Sunday, October 09, 2005

Are we missing out somewhere??

As I said before - Stock Market is one thing which I have started following quite closely off late. And beleive me the Indian Stock market is at its best now....all the indices scaling new peaks almost daily. No, I am not exaggerating at all.....the back-bone of this is ofcourse the GREAT INDIAN STORY. All the foreigners out there (from US, UK, Japan, Korea to now even Australia) beleive India to be the best place to put their money into and thus FII's (Foreign Institutional Investors) keep pouring their money into Indian companies. Why won't they?? When a country can show more than 7% GDP growth (which is Great) and the finance ministry is confident of continuing this for a longer term.....and companies in all the sectors are showing tremendous growth...why wont they pump in their money here - afterall they are going to get great returns from this!

First the Software Industry then the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) and now...the next industry in the pipeline to take off is the KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing). KPO is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 46% from $1.2 billion in 2003 to $17 billion in 2010. India is going to play a very important role in the development of the KPO. Ofcourse good news for us ...India is marching forward. (I dont want to fill in this column with statistics - may b I'll provide the links for all the data used here sometime soon).

And also the general lifestyle of the public has become great in the past few years. With the software companies coming in....all the restaurants and the pubs in the city are almost always HOUSE FULL! We have seen two revolutions silently happening - First the computers and now the mobile phones. Computer which was very rare just a few years back has become more a basic requirement these days...and to add to that lap tops are also catching up, in less than a year sale of lap tops would grow at a very high pace....say reports. Mobile Phones -- well I know there is no need for me to talk about that...we all know it...

Automobile Industry is doing great. Every foreign auto major wants to tap the market here - Ford, Hyundai, VW (I am not going to go into the VW problem - lets talk of it later), Chevrolet, Skoda.....and the list is endless and ofcourse many of you would be knowing the Rolls Royce' model Phantom's launch in July this year in India, 6 cars were booked on the very first day of launch and the cost of the car is around 3 Crores each!! Also the Indian auto companies are showing great sales numbers - yes India is a growing market for almost all commodities from Cars to Bikes to what not!

So are things finally getting good for India....when I read all the above reports I very much thought so! I was infact very much excited.....but not anymore.

But why not - you may ask. When we are boasting of all the above developments there is another section of people in our own country who have absolutely no connection with any of these developments!! Absolutely left out!!

It all started when I read an article in the Hindu - The Sensex, Sania and the Starvation. The article clearly underlines the inequality that is very clearly getting bigger and bigger. It just reminds me of the good old theory - The rich getting richer and richer and the poor getting poorer and poorer. Will you beleive 2,675 childern died of malnutrition in Maharashtra from April to July this year!! I don't want to go into the statistics - I prefer u reading from the article - http://www.hindu.com/mag/2005/09/18/stories/2005091800080300.htm.

And after I read this article I tried to look in to the real situation around me - just to confirm to myself that I was not getting biased reading the article, but I was shocked - I should say!! The number of homeless people.......no proper food...no proper clothing...and a set of people who have nothing else other than the above two. No I am trying to be cynical at all - just wanted to get a few things cleared for myself........ maybe once you try to go round the city during late hours...and you'll see a lot of families sleeping in the platforms - with absolutely no shelter......and time and again we do hear news of lorry killing people who were sleeping the platforms!! The case in the rural side is actually the one to watch....let me not go into that for now....

Has such a rapid development catered just a small portion of the people......I don't know, frankly - trying to find out the answer! Actually I am not trying to blame anyone........but just am not able to digest the In-equality which is very clearly visible!! I am sure people responsible would we watching these closely and hopefully working on these issues.....and now we remember those beggers who bug us time and again - don't we - oh yes - do they come under this category?? But anyway I have never supported and will never support those people who can work but just opt for begging!!

Just wanted to get a clear picture which is simple so that even people like us can understand the actual situation. So wanted to remove the jargon and present it in simple language......

* The United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index (HDI) is an Indicator in terms of Human Life expectancy, Income generation and literacy and is provided for countries across the world.
* For the year 2005, India has retained it's position at 127 out of 177 countries. (Srilanka being the only country in south asia ranked below 100)
* IMR and MMR are sensitive measures to determine a nation's health. (IMR being Infant Mortality Rate - Annual number of deaths of children under age 1 per 1000 live births and MMR being Maternal Mortality Death - Annual number of Maternal Deaths per 1000 live births)
* India's IMR is 63 per thousand live births. IMR's of countries like Srilanka(13 per thousand), China(30 per thousand), Nepal(61 per thousand) and Bangaladesh(46 per thousand) better than India
* India's MMR is 5.4 per thousand births. Countries like Srilanka (0.92 per thousand), Pakistan (5.0 per thousand) and Bangladesh(3.8 per thousand) have done well when compared to India.

Maybe you can get more details from the following link - http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/
I think this is just enough to get an outline of things.....I happened to read the reports of both sides....so just thought I would put them on here and leave you to think for yourself.....will write more on this later.....

so....would you mind going through the first few paragraphs again....and now the title - Are we missing something somewhere??

1 comment:

Nitin Goyal said...

Nitin's Blog: The future of Indian BPO contains a different viewpoint on the growth prospects of BPO in India.