This oped piece in NYT claims that the “new” India is a myth created by the western press and the NRI population.
No labor-intensive manufacturing boom of the kind that powered the economic growth of almost every developed and developing country in the world has yet occurred in India. Unlike China, India still imports more than it exports. This means that as 70 million more people enter the work force in the next five years, most of them without the skills required for the new economy, unemployment and inequality could provoke even more social instability than they have already.
I disagree. India has missed the industrial revolution and the benifits from it. I dont think their is any point in competing with the likes of China in manufacturing. This in my opinion is competing to the bottom. Instead we should play to our strengths. I see the arugment often made that only a manufacturing based economy can provide employment to a large portion of the population. I dont think that is true anymore. India can employ a large portion of our people in the IT industry. The article quotes how IT employs only 1.4 million people out of the 400 million work force and hence is not benifitting many people. But its also growing every year at an exponetial rate.
The IT industry claims that their is a shortage of skilled IT works. So I dont think the problem is that IT industry cannot produce enough jobs. I think the real problem is literacy and lack of access to good education to a large section of population. We can invest in that instead of investing in manufacturing. I am sure if you ask any poor, uneducated Indian today, he/she would rather be an IT worker then work in a plant making furniture or toys. IT jobs in general pay much better then manufacturing jobs. So instead of teaching them how to make tables, we should teach them how to use a computer.
