THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN

As the nation woke up the economic index began the slide southward.

It had all the trappings of a midnight political drama, which in any case it was.

The steady tunneling that was carried out by the political bosses had finally created enough of hollowness under the foundations of the institution. The dome crumbled under its own weight. The institution lay exposed. The government tried its best to find the proverbial fig leaf to cover itself. Unfortunately, it managed to get a tulsi leaf for a substitute. It will be a herculean task to justify with the chosen leave to save face when the matter comes up for hearing on Friday in the Supreme Court.

Gangrene spreads

The two top officials at the apex of the CBI organization set in a gangrene growth threatening a body blow to the very life of the institution. The rate of spread affected the government body. The bleeding was uncontrolled as facts started spilling out bring out the rot that had set in by the infusion of the virus. The septic open ulcer clearly exposing the physiological rejection of the doctored implant by the organic body structure of CBI.

The Gujarat model of governance had arrived nationally. The consequences were the same. The way cases could be crafted, evidence designed for desired outcomes

Aristotle’s words of wisdom ring true – “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”

The actors must be credited for the mastery in having perfected the science of psychological and circumstantial manipulation into an impossible art. Alas, there were too many inbuilt contradictions to the objectives and ethics of the grand old institutions.

Industry loses confidence

This is one episode that will have far-reaching ramifications for the economy. The confidence index is going to take a huge hit. Investments that are already in a state of limbo will further dry up given the question mark that has come upon the viability of the prime minister and his ability to lead the party into the next election. The maverick party president not being discounted at this stage.

There seems this could be the last stitch that will entangle the knot the holds the possibility. The joblessness and the farmer’s impatience will overwhelm the economy. There seems no respite from global indicators either. The NBFC and IL&FS have already hit the SME sector hard. So there is no light at the end of the election tunnel for industry or business. The firecracker industry is on fire.   

The common man’s resilience and inflection point is stressed to the limit of endurance. The media management is already slipping as negative bits have multiplied compared to what it was even a month back. The government and party spokesmen are getting shriller on TV panels, unable to deflect the flak. “No news is good news” can well be the governments by line today. 

Tuthookudi – the past glory and the future story - The pearl

The V O Chidambaranar (VOC) (Tuticorin) Port received a vessel with 14m draft on 15^th Oct.2018. The vessel, ‘MV Zheng Jun’ which is 229m long and had a beam of 32.26m was docked at the north cargo berth.

The vessel brought 74,962 tonnes of Indonesian coal for (NTPL plant at Tuticorin. The previous record was 60,500 tonnes of rock phosphate for Greenstar Fertilizers Limited, Tuticorin and the vessel draft was 13.20m draft. The draft is the depth from the water line to the bottom of the ship. This is the clearance a ship needs to safely berth in the port. The business and industry in south Tamil nadu will be directly benefitted from the advantages of scale such big vessels bring to the city of Tuticorin.

The port authorities have initiated maintenance dredging for enhancement of draft in the dock basin and approach channel. Depth in the dock basin of the port will be increased to 15.50m and the approach channel to 16.50m. this will facilitate handling fully-laden Panamax size vessels with a draft of up to 14.5m as well as container vessels with the capacity of 9500 TEUs, within a period of two months. Further Considering the growing demand for bigger size container and dry bulk vessels of 16m draft and to attract trans-shipment traffic, the port has proposed increasing depth of the inner harbour to 16.70m .

Shot in the arm - Relaxation in cabotage rules

The cabotage rules were one of the biggest hindrance preventing Indian ports to act as transshipment hub . Relaxation in cabotage rules that were prohibiting foreign flagged vessels from ferrying domestic cargo will help transferring transshipment activity to Indian ports , help save forex, open fresh business opportunities and also create jobs opportunities locally. 

The revised, liberalized Indian cabotage law — opening the intra-India export/import container transportation segment to foreign-flag ocean carriers can increase the attractiveness of Indian ports as direct ports of call for ocean carriers on major trade lanes and transform some of them into transhipment hubs, which is required to reduce the shippers’ need to relay cargo over foreign ports with additional costs and longer transits. Studies by shipping industry estimate  “Currently, around 25 percent of [total] Indian container traffic and 78 percent of cargo originating from or destined to the east coast of India is transhipped at ports outside India”. The relaxation of cabotage regulation will help to attract more containerized cargo by reducing time and cost for mainline vessels thereby ensuring efficiencies of scale, facilitating India in becoming world class shipping hub at par with the region lead Singapore.

How Tuticorin port can be beneficial for shippers?

McKinsey & Company, the consultant hired by the Shipping Ministry to prepare a strategy for transshipment and mainline calls at major ports have brought out the feasibility of  VO Chidambaranar Port as a potential alternate port to Colombo due to its geographical location close to the international shipping  route and possibility of being connected to inland product manufacturing but it needs better infrastructure and draft to allow bigger mainline ships to dock,”

Shipping lines mainline vessel services connecting China with Europe, Bangladeshi garments (western exports travel east to ports in Singapore or Malaysia first before they are transhipped to), bigger vessels that take them to destinations. India will reduce time taken for the garments to travel to their markets

Economics & Savings 

Calling at VOC Port instead of Colombo entails a deviation of 51 nautical miles, which translates into an additional voyage time of only three hours for a ship.  Of the 50 services calling at Colombo, a handful of services have been identified that can call at VOCPT based on its captive traffic. These include services such as the EAX, Australia Express, East Coast EC5 and Empire.

Main line ship services calling at Colombo are fed Indian origin-destination containers through small feeder ships. A main line call at VOCPT will yield a benefit of as much as $50 per TEU for a ship, compared to using it as a feeder port, say experts.

Sending a container from VOCPT to Colombo en-route to the UK/Shanghai would cost $288 after factoring in vessel-related charges (VRC) and box transfer cost at Colombo, feeding cost from VOCPT to Colombo, container related charges (CRC) at VOCPT and mainline voyage cost, assuming a parcel size of 1,000 TEUs per week.

VOCPT will earn ₹3.75 crore from a mainline vessel call by Wan Hai after factoring in a 60 per cent discount in VRC extended to the service. The total benefit to VOCPT from five shortlisted mainline services is estimated to be ₹24 crore.

What does all this mean for the city of Tuticorin?

Tuticorin can transform into south India’s power hub. The city can also become the distribution and integration centre for the industrial raw materials and export of manufactured products respectively for the hinterland.

But Tuticorin lacks a developed railway network with the hinterland. Develop the backbone concept in partner to attract more container and bulk cargo business. Because of logistical reasons and available infrastructure and community expertise, Tuticorin will be more attractive to exporters from the southern hinterland than Chennai.

VOC port is just three hours sailing time from the international sea lanes, a critical advantage for the future of marine trade over Chennai. Time is the most competitive factor for shipping industry and Tuticorin needs to offer better TAT (turn around time) with greater efficiencies for main line vessels compared to Colombo, which is a world class transshipment port. This will improve the container trade deficit (the balance between incoming import containers and outgoing export container units) that it presently faces. This can also have a cascading affect on the development of coastal transportation, powered by service upgrades and tariff advantages, could prove to be a key factor in easing pressure on rail-road networks.

What needs to be done?

To attract the next generation deep-draft vessels, additional steps needs to be taken — such as competitive pricing flexibility on marine charges as other hubs like Colombo enjoy compared to Indian ports.  A move towards a market determined tariff, investment in state-of-the-art technology, and maintaining deeper drafts are among other measures that will boost the sector to make it more attractive and support India’s trade growth.

The change will benefit privately operated ports — especially Adani Group's terminal network led by Mundra , rather than public ports such as Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and Chennai.  The private operators have advantages  on the strength of their pricing and infrastructure competitiveness versus bureaucratic rule bound government administered ports.  

Conclusion

If Government, industry, civil society, business and trade work together the dream of a Tuticorin mega polis can be a reality in the near future. Fish processing storage and packing for global exports and related industry has a tremendous scope. There is already a strong mineral & metals and chemicals manufacturing base which can support a host of other new-age industries. The service sector required for this existing base itself can generate a huge portion of the overall employment for skilled youth of this region. The consolidation of all these economic activity and revenues can easily sustain the MEGAPOLIS OF TUTHOOKUDI.

Joblessness or Less Jobs? Dissecting Unemployment Crisis

                    

India has a favourable demographic advantage over other countries of the world as it has half of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35. By 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years which is lesser than China and Japan. With the potential for exponential growth and the surplus working population, the only Achilles heel for development of our country is the alarming growth of unemployment. The pressing issue needs immediate attention and solution to achieve  the anticipated GDP in a sustainable way.

The fundamental step in finding solution to any public good issue is to know the state of affairs through the statistics collected. In this regard, Government surveys to monitor and record jobs vacancies and unemployment rate are not proactive enough to say the least. There isn't enough political will to create the right survey design and infrastructure that records the data on a monthly or at least quarterly basis in stead of the existing system of once in five or ten years.

Having said that, the World Bank dispels the wrong notion of growth without jobs (Jobless Growth). According to it's recent report, 1% growth in GDP should ideally create 7.5 lakh jobs in the economy. At this rate India must create at least 5.25 million jobs with its 7% GDP. This implies that there could be instances of low demand for jobs but never a standstill.The low points could be due to various disruptions like Demonitization, Implementation of GST or Global Financial Crisis and the like.

Having understood that there is always a demand for jobs, the next question is how much demand?

Factors affecting the intensity of demands and vacancies are

Firstly, large scale substitution of labour with Capital and Automation which decreases Employment Elasticity rate. Employment Elasticity is the growth in job demands per 1% increase in GDP. In 2018, the figure is 0.2% jobs creation for 1% GDP growth.

Secondly, economy's declining ability to create jobs. This trend is observed not just in India but globally.

To counter the two factors, government must focus on generating jobs rather than increasing GDP.

Why create work than improve GDP?

Assuming that every one percent increase in GDP creates 6 lakh jobs (realistic assumption aganist the projected 7.5 lakh which gives 4.2 million for 7% GDP), every year at least 50% of 15 million(7.5 million) of the 15+ age group people seek employment rather than higher education or marriage. This creates a jobs gap of 3.3 million. In addition to women who may opt to work, the jobs gap could be as much as 9 million(60% of working age). 

Where to employ the excess?

Agricultural sector in India is inundated with surplus rural labourers who are migrating to urban areas in search of work. Growth in urban areas is in itself under threat because of changing demography and trade wars. It is estimated by various international organizations that growth in global working age population would face a 1% dip in growth which translates to 1.5% in India.With all these challenges ahead, policy makers must proactively design reforms to employ people.

World is flooded with capital so money is fuelled in large investments of automation and technology. Technology has the tendency to create polarized jobs. It creates humongous demand in very high end skills like Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, Machine learning experts and low end skills like drivers and delivery boys. Middle skilled labourers like Bank staff and Java coders go out of work because of technology upgradation and business consolidation. Blue collar jobs like logistics, warehousing, education, tourism and healthcare are booming. Data science and machine learning jobs await for thousands of upskilled employees in commerce, banking and energy sectors.

How to employ?

There is a call for change in skill development and planning. The need of the hour is to improve and reform the Labour market information systems.Identifying 

the skills that are required and provide training on that. Decentralize planning and bring it under the ambit of state and local governments. Once when the Labour market laws are reformed, the government and industries must ensure reasonable salary and security benefits and provide subsidies if needed. 

When the required skills are identified and provided and a secured salary ensure, the next step is to guarantee enough jobs and vacancies. Three ways that can happen are :

1.Medium scale units which have higher scope of employment must be encouraged through respective labour law reforms and easier access to credit by the government.

2.To aim for smart urbanization by providing  good infrastructure and good governance.

3. Optimization of government funds and focus on public good than providing freebies.

Need for Change

In accordance with the first two suggestions on the reform of skill development, government's decision to merge NCVT (National Council for Vocational Training) and NSDA (National Skill Development Agency) into NCVET (National Council for Vocational and Educational Training) is a welcoming change.

NCVET combines the legislative and executive function of Skill Development.It would Establish minimum standards, approve, regulate, assess, monitor and govern all aspects of skill development planning and training. As for Labour reforms, government must focus on jobs generating growth than merely growth. As mentioned earlier, there is no bigger myth than jobless growth. Jobs growth can never be consistent and the better we understand this, the more appropriate will be our response.

Government must take into account the degenerative trend in global growth while formulating labour reforms and target ways to minimize job gaps which is around 3 to 4 million annually. The unemployment crisis rampant in rural to urban migrants due to saturation in agricultural sector must find a place in the reforms too. With this holistic approach, government can effectively tackle the problem of joblessness.

Why Tuticorin could compete with Chennai to be the future mega polis of south India?

The V O Chidambaranar (VOC) (Tuticorin) Port received a vessel with 14m draft on 15^th Oct.2018. The vessel, 'MV Zheng Jun' which is 229m long and had a beam of 32.26m was docked at the north cargo berth.

 

The vessel brought 74,962 tonnes of Indonesian coal for (NTPL plant at Tuticorin. The previous record was 60,500 tonnes of rock phosphate for Greenstar Fertilizers Limited, Tuticorin and the vessel draft was 13.20m draft. The draft is the depth from the water line to the bottom of the ship. This is the clearance a ship needs to safely berth in the port. The business and industry in south Tamil nadu will be directly benefitted from the advantages of scale such big vessels bring to the city of Tuticorin.

The port authorities have initiated maintenance dredging for enhancement of draft in the dock basin and approach channel. Depth in the dock basin of the port will be increased to 15.50m and the approach channel to 16.50m. this will facilitate handling fully-laden Panamax size vessels with a draft of up to 14.5m as well as container vessels with the capacity of 9500 TEUs, within a period of two months. Further Considering the growing demand for bigger size container and dry bulk vessels of 16m draft and to attract trans-shipment traffic, the port has proposed increasing depth of the inner harbour to 16.70m .

 

Shot in the arm - Relaxation in cabotage rules

Relaxation in cabotage rules that were prohibiting foreign flagged vessels from ferrying domestic cargo will help transshipment activity to Indian ports and can help save forex and also create jobs opportunities locally. The cabotage rules were one of the biggest hindrance preventing Indian ports to act as transshipment hub .. But India's revised, liberalized cabotage law — opening the intra-India export/import container transportation segment to foreign-flag ocean carriers can increase the attractiveness of Indian ports as direct ports of call for ocean carriers on major trade lanes and transform some of them into transhipment hubs, which is required to reduce the shippers' need to relay cargo over foreign ports with additional costs and longer transits. The shipping industry estimates  "Currently, around 25 percent of [total] Indian container traffic and 78 percent of cargo originating from or destined to the east coast of India is transhipped at ports outside India. The relaxation of cabotage regulation will help to attract more containerized cargo by reducing time and cost for mainline vessels thereby ensuring efficiencies of scale, facilitating India in becoming world class shipping hub at par with the region lead Singapore

 

How Tuticorin port can be beneficial for shippers?

McKinsey & Company, the consultant hired by the Shipping Ministry to prepare a strategy for transshipment and mainline calls at major ports have brought out the feasibility of  VO Chidambaranar Port as a potential alternate port to Colombo due to its geographical location close to the international shipping  route and possibility of being connected to inland product manufacturing but it needs better infrastructure and draft to allow bigger mainline ships to dock,"

Shipping lines mainline vessel services connecting China with Europe, Bangladeshi garments (western exports travel east to ports in Singapore or Malaysia first before they are trans shipped to), bigger vessels that take them to destinations. India will reduce transit time to their markets

 

economical & Savings by consultant study/recommendations

Calling at VOC Port instead of Colombo entails a deviation of 51 nautical miles, which translates into an additional voyage time of only three hours for a ship.  Of the 50 services calling at Colombo, a handful of services have been identified that can call at VOCPT based on its captive traffic. These include services such as the EAX, Australia Express, East Coast EC5 and Empire.

Mainline ship services calling at Colombo are fed Indian origin-destination containers through small feeder ships. mainline main line call at VOCPT will yield a benefit of as much as $50 per TEU for a ship, compared to using it as a feeder port, say experts.

Sending a container from VOCPT to Colombo en-route to the UK/Shanghai would cost $288 after factoring in vessel-related charges (VRC) and box transfer cost at Colombo, feedering cost from VOCPT to Colombo, container related charges (CRC) at VOCPT and mainline voyage cost, assuming a parcel size of 1,000 TEUs per week.

VOCPT will earn ₹3.75 crore from a mainline vessel call by Wan Hai after factoring in a 60 per cent discount in VRC extended to the service. The total benefit to VOCPT from five shortlisted mainline services is estimated to be ₹24 crore.

What does all this mean for the city of Tuticorin?

Tuticorin can be south India"s  the power hub. The city can also become the distribution and integration center for the industrial raw materials and manufacturing export of products respectively for the hinterland.

But Tuticorin lacks a developed railway network with the hinterland. Develop the backbone concept in partner to attract more container business. bulk cargo

VOC port is just three hours sailing time from the international sea lanes, a critical advantage for the future of marine trade over Chennai. Time is the most competitive factor for shipping industry and Tuticorin needs to offer better TAT (turn around time) with greater efficiencies for main line vessels compared to Colombo, which is a world class transshipment port. This will improve the container trade deficit (the balance between incoming import containers and outgoing export container units) that it presently faces. This can also have a cascading effect on the development of coastal transportation, powered by service upgrades and tariff advantages, could prove to be a key factor in easing pressure on rail-road networks.

What needs to be done?

 "To attract the next generation [of] deep-draft vessels, additional steps needs to be taken — such as competitive marine charges as other hubs like Colombo enjoy pricing flexibility and offer more competitive rates compared to Indian ports," company officials told JOC.com. "A move towards a market determined tariff, investment in state-of-the-art technology, and maintaining deeper drafts are among other measures that will boost the sector to make it more attractive and support India's trade growth.".

the change will benefit privately operated minor ports — especially Adani Group's terminal network led by Mundra — rather than public ports such as  Chennai — on the strength of their pricing and infrastructure competitiveness, versus rule bound government run rivals. 

Conclusion

If Government, industry and business and trade can pull together the dream of a Tuticorin mega polis can be a reality in the near future. Fish processing storage and packing for global exports and related industry has a tremendous scope. There is already a strong mineral and metals and chemicals manufacturing base which can support a host of other newage industries. The service sector required for this existing base itself can generate huge employment to skilled youth of this region. 

The dark cloak of government deception

A magician is never seen to use the traditional cape to cover-up any of his movements. But, we all know how important it is for some of the crucial sleights of the magic movements to be performed.

The state seems exactly like a magician in intent and purpose as we will watch intensively into some of the government's disparate moves. These are actually part of the overall acts, away from public scrutiny, to keep the shortcomings and hidden agenda.

the state's champions the role of a "knight in white armour" to protect the environment for the people against defaulting industries. But At the same time the state wants to remove statutory conditionality of the impact assessment notifications on selective projects.

The fire work industry and the green field projects cases bring out the contradictory aspects. In the case of the firework industries it justifies the abatement of environmental strictures, by the Supreme Court on the banning/display of fireworks to improve air quality, on the pretext of stopping the loss of poor workers jobs.

While In the case of public hearing of major projects it justifies exemption of public hearing for "public importance projects". OMG, what are "non public importance projects"? Are they differentiating between private and government projects? What is the real intention and purpose of such a blatantly discriminatory request?

They claim that public hearings are unruly and cumbersome and an impediment for quick implementation of projects. It again sets you wondering, why they are unable to complete scores of departmental work within allotted time and budget, that neither is hindered by the environmental or public resistance in any form.

The truth is brought out when one looks at the recent spate of rulings by the courts on these issues.

The madras HC directed the CBI to take over the SIPCOT police firing case during the protests at the tuticorin Collectorate on May 22, demanding the closure of the Sterlite plant. The court's caustic comments in the directive is sufficient confirmation of the facts. The bench noted " It can hardly be expected that any investigation either into the wrong doings of the protestors or of the police or administration would inspire confidence if entrusted to agencies of this state"

Here lies the crux of the problem. The state has no public credibility as the court rightly observed. This permeates right through most departments, bureaucrats and officials working under the dictate of the government. Impartiality and public service attitude is a scarce virtue. This is precisely the reason for public to get agitated during public hearings. when officials of the state ride rough shod over public views as biased and respond with concocted reports under eternal influence of vested interests.

The above fact may summarily be rejected by proponents of the government view. Hence I will refer to the another ruling by the madras high court when it lambasted the state government handling of the salem-chennai corridor case, for not furnishing information sought by the court. It noted "every time the court has to compel the state to provide necessary information. Government advocates are doing nothing except coming to the court. the case documents can only be kept in museums". The damaging observation should leave no further doubt on the veracity of our proposition.

In most of the times government delays and procrastinates submission of full and complete information, adding to purposeful delays & subverting the public interest of the project itself. This is especially true, when the required information is uncomfortable or renders the government position untenable. These are standard delaying tactics adopted in courts.

You can well imagine the common man's predicament and frustration, when genuine public interest conflicts with private motive. No guess on who the loser will be financially, materially and socially along with great personal risk and public safety. Who will not vouch the nightmare experienced in getting simple documentations done from a government department?

The final nail in the coffin is the reasoning for exemption - for a special list of projects exempted from mandatory public hearing. The danger is that later by a mere administrative stroke of the pen, the list can be modified to included favored projects. The second danger is that projects of "great public importance"( no guesses on who will decide this) will go unscrutinised for obsolete technology and poorly defined, non quantified environmental impacts. The capacity and ability of the state agencies to evaluate advanced pollution control technologies is highly restricted and in most cases not available at all.

Hence if the admission of the government's inability argument is accepted in its entirety and honesty, they should voluntarily abdicate its monitoring and supervisory role. They must allow approved professional institutes /agencies to completely manage the whole gambit of environmental project management under strict enforcement of 3rd party audit and compensatory rules for default of mandatory standards. Only such a non interference by power obsessed state can energise developmental agenda and also ensure environmental protection compliance in its true sense.

Lets draw up courage to admit that the PCB is a dysfunctional body. The case being made out is simple, the government has no case to be the sole non- functioning custodian of the people will and right to a safe and healthy environment synchronised with industrial and economic development. "Lead follow or get out of the way" is an apt conclusion.

About Rafale

While the whole national media is shouting itself horse over the French Rafale fighter deal, it time to pause a for a little wink.

The central government is for the first time after a long time has shifted from offence to defense. OMG, what a change in stance and appearance. The BJP and government spokespersons seem to be telling us everything but the few basic facts that will or could extinguish the fire. But they just refuse to tell us.

So will be grateful to anybody who could help me with just two doubts, for the time being

1.    Why did the defense minister have to leave for France now? She gave two plausible reasons at the press conference

A. she has been invited and is as per schedule.

B.  It's as per purchaser's  obligation.

since the contract is already operationalised, both the above answers don't hold water for a defense minister level urgent meeting. But it does help to hold the leaking bucket of lies a bit longer.

2.    Just tell me how Anil Ambani's company becomes eligible especially when HAL was not qualified?

The standard answer of "you have to ask Dassault" raises a stink beyond endurance. So hypothetically – " could some anti national company operating in India actually become the offset partner without the knowledge of the Indian government? OMG what a thought.

Hope to have no more questions, as I am hope the totally unfounded allegations being shot off the political radar any time now.

"BOMBES LOIN"

Why Manufacture in India will fail

The government shouts from the roof top about its make in India strategy.

But when it comes to the multi core RAFELE deal with a multimillion potential for make in India it faulters and goes in for the flyaway model of purchase. This typifies the contradiction we practice between what we preach and what we practice.

THE EARLIER DEAL WITH HAL AS THE OFFSET PARTNER would have given the nation us manifold benefits. The private sector would have also got the benefits and more as HAL would have made then component vendors and associate manufacturers for sub systems for final integration. HAL has the capability and maturity that any one private sector company may not have.

The opportunity, experience and money India would have earned but now lost out to the various aspects of manufacturing the first lot in India have been lost forever. The infrastructure capabilities that we could have built by this route is immeasurably lost. A small part of this is actually the monetized value we have agreed to give to France as the increased cost of the first lot. Our cost for manufacturing partly in India for the rest of the quantity will be far higher. The claimed benefit of having the "game changer" 36 rafele jets is only illusionary. Without the maintenance capability and strategic support the first lot is only a money drainer of our defense preparedness and independence. The true picture is beyond the understanding of the general public. The government is unnecessarily politicalising the issue by nudging the profession air force establishment to come and defend an indefensible position.

The full potential of the rafele will be realized only with the deployment of the Russian S400 system along our sensitive borders.

You will appreciate that aviation engineering as with other technological advance equipment is about technology integration.

"Make in India" is about stream lining the whole system of industrial activity. The sequence starts with mineral mining, transportation, metal refining and processing to basic raw material for the manufacturing and fabrication sector and component, subcomponent and system configuration and final product integration.

Take the example of our program on EV. After drafting the FAME 2, the government realizes that the battery is more important that the chassis or product integration. ( manufactureing the EV vechicle). It then goes back to redraw the plans. While there are more than fifty Indian companies working at various critical advanced stages of BMS (battery management systems) and Ion lithium battery processes. Most of these cutting edge technology companies working on subcomponents face the constraints of regulated market conditions for import of critical parts or machinery with no help from the government.

But away from the glare of the policy makers they have survived to have got the attention of many major players in the automotive sector. Under their financial and organization interest and participation they have been able to bring out world-class technological EVs.

In short, the absence of a government policy is sometimes better than a faulty one which and guides an innovative industry to pursues/ follow a wrongly made policy.

HOW THE WEST WAS WON by the Indian IT pioneers is the story of an industry which successfully built only because of the absence of government in the nascent industry.

It is a researched fact that political presence (let alone interference) kills innovation. And today innovation is essential to survival. The successful industries and systems of economic development of the next 15 years have not been started as yet. Why then is the government in this business at all?

The future public mobility space will undergo a transformational change from what it is today. The urban pattern of transit and work commute will change over the next ten years. As nature of work itself will change bringing a quantum change of commute density patterns. Sustainable High-density transit in metros will be based on mass public transport and much less on cars.

The coal and nonrenewable fuel-based power and steel sectors will shrink in comparative value terms (ratio) to rare earth minerals and carbon composites and nanomaterials.

The changes will be explosive and impactful in comparison to what even the developed world is experiencing. India will have the opportunity to leapfrog half a century. As some scientists say, the industrial revolution hasn't even started yet. Finance will play a secondary role to human capital in the next stage of our evolution. What we will experience over the next twenty years will be phenomenal. With the advent of the new era we will overcome some of the older problems, but along with change will come newer problems of housing and health?

At BUSINESS500 we will have some very exciting dialogues on the future. Join us with your participation to make it even more enjoyable and revealing. Keep watching our forthcoming sections._