Quite an eventful year ends…and one of hope starts

A year in which India discovered herself!

Sometimes it is good to be in a developing country during the start of your career. All the key parameters of the economy are going northwards. Let us look at how India scores with its once forsaken disadvantages turning to advantages…
1.Demography: With a population, whose bulk is youth, India has an advantage over the ageing American/European population. What this means is that maybe sometime in 5-10 years, about 10% (well this is my guess) of the working population of the world would be Indians. And guess what, there is going to be a short supply of engineers by 2010 in India.
2.Literacy: Well we were worried once about the 50% literacy rates in India. Well the best thing to happen is the rate at which it is growing. Why do you think the media is seeing newer channels and newspapers across India? When the growth in the developed markets has stagnated, India is set to grow and grow at two-digit growth.
3.Growth in rural areas: Talk about tapping the bottom of the pyramid, well that is exactly how the bigger FMCG companies and other MNCs look at the rural market now. They have customized their services to suit the needs of the rural India. With projects like e-choupal, the farm sector will become larger sourcing hubs not just for the Indian companies, but for a whole lot of other MNCs.
4.Teledensity: Well, it was that time of the year when the number of mobile phones overtook the number of landlines in India. And with the teledensity at around 10 per thousand, India is looking at doubling and tripling the number in the next 5-10 years. And that is something which will lead to many more things other than communication.
Well these are just some of the parameters and I am not even talking of the IT sector which is blooming and blossoming, India being the largest milk producer et al.

If there is one thing that I would hope India improves on is the corruption in public life and our inherent tendency to break rules. The first one is beyond the control of the common man, it needs a cleansing from top down, but maybe the second point can be done by one and all, a bottom up approach.

With the Tsunami and earthquakes behind us, India as a country has just started its march forward and lets hope this year brings in a lot of cheer and joy for the nation.