RURAL INDIA LOOKS BEYOND GREEN PASTURES

Rural India, home to about two-thirds of the country’s 114.5 crore population. India’s rural economy is largely agrarian is a notion of the past. India is witnessing a dramatic fall in the share of agriculture in rural GDP against the value of goods and services produced in rural areas.
The contribution of Agriculture and allied activities is decreasing since the year 1950 – 51. Agriculture contributes to around 19% to the total GDP of India. The contribution of the agriculture to the rural gdp of India is following a similar trend. According to an analysis done for ET by Rajesh Shukla, senior fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), the combined share of industry and services in rural GDP has risen to 58.4% in the current fiscal from 48.6% in 1999-2000 on the back of strong growth in these sectors in the past five years while the share of agriculture slipped to 41.6%. The contribution of industry, the most robust of all rural sectors, to the rural economy is 30.2% in the current fiscal year while services account for 28.2%. According to the CSO’s Economic Census 2005, about a fifth of the non-farm rural workforce is employed in agricultural establishments while four-fifths worked in non-agricultural establishments. This is the result of large public and private investments in the rural sectors over the last decade. The public sector has invested heavily in infrastructure of rural area. While it has led to the overall development in sectors like power, irrigation, roads and transport; employment generation can be considered as the by-product of such heavy investments.
Following is the list of recent schemes and initiatives by the government in rural sector :
The Bharat Nirman programme
NREGA (national rural employment gurantee act)
The National Food Security Mission (NFSM)
The Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana
Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF)

Echoing Shukla’s view, chief economic advisor at the finance ministry, Dr Arvind Virmani said: “There may be a need to review the definition of what is rural as per the Census of India. Parts of rural India do appear to have urban characteristics.” As per this view, we might need to change the definition of rural or urban area. As per Nagesh Kumar, director-general of Research & Information Systems for Developing Countries, a New Delhi-based economic think-tank: “Such a transformation — away from agriculture — is actually desirable for India as over 60% of India’s population cannot live off just under a fifth (19%) of the country’s GDP in agriculture.”
To conclude I would like to consider the other aspect of the article. If we look at the current growth rate of agriculture which is just 2.4 %, we cant get too optimistic of the increasing contribution of the industry and services to the rural gdp. At the end of the day we need to realize that we need agriculture growth rate of atleast 4 % to meet the demand of 115 crore and ever increasing population of India.

MEDIA FRAGMENTATION

MEDIA FRAGMENTATION

SYNOPSIS
With technology embarking into the world of advertisements, advertising would never run short of options. Well think again, with the advent of technology comes along the comfort. Comfort for the consumers, comfort of multiple choices, choices in terms of choosing the media. Since decades newspapers has been the main source of entertainment and information for the masses and also the main platform of advertising. Past two decades were ruled by the television. Recent trend has been changing which has given rise to what we call today as ‘MEDIA FRAGMENTATION’. Media fragmentation is essentially a trend in which there is an increasing choice and consumption of a range of media like the television, radio, newspapers, magazines, internet, mobile phones etc. It is the level of difficulty in the reaching the target audience.
Television was by far the most effective way of advertising. However, DTH and DISH TV is changing the way people will view television. This new technology allows a viewer to record his/her favorite t.v. program. This gives the viewer a choice and a command over the television advertisements. Radio has been replaced by mp3 players and mp3 enabled cell phones. The increasing use of internet is just like a coin with two contradicting faces. While on one side it is the most novel way of communication and information, on the other hand it has also left many other traditional models of communication redundant. The best example is the use of e-papers. A reader can select and read the news of his choice without changing the page of the newspaper. This makes advertising a mere filler.
“Necessity is the mother of all inventions”. This line suits best for the current scenario of advertising. The necessity to innovate advertisements has led to many new ideas and tricks in advertising. Since television has lost its luster in advertising, we have in-film or covert advertising. So what if viewers skip the ads using dish-tv, they cant ignore the promotion and placement of a product or a brand in their favorite tv show or movies. How can they avoid watching their favorite stars using a particular brand? Newspaper companies also have not ignored their problems. Newspapers are making great strides in color capabilities in order to improve the reading experience and the advertisers’ message. Search engine and interactive tv are the future of advertising which will pave the way for the new age advertising. Moreover advertisements which can bring a surprise can create an image in the consumer’s mind. The most least expected advertisements or promotions appeals the most. Since the traditional advertising had become too predictable and obvious, it created a miniscule difference for the product being advertised.
Every cloud has a silver lining. The media fragmentation is a dark cloud however with many silver linings

DIVERSIFIED, BUT NOT UNITED

Today when people in India, talk about the youth of India, they say we are immensely influenced by the West. Specially the political parties are of the notion that we, the youth of India have inculcated all the negatives from the Western culture, but the point I want to put forth is, Indian youth to a large extent has learnt optimism from the same western culture. The US president elect Barack Obama, gives a new point of discussion on the same old lines. His persona is inspiring and no one can disagree with that. Although his policies might or might not be beneficial to India, is a different story altogether. However the way he is preparing his country to face the crisis is something no Indian can ever think of.

Coming back to our motherland, a decade ago when Enron tried to establish a power plant in Maharashtra, ENRON faced a political warfare followed by the report of the Godbole committee which led to the failure of ENRON project, similar to what happened to NANO in West Bengal, except the fact that in ENRON project the opposition was in favor and the government itself was against it. The result, Maharashtra lost a golden opportunity to become self dependent in power sector. Today, people in Maharashtra would have been spared from load shedding, 6 hours in suburbs and up to 16 hours in villages. This is the best example of what I call diversified but not united. Clash of two political parties led to a loss of the state. Here is, where the Americans leave us far behind. In this crisis situation, the democratic leader Barack Obama & the Republican leader John Macain, decided to come together for the their own motherland. Together they will strive for what’s best for America. Today when global financial crisis is ready to knock at India’s door, when banks might be on the verge on bankruptcy; our political leaders are busy in a battle for banks, their vote banks.

This keeps the two countries worlds apart. In India, the focus is still on the forth coming election. The minority parties try to win their vote bank by staging a protest against current government trying to brainwash the lower uneducated class rather than educating them & the opposition and the left together play a hindrance role by opposing promising new deals & the list goes on. It’s high time that political parties in India like the youth be influenced from the west. Ironically this is the same country where people say there is unity in diversity, I would rather say diversified but not united.

INDIA INC - A NEW GIANT

INDIA INC – A NEW GIANT

Year 2008-09, all the strong economies of the world are on the verge of recession. Companies tryin hard to control sustain its operations, govt of their respective countries trying hard to block the fund erosion but with very limited effect. People go to their office just to find out that they have been given a pink slip, reason, the very old cost cutting policies of the company in this credit crunch situation.

Situation is not different in india, india inc is expected to cut off 25 % jobs in various fields like IT,brokerage services, bpo, airlines and construction. Amidst all these dark clouds we see a silver lining. India inc. can exploit this situation to its best interest with little optimism. Despite of the crisis situation many Indian co. like the sbi bank, the mahindras have shown excellent net qtr results which suggests that India inc is to a large extent insulated from the global crisis. The worst is miles apart from India, and the credit should go to the Indian industry which in last 2 decades has grown faster than a weed.

Though India felt the tremors of the global turmoil, some sectors in India are independent enough to resist these turmoil. Sectors like IT, SERVICES AIRLINES, HOTELS have been hit right where it hurts. This is the consequence of over dependency of this sectors on economies like us and uk. With every little policy change in these countries, affects the operations of industries of these sectors in India which in turn affects every single employee like you and me. These are the sectors which have grown in the last decade which are very much responsible for the 8% gdp growth of India. However now they face the challenge to contribute to sustain 7% gdp.

On the contrary we have sectors like fmcg and pharma which are emerging as the saviors of Indian economy. Industries in fmcg like the HUL & ITC which do not depend on foreign currency are unlikely to have an impact. These industries are self reliant and should see this crisis as an opportunity to take Indian economy to its peak level. These industries give india an optimistic approach to deal with this crisis and is also one of the main reasons why india is not amongst those worst affected.

Credit should also be given to this nda govt. and not to forget the finance minister, P. CHIDAMBARAM the governor of RBI, mr Y.V. Reddy.With all their expertise and experience they took some dauntless decisions to curb the excessive influx of foreign funds in the Indian market, the decision to raise the crr ratio and the interest rates when inflation was hovering around 12 %, a move which was initially picked apart. However this proved to be prophylaxis for the economic danger that lied ahead. Had it not been for their foresight and ingenius thinking, India would have been in the league of the worst affected nations of this economic crisis.

All said and done, how should we, the students graduating from various b-schools in India should look at this? Sure there will be fewer companies coming to the campus for the next two years. In such scenario MNCs and international placements will be like a mission to mars, a distant dream indeed. However we cannot ignore the fact that this gives companies in India to get the best brains from Indian b-schools. This would in turn lead to a reversal brain drain. The best brains which flew out of the nation to earn in dollars and pounds now working in our own land, leading to growth of India inc. Eventually India will get what it deserves, the services of one of the world’s most intelligent work force, i.e. we the Indian students. Lets give a thought to this, Indian companies sure have a great opportunity to retain some of the best students from IITs & IIMs and when that materializes no one can stop this nation from becoming a new giant.