Indian Socio-Cultural Variables - Assignment Example

India- Socio- Cultural Variables Introduction: India is also known as Bharat and Hindustan in Hindi, the national language. India offers a rich variety of cultural heritage within the country. Though officially Hindi is the national language of the nation but there are thousands of local/ regional languages as well. This land of snake charmers, Yoga, Ayurved, Meditation etc has raised the curiosity levels amongst the tourists and explorers right from the times of Christopher Columbus. Population Density and Wealth Distribution: As per the official census figures of 2001, India houses more than 1028 million people a marked rise of 23% from the official figures of 1991. During the last century while the world's population grew three fold, India population grew four fold. This increase could have been much more if the government of India had not adopted population control measures for the last three decades. Spread over an area of around 3.3 million square kilometers, it is the seventh largest country in the world. India is the world's largest democracy with a population nearly four times that of the United States. Indian government has adopted the British Parliamentary system with valuable inputs from USA and European governments. Population density is an indication of population concentration. It is defined as the number of persons per square kilometer. Official census figures of government of India indicate that the population density of India in 2001 was 324 persons per square kilometer, which indicates that now 57 more people live in a square kilometer area in the country than the number that lived a decade ago. In 1901 the density of India was as low as 77 and this steadily increased from to reach 324 in 2001. The cause of worry for the Indian government is that this increase is not matched equally by the increase in healthy food, diet and other resources. Per capita income in India is approx. INR 12500 i.e. approx. $290. Contrast this with the per capita income of US, which is more than $40000, while US population is less than one fourth of India. Such disturbing figures give rise to discontentment amongst the masses. If we look towards India as a market, it is indeed a very attractive market. Because, market needs customers - the more the merrier. Of late this market of more than a Billion people has been attracting MNCs in good numbers. If per capita income is less here then cost of production is also less so goods and services are priced accordingly. Indian government is also in the facilitating mode to Investments from abroad. Therefore from the investment point of view I'd give it 7 out of 10. Age Profile and Employment Scenario: Though official poverty figures have been coming down sharply e.g. the figures indicate that poverty ratio came down from 36% in 1993-94 to 26% in 1999-2000, yet a large number of educated youth remain unemployed. The population of India is estimated to be 1.4 billion (1,400 million) by the year 2025, and youth will form the majority of the population. With this problem in sight, the tenth five-year plan targets that gainful and high-quality employment will be provided to the majority. Unlike some of its neighbors, education level in India has been quite good. Engineering and Management graduates from Indian Institutions have left their mark in many international companies. The Pentium chip of Intel had the brain of an Indian. Majority of the H1B visa holders in USA are from India. The recent trend of outsourcing ITES towards Indian subcontinent is the testimony for the education level and technical capability of Indian youth. From an Investment point of view, I feel Indian youth will prove very helpful. I'll give 9 points out of 10. Entrepreneurship culture Historically, India is not much known as the nation of venture capitalists. Indians preferred to play safe. But the IT bug seems to have converted them into venture capitalists as well. For example, Hotmail was the brainchild of a 25 year old Indian youth Sabeer Bhatia. He made billions by selling it to Microsoft. Couple of Indian youth ventured into online auctioning with Baazee.com and today e-bay had to negotiate with them for entering into Indian space. This trend indicates that Indians are fast turning towards venture capitalism. But all is not rosy, there's another side of India as well. From time to time, the Indian media keeps highlighting stories on farmers' suicides, the starvation deaths, victims of communal riots etc. For any civilized society these are indeed alarming reports. Equally disturbing are the Naxalite problem in some of the states in Eastern and Western parts of India. The districts along with the bordering areas of Nepal and Bangladesh are particularly very active Naxal operation areas. The Maoists of Nepal operate in tandem with the Naxalites of India. There stated purpose for this armed opposition is to see equitable distribution of wealth. But the unfortunate part is, quite often they end up killing those very villagers for whom they claim to be fighting. Terrorism is no doubt a problem having international dimensions, but India has been reeling under the shadow of one or the other forms of terrorisms for many decades now. India could successfully counter the Sikh terrorism of 1970's. But now India too is at the receiving end of the nasty designs of the likes of Osama bin Laden. Indian security forces are fighting it out with Islamic terrorists in northern state of Jammu & Kashmir. Such social unrest proves very costly for the economic progress of any nation. India initiated the economic liberalization policies in 1991 under the then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and these policies have been followed by successive governments with little adjustments from time to time. The results are also apparent in some of the sectors like IT and banking. Particularly in the IT field Indian IT experts and entrepreneurs are regarded amongst the best world over. Outsourcing of IT enabled services from US, Canada, France, UK, Germany etc to Indian destinations has brought a windfall of opportunities for the young Indian IT pro. Now the youth barely out of their colleges become a call centre executive in a BPO with salaries far above than are available to their counterparts in other sectors. The rate with which the outsourcing to India is increasing, IT experts have predicted that in the near future the industry may not find enough qualified people to fill up the vacancies! This trend coupled with the growing confidence of MNCs in India appears all set to bring an economic turnaround in India. In fact some Indian companies led by the well known software companies like of Infosys, Wipro, TCS, etc. have started looking towards West for business tie-ups. For example the taking over of London based Arcelor steel by Indian company Mittal steels made interesting headline all over the world in the month of July/ August 2006. Recently Tata steels, bought over Corus steels. This trend indicates the increasing confidence of Indian venture capitalists. Vision 2020, a Planning Commission report of Govt. of India projects that by 2020, the people of India will be more numerous, better educated, healthier and more prosperous than at any time in the long history. The report indicates that in spite of the declining fertility rates, falling infant mortality and increasing life expectancy will spur an increase of at least 300 million people. As a result the total population of India will exceed 1.3 billion by 2020. Accordingly the successive Indian governments have started planning and execution of newer initiatives. In the Tenth Five Year Plan (2002-2007) the Planning Commission has outlined India's human development goals and targets for the next five to 10 years. Most of these are related to and are more ambitious than the UNDP's Millennium Development Goals. All these factors make it a favorable destination from investment point of view. I'd prefer 8 out of 10 on this count. References: 1. Dr. S.P. Gupta, "India Vision 2020", Report of a committee set up by Planning Commission of India, 2002 2. United Nations Development Programme website (http://www.undp.org.in/) 3. POPULATION PROJECTIONS FOR INDIA AND STATES 2001-2026, available online at http://www.censusindia.net/Projection_Report.pdf 4. 'India: The World's Largest Democracy', available online at http://www.beyondbooks.com/wcu91/3p.asp Read More