'Atmanirbhar' India must be competitive

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 'Atmanirbhar' India must be competitive

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• Atmanirbhar Bharat 2020: The earlier version of this self-dependent India (Nehru and Indira Gandhi times) led to a diversified economic base, but not high quality, technology and productivity. The latest 2020 version must not lead to the same.
• Why we failed earlier: The policy regime (industrial and trade) led to a licensing system and high tariffs to reduce imports. Markets became secondary, planning primary. It hurt.
• Some truths:

1. Most developed nations don't have the workforce to produe what they need, within their economy. Trade solves that. Immigration is controversial. So globalisation will not die.
2. Concentration is always bad, and companies & countries will diversify away from China for sure. If India becomes competitive, they will come to us.
3. Wealth for Indians will be generated when we build surpluses, and that is when we add high value to all our resources. We will anyway continue to import fossil fuels, capital equipment, rare earths, etc. So Atmanirbhar must come with being competitive.
4. Ten ways to do it: We can do both by following this plan -
1. Identify emerging needs quickly, in fields like defence, agriculture and healthcare. Example: Setting up of NBRIC (National Biomedical Research Indigenisation Consortium)
2. Build policies to end crony capitalism and grow domestic competition, if we seriously want to build strengths.
3. Control only critical value chains, and not everything. The recent move to produce 57 more APIs in India is a good example.
4. Subsidies and incentives must be performance-driven, and not generalised. Focus not just on volumes or revenues, but also on benchmarking with the best globally.
5. Right level of quality standards to get quality, safety and public health. Focus on local needs. Avoid useless high specifications.
6. Regulatory quality must improve. Why could CDSCO not do well during COVID crisis, and ICMR took the lead?
7. Public procurement strengthening is needed (e.g. GeM) and "quote to cash" cycle must be speeded up.
8. Grand challenges and competitions to be used more effectively, by ensuring IPR protection, and clear quality metrics.
9. Trade restrictions must be regularly reviewed, as raised tariffs on some lines may need to be relaxed after a while, else companies will fail to honour international contracts.
10. Business and trade alliances may be thought of in line with geopolitical realities, to maximise output for India.

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