- Jay Maharjan

‘Industrial Discipline’ was a remarkable initiative undertaken in the West in the mid fiftees – to get new workforce ready for the industrial revolution. We are seeing a new wave of industrial discipline currently taking place in India and China. Though China is moving at a much faster pace when it comes to infrastructure development, I believe India is slowly paving the path for sustainable industrial discipline. India, being the world’s largest democracy has tremendous potential when it comes to utilizing knowledge workers. With a strong foundation to build on in education system left by British occupation and with 100% literacy rate in most of southern India, the country is ready and enthusiastically grooming the new workforce to take on new challenges in the 21st century.

This October when I attended a global health conference (attended by delegates from 60 countries) in Mumbai, I didn’t expect the Indian economy to be growing that rapidly. Not only that the economy is booming, but the sudden interest among entrepreneurs and industrialists to grow structurally – and create an intellectual infrastructure compared to the early growth of the knowledge economy -  has been quite noteworthy and commendable. With over billion in population – if done right, the structural and scalable knowledge foundation and the successful push for new industrial discipline can do wonders for this part of the world. On top of being this geographic region as an innovation hub, it is also becoming the mecca of consumers for conglomerates from around the world.

What India needs to do now?

Though India is the largest democracy in the world, political bottlenecks have been a major hindrance for an exponential economic growth. Now that the country has a renowned economist and the former Finance minister Singh as the top leader, India has seen notable changes in the economic policy – that is attracting foreign investors, corporations in droves. But it is not enough. As one of my ventures is looking to expand in India, it is not easy for an American Corporation to start partnership in India. With growing demand. India must ease policies regarding service industry collaboration. While India has a strong technical know-how to operate and process inner workings of Multi-national service industries, there is an abundance of service industry opportunities within Indian consumer base that economic policies should reflect genuine free market competitive environment for domestic and International companies alike. When momentum is as strong as it is now, this is not the time to hold back – as I was emphasizing on the need for Western management consultants in masses to help medium size Indian companies in my previous piece – it should be a no brainer to bolster free economy to provide incentives for partnerships, collaborations in order to attract high caliber Western talent pool.

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