There is a desire that the huge effort made and the government’s well targeted policies deliver good results. There are still many poor waiting for a better future; others aspire for good opportunities to contribute to the country while improving their living standard.
It is heartening to watch the efficient private sector thrive: which is certainly the case in the telecoms offering ever greater surprises; in pharmaceuticals and IT, both growing in turnover and exports having already carved out a slice for them in world markets. Other sectors have improved their performance and presence: automobiles, textiles and electronics. There is high-quality R&D, healthcare, entertainment and tourism services as well, ready to draw more users and investment.
I believe that the State owned sector can improve its performance, to make the installed capacity to fully generate ‘value for society’. I would like to mention the following State Institutions in particular:
a) – Education, especially the selective Higher education, (IIT, IIM, IIIT, IISc, IIMSc, Medical Colleges), where goals should be set aimed at expanding, to take on more students. The HRD Ministry has specified to IITs and IIMs, to become multidisciplinary and world-class, with many more students, to become Universities.
How to get there would remain a prerogative of the Director and Board. They would only need to comply with general regulations. As a suggestion, classes could be offered in shifts, two per day. There would be need for more student accommodation; to hire suitably qualified new teachers and train them; invite some working abroad and willing to come home, by giving a subsidy for resettlement. Also attract high quality talent pool in academics by offering less coursework load and research incentives.
India needs to redefine its education system by learning from countries as Germany which provides a range of vocational courses at high school level. This may help in improving the skills while making them job ready.
b) R&D, within the CSIR and agronomical research institutions: they should aim for the registration of patents and the promotion of PhDs. Many of these Institutions have autonomy to sell their services. It should be enhanced; a share of revenue as well as a share of the market value of invention patents should be allocated to awards, I will refer to further down.
c) State owned Industrial companies: they must provide returns that match the best-run businesses in the country. There would be two options: one is to alienate total capital as the State is a poor Manager; the other is to gradually pull back by drawing down shares to limits deemed desirable. Air-India, a company that should have been sold entirely, comes to mind.
Some exceptions to public services like utilities and others meaningfully bearing a social character; these need to be cherry-picked and handled carefully not to make life harder for the poor.
d) Healthcare units and Hospitals: These are of the utmost importance for the poor. Directors must be efficient and able to promote a culture of organized hard-work geared to providing quality service. Staff would feel stimulated to treat more patients and to give equal treatment to the rich and the poor, irrespective of requests made by influential people and politicians on behalf of their friends.
Each unit of the prior four groups referred to should have a Director-General appointed: besides the profile required by the Institution, he would possess a strong results-driven entrepreneurial push. He would build his Board of Directors and the Ministry would set out a map of objectives, with targets to meet in a certain period. And there would be yearly awards associated to targets achieved, for the Director-General and his team and for each Department. Money incentives may be useful to make people focus on essentials. Someone may think: this is wasting money. In fact, everywhere the results achieved far exceed prize-money spent. Besides limitless ‘value for society’, it stokes meritocracy lifting up and out from mediocrity.
In his ‘The Beautiful Tree’ the author points out to how in and around Hyderabad the poor would have their children attend fee-paying, poorly equipped private schools, instead of free-of-charge public schools, housed in proper buildings. In these later teachers were absentees, while in the former parents could see their children happy and making academic progress. At private schools teachers are dedicated, do not miss classes and earn trust and respect from students. Most state officials/bureaucrats failed to grasp these facts!
Successful cases should be made known to serve as inspiration to all. Indians work in a very inventive way; that explains why there is so much frugal innovation attracting Multinational Companies to do R&D in India; there are now an estimated 1.100 MNCs in India, with more setting up shop every day. The most important is to find ways to do good job, to free creativity, in the State owned institutions too.
(The author is Professor at AESE-Business School; Director of AAPI- Portugal-India Friendship Association)
