New India at World Stage

India has surely leapt into the front-row seat in post Covid world order due to its large scale implementation capabilities demonstrated in handling the pandemic while considering welfare of all at home with Sabka Saath and abroad with Vaccine Maitri. Achieving this in a democratic setup is indeed wonderful news for all poor and needy across the globe. This has not been accidental when one looks at the Ethos of Atmanirbhar Bharat, a mass movement, which is deeply rooted in the values of this young nation.

Framers of the Indian Constitution have set forth an enormous and unique challenge of simultaneously completing India’s triple transition across social, political and economic fields. India is one rare country of this size and complexity which has taken on this challenge of getting on to the three transitions together.

The inherent power of owning up to this arduous task seems to have stemmed from the rare surviving ancient culture of the land of this young nation. Energy of youth and availability of a belief system of timeless wisdom!

“We shall frame the Constitution, and I hope it will be a good constitution, but does anyone in this House imagine that, when a free India emerges, it will be bound down by anything that even this House might lay down for it? A free India will see the bursting forth of the energy of a mighty nation.…May this Resolution bear fruit and may the time come when in the words of this Resolution, this ancient land attains its rightful and honoured place in the world and makes its full and willing contribution to the promotion of world peace and the welfare of mankind.” Pd Jawahar Nehru spoke these words on 22 Jan 1947 during the closing of the debate on Resolution of the Constitution, representing the Constituent Assembly.

As Leadership in India looks to the next 25 years with a Vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat and Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, every interaction at global stage is going to be closely monitored world over.

Despair to Hope and Confidence within a Year

Celebrating 1 year of the national vaccination drive, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated today that India’s approach to fighting the pandemic will always remain science-based. This was evident from the very beginning, as last year Emergency Use Authorisation was granted to two “Made in India” vaccines namely, Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin. Then Nationwide rollout of Vaccination began for doctors, healthcare workers, frontline workers including Safai Karamcharis which later on got extended to all adults in stages and even to the adolescent population this year. To ensure gender parity in the Nationwide vaccination drive, the government has made concentrated efforts due to which a total of 49% Females and 51% males have received vaccine doses till date.

As we take stock of the last one year, India is leading the world with its fastest vaccination pace. It has not been an easy journey – the sudden nature of the pandemic, the need for tough and far-reaching decisions amidst a lot of conflicting, incomplete and even wrong information were clearly baffling all across the globe. Further, huge population and consequent shortage of supply at the initial stage together with the need for Government procurement and large scale deployment, including the issue of vaccine hesitancy came as added problems.

PM Modi led from the front in tackling these challenges, especially in engagements for clear communication to create awareness about vaccine safety and building trust. His images from the AIIMS vaccination site, perhaps, boosted the confidence of citizens to go and get vaccinated.

The success of crossing over 155 crores administered doses within a year is a testament to the large scale project deployment capabilities of “New India”. Clear communication from leaders and experts has played a pivotal role in achieving this staggering level of vaccination, esp. in combating fake news and bringing down vaccine hesitancy. To know its importance one can look at the USA where governments had to announce lotteries, scholarships, saving bonds and even cash payouts to encourage people to shed fear and resistance to vaccines.

This success is not only about producing, procuring, distributing and administering vaccines. The needed healthcare infrastructure spending was a big ask. This coupled with extending the availability of food to a large percentage of the population, making provisions to support businesses to get back to production and operations as soon as possible are testaments of a country ready for large scale deployments. There is a lot to be done towards the economic recovery of MSMEs, the rural economy and the poor in the cities – the ones very badly affected by the pandemic and its handling in the form of lockdowns. India is ready and on track to overcome these challenges and make the 2020s a Decisive Decade of Growth.

Entrepreneurship: Open Secret

Critics don’t want any failures to happen in the success story of entrepreneurs and start-ups. They claim the stories of failures are well-hidden as if a state-run media doesn’t want the truth to come out. The risk-taking ability of an entrepreneur is squarely equated to a gambling nature and anyone succeeding is just a rare occurrence.

They are not ready to accept that overcoming failures is the only way to success, not giving up. Did we not learn even the most basic activities by overcoming failures or giving up after the first few attempts of walking, eating, or dressing? Rather, making systemic changes to reduce the chances of failure and positively dealing with such failures to fight back should be prioritised. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi outlined, “First, to liberate entrepreneurship, innovation from the web of government processes, bureaucratic silos. Second, creating an institutional mechanism to promote innovation & third, handholding of young innovators, youth enterprise.”. Indeed, Wealth Creators need to be respected by doomsday predictors.

A simple yet powerful framework of risk assessment is a 2×2 matrix of known, unknown and manageable, unmanageable. No one has any issues with ‘known, manageable’ and ‘unknown, unmanageable’ can’t be planned for. You bring in experts for ‘unknown, manageable’ and build a protection mechanism in the form of insurance, etc for ‘known, unmanageable’. This is precisely how an Entrepreneur operates when deciding on team expansion and bringing in investors, she is not a habitual gambler.

What helps with this process is continuous learning opportunities and India is proving to be on the right track. India has the third-largest ecosystem for Startups and is the fasted growing ecosystem for Unicorns. “India has more than 1,000 universities, over 11,000 stand-alone institutions, 42,000+ colleges & lakhs of schools…India is constantly learning & innovating…it’s ranking in Global Innovation Index has jumped from 81 in 2015 to 46 in 2021… In a bid to spread startup culture far and wide across the country, 16 January will now be celebrated as ‘National Startup Day’”, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in interaction with more than 150 startups which had been divided into six working groups based on themes including Growing from Roots; Nudging the DNA; From Local to Global; Technology of Future; Building Champions in Manufacturing; and Sustainable Development.

With the advent of the digital age collecting and handling a large amount of data has become possible and cheap as well in recent years. This allows any motivated youngster to look around and spot opportunities to solve problems ailing the residents of his family, mohalla, village, town, district, state, country, or internationally. The rise of entrepreneurship has been a big equalizer too as 45% of startups in India are from smaller cities, and 45% of enterprises are run by women. India needs to trust and support its young, they are leading the country to a better future.

Enigma of Adarsh Gram

“You see,” Gandhi began, “the centre of power now is in New Delhi, or in Calcutta and Bombay, in the big cities. I would have it distributed among the seven hundred thousand villages of India. That will mean that there is no power… nobody could deprive them of their assets. There will then be voluntary cooperation between these seven hundred thousand units, voluntary cooperation – not cooperation induced by Nazi methods. Voluntary cooperation will produce real freedom and a new order vastly superior to the new order in Soviet Russia…. a system like the one I have outlined to you did exist though it undoubtedly had its weakness, else it would not have succumbed before the Moghuls and the British. I would like to think that parts of it have survived, that the roots have survived despite the ravages of British rule. Those roots and the stock are waiting to sprout…” Mahatma Gandhi‘s these words were noted by American journalist Louis Fischer in his book “A week with Gandhi” (4 to 10 June 1942).

There have been many attempts to realise this vision of Mahatma Gandhi that Indian villages are empowered and model of development. There certainly is a need to audit why Member of Parliament Model Village Yojana has not been successful since its inception in 2014. On the other hand, PMAGY was started in 2009 but the work could begin only in 2014 and now once more, Prime Minister Adarsh Gram Yojana has set a target to develop 8,000 model villages in next six months. Further, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has determined to convert every scheduled caste majority village into a model village by 2025. As there are over 27,000 such villages, the work needs to be taken up on priority basis to achieve this target.

With monitorable indicators of villages provided with adequate sources of drinking water, villages with school creation, villages connected with all-weather road, and number of villages electrified, this programme is indeed the need of the hour to achieve Mahatma Gandhi‘s vision. Yet less than 20,000 villages have been covered so far under this Yojna. The slow progress highlights the need of much more aggressive redressal of implementation issues.

Why Members of Parliament, cutting across party lines, have not been able to develop model villages is a serious cause of concern. Perhaps a debate on this in the upcoming parliamentary session to find out the causes and resolve them would be a welcome step.

Banking on Unbanked

“Don’t have enough money to meet minimum balance requirements”, was the most cited main reason by unbanked Americans, still around 5.4% of households, FDIC reported last month. In contrast, the visionary step of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to have no such requirement for Jan Dhan Yojana has brought in a silent revolution. More than entire population of the USA has now obtained access to the banking system in India since the inception of PMJDY.

Atmanirbhar Bharat is turning into a mass movement similar to Namak Satyagrah. Access to financial services to the last person of the society – the poorest of poor, by PMJDY led interventions is perhaps the biggest enabler. This national mission for financial inclusion ensures access to financial services, namely, banking – savings and deposit accounts, insurance, remittance, credit, pension in an affordable manner. It is worthwhile to note the pace at which unbanked in India are catching up to the best in the world. The FDIC survey, started in 2009 in the aftermath of GFC, has just now begun to ask questions on bill payment services and use of a website for ETP to send or receive money domestically – which we know is almost ubiquitous now in India.

Indeed, sorting out reported accessing problems of Jan Dhan accounts and Aadhaar enabled payment systems need to be done on priority basis. So too is reaching out for still unbanked Indians, especially women, for enabling PMJDY further to reach 100% of India’s household.

The masterstroke of starting accounts with zero balance is evident in the amount actually deposited in these accounts. Total deposits crossed over ₹1.5 lakh crores. Let’s look at some comparisons to sense the victory of these zero opening-balance account deposits. How much cash does Reliance, India’s largest corporation, have in banks – less than ₹20,000 crores! What is the cash balance of well known national banks, say Bank of Baroda, ₹1.2–1.8 lakh crore.

Success of PMJDY can largely be attributed to uncomplicated access to these banking services to anyone who wants it, i.e. there is no categorisation of beneficiaries, which largely stems from the mantra of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas. The provisions made to ease account opening and operations in the form of no minimum balance requirement, embedded accident insurance cover, banking service on any phone (read non-smartphone), active monitoring and grievance–redressal mechanism have made this grand success feasible. India shows yet again a large-scale implementation capability not seen anywhere else in the world.