The mirage of Atmanirbhar bharat
India's dilemma of modernity and indigenization: a mirage of atmanirbhar bharat.
Recent 'atmanirbhara bharat' announcement by prime minister of India has set goals to make India self reliant and strategically autonomous.
Discussions around these topic end up with complaints of india being not good at manufacturing further blaming china.
Let's document reality of gap between India’s economic profile and state of
affairs first.
Before that we need to first understand basics:
Stages of human evolution
Stone age : illiteracy, societal violence, cannibalism.
Bronze age: illiteracy, centralisation, reduced violence, human sacrifice
Iron age : literacy, centralisation, reduced violence, end of human sacrifice, mob violence
Industrial age: high literacy, heavy centralisation, heavy social upheaval , state monopoly on violence
Information age: universal literacy, post religious, different form of mob violence.
*There are more specifications and nuances in the above categories, also they are not applicable across all societies but our focus is on industrial age which can be understood with this prerequisite.
Policy makers views
To get this best mover advantage and disrupt all existing equations first thing that needs to be done is to enter
information age. Looking at the parameters given above india is yet to industralise and identifies itself as krishi pradhan desh whereas policy makers think they can jump directly to information age.
India's economic profile
India's economic profile when compared to Germany looks like that of a devloped nation, so where exactly are we missing?
Look at the number of people involved in agriculture in both the countries and per capita income of farmers. It indicates productivity of German farmers and industrial sophistication involved in farming, whereas in india nearly half of the country is doing farming and that too very insufficient.
This clearly shows failure of india to industralise and modernise in 7 decades. India is a agrarian country and
majority of its population is yet to enter industrial age.
This also explains why china is buying raw materials from india doing value addition and selling them back at high prices.
This is colonial trade simplified.
Market size of india
Many including government institutions claim india is a big market and world is looking towards it. Let's check how big is it?
India aims to exert same kind influence as that of China and OECD devloped countries with market size of much smaller value whereas population of all three units are approximately equal.
From above comparisons we conclude that india lacks behind in manufacturing sector. Successive governments have also claimed to make India a manufacturing hub.
Let's check why they fail and what breeds industrialization.
Education
India currently has a very bad education infrastructure primarily because indian governments after independence invested more in quality of premium institutions rather than sufficient primary schools in proportion to population.
Quality institutions later were flooded by masses which reduced them to launching pad for greener pastures outside.
People joining workforce
4.5 million
Total youth to be educated
195 million
Primary education at 1000$
156 billion
Secondary education at 10,000$
390 billion
Total education expenditure required
546 billion
Public education expenditure
8 billion
Private education expenditure
8 billion
Per capita education expenditure
82$
(Approximate data)
Amount of money that needs to be invested into education to produce atleast factory floor workers is 546 billion $, which is more than budget of this country.
Even if you want to industralise only on basis of education you have to select a few and invest heavily but it is not possible in a democracy.
(Sometimes known as too much democracy)
With government of India investing 82$ in per capita income you can’t have scientific ,technical and policy expertise similar to that of countries with nearly thousand times more human capital investment.
Remember that thirld world countries are not just about bad infrastructure but also bad human infrastructure.
Malnutrition
21% (urban: 20%, rural: 22%) are wasted (low weight for height). 36% (urban: 29%, rural: 38%) are underweight (low weight for age). More importantly, 7.5% of children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition . An estimated 23.6% of the population of India live below a purchasing power of $1.25 a day. This poverty does not directly lead to malnutrition but it leaves a large chunk of the population without adequate amounts of food.
This makes a lack of access to food since people are too poor to go out and purchase it.
*Food and knowledge can’t be seen in isolation while nearly 42% of india is suffering from malnutrition leading to
cognitive disabilities which needs special care further increasing the cost of education.
Food
40% of all the food produced in india is wasted. Remember, 44% of indians are malnourished and while government spending most of its budget in subsidising farm produce and return is extremely low.
compounded with criminal wastage of food which can feed almost all of india.
Also, there is no relation between demand and supply, where nutrition is required carbohydrates are supplied.
Water
More than 44 per cent of India's areas were under various degrees of drought conditions
(abnormally dry to exceptionally dry) as of June 10, 2019
Energy
Even as India hardly produces enough energy to fulfil its domestic and industrial demands, a major portion of
the electricity produced is being wasted. Nearly 20 per cent of the electricity is lost due to technical and
commercial reasons (AT&C Losses).
English disadvantage
Why doesn't India figure in the top nations for programming and Ai.
programming taught via English is freezing out 90-95% of the population.
+ focus on services (where you work for someone else) rather than on products (where you work for yourself).
Government institutions in india use only english as their language which is not known by 95% of indians and all the premium education institutions of government function in English medium which makes it impossible
for someone to study in india without knowing english. This is unwanted burden we are carrying on ourselves.
India doesn’t come even in top 5 when it comes to patents in it sector which is directly proportional to development in that sector but our ' english advantage ' is just about producing corporate coolies which can’t disrupt all existing equations as suggested by our honourable prime minister.
Is English international language?
Even if it is why are we teaching students in any other language rather than
their mother tongue.
“Learn English, but don’t learn in English''
Above data shows all devloped countries communicate, learn and promote
their languages whereas developing countries use languages of their former
colonial masters.
"Language is like a sense; and the psychological damage caused by the continued official use of English, which
can never be more than a second language, is immense. It makes for inefficiency; It separates the administrator from the villager.”
~ Naipaul, An Area of Darkness
Government institutions
Industrialisation is not about setting up random factories but a complete societal upheaval and a very disruptive process which requires heavy centralisation and law enforcement.
Is indian state capable of that?
Police and security
Societal crime is extremely high in India.
*Crime rate – definition of crime changes with countries and crime reportage in devloped countries is better
than underdeveloped countries which highly influence the data and should be noted.
Monopoly on violence is basis of industrial society and India’s bad law enforcement shows clearly that state can’t police everybody and criminal investigation is not consistent.
NGO activities and associations of police who take foreign funding directly or indirectly should not be allowed.
Judicial capriciousness
Pendency number of cases pending in courts is equal to 35 million.
Judges per capita.
Policy recommendations and deductions
Representation
At the time of independence urbanization was 10% but now it is nearly half. India's majority of population resides in urban settings but parliament seats are defined still on 1947 data which gives so much power to rural India and villages drive policy making in india. Until equal representation to all is guaranteed and urban rural redesignation is done and new aspirational urban youth emerges in india we will be caught into trap of
cold electoral politics like freebies.
the current deindustrial state of India (along with the de-urbanized population) is a direct policy outcome of the British Raj. India was deurbanised to suit colonial exploitation.
It is a statistical sleight of hand that the majority of towns and inhabited areas in India are called 'villages'.
This also enables corruption, black money, unregulated real estate and construction.
+ native language education is necessary for industrialisation.
Detailed explanation of The myth of ruler india
Statistical collation problem
Policy in india has no relation with reality on ground, mostly data is not available and when available it is very less to address concerns of population as large and diverse like that of india. We will never get macro picture right until we have data and facts on table.
"Feelings and votebank determine india's policy not data which is non-existent"
Indian foreign policy=failure compensation
When basis of our economic policy is wrong and you ignore reality and fundamental principles your industrial
policy is going to be wrong and manufacturing sector will be neglected and when you misread your economic
policy your foreign and defence policy. Lack of policy expertise compounded with little amount invested in
ground research and intelligence institutionalises mediocrity.
Social decentralisation
Government regulations on msme’s of india is leading to dying manufacturing sector in india. When information age sets in global supply chain diversifies and innovation shifts from large industry to msme’s and they are also responsible for major employment.
Problem of islanding
When you have very less money to invest in population then you do islanding and start a new sector in your
economy by investing in selected few like white population in South Africa where it complete resource capture
and China where east belt devloped first then gradual expansion, but it can’t be done in a democracy like
india.
We gave fundamental rights before making institutions.
References:
• Centre for civil society, regulatory barriers on micro, smalland medium enterprises
• MSMED Act, 2006: http://www.msmeodisha.gov.in/PDF/MSMED_Act.pdf
• IITKGP, samvad, Abhijit Iyer mitra, https://youtu.be/outMIhNxFSA
• Annual average unemployment figures for Germany 2004-2020,
https://www.statista.com/statistics/226994/annual-average-unemployment-figures-for-
germany/,statista
• UDAY website, money control,
https://www.moneycontrol.com/india/newsarticle/news_print.php?autono=12061241&sr_no=0&clas
sic=true
• Sankrant sanu, http://sankrant.org/2011/03/the-english-class-system-2/
• UN india, https://in.one.un.org/reducing-food-waste-vital-indias-food-security/
• World bank, Groningen growth and development center, https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-
of-employment-in-agriculture-industry-and-services?time=earliest..latest&country=~IND
• Eurostate, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php?title=Agricultural_census_in_Germany&oldid=379544
• World bank ,
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS?end=1976&locations=IN&start=1976&view=bar
• OECD statistics, https://stats.oecd.org/
• Samrat Sharma, https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/why-are-there-so-many-power-cuts-in-
india-large-amount-of-electricity-produced-is-simply-wasted/1882746/
• Human development report, 2019, india in pixels
• Drought early warning system, india.
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