

Dey and Talgeri further explain, “Non-metro airports will cost about Rs 250-450 crore ($59-106 million). Their business models will be different from that of the metro airports, which generate a critical mass of passenger traffic. Experts say airport operations in most non-metros will be viable only at eight to ten flights a day. Most small airports will start with one or two flights a day, and reach four flights a day in three to four years. So, the project viability will hinge on city-side revenues. Revenues from tourism, industry, commercial development of real estate, and aviation-related services like training, repair and maintenance will have to cross-subsidise the airport’s operations.” This aviation-infrastructure would develop India.