One of the terms that has recently entered the business and political jargon is “game changer”. While there is no precise definition yet in the dictionaries, it usually connotes an event or a discovery or an action that can potentially bring complete transformation in the dynamics of the operating environment of the country or the sector or a specific entity.
It may be too early to conclude but it seems that the tectonic change in the age and other attributes of the overall demographic profile of the voting population has been the game changer in the recently concluded general election. Indeed, the PM himself and his party have acknowledged the impact of the youth and at the same time, their heightened expectations from the new government to meet their aspirations of having a better life for themselves.
Indeed, India’s challenges are myriad and the ground realities are such that no simple solutions can be found immediately, irrespective of the strength of the ruling party in the Parliament. One hopes that the new government will, therefore, get down to the onerous task of tackling these challenges without losing any more time and without making too many compromises on account of political expediency.
Having said that, could there be some conceptually simple “game-changing” ideological shifts that can then lead to some clearly articulated policy shifts which can then be followed up by a few highly focused implementation efforts? It is impossible to touch all the sectors of the Indian economy at one go. However, keeping in mind the urgency of achieving a job-creation led pan-India growth and keeping in mind the obligation of any government to fulfill critical social objectives such as food, shelter, education and healthcare, game-changing efforts have to be made in the few key sectors that have the most direct and indirect impact in meeting these expectations and obligations.
Let us start with the agriculture sector. One of the game-changers there could be to acknowledge that farm-level productivity has to be raised dramatically and the concurrently, farm-to-kitchen linkages have to be made much more efficient. The ideological shift needed is that India cannot directly or indirectly support two-thirds of its humongous population and therefore the highly fragmented farm land has to be aggregated to larger, more economically viable sizes and at the same time, tens of millions of farmers have to be taken out from farming activity to other vocations that do not require college education or huge amounts of capital. Hence, on one side, co-operative and corporate farming has to be facilitated and encouraged, on the other, grass-root level unskilled, semi-skilled, and skilled employment creating sectors such as road infrastructure, housing and other real estate, food processing, healthcare, and retail have to be given a policy fillip with a special focus on rural and small-town India oriented investment.
The game changing ideological and policy shift in the education sector has to be that for-profit education is to be encouraged concurrently with enhanced public spending on primary, secondary, and higher education. Even if the government’s support to the education sector is increased manifold from the current levels, the demand-supply gap (and especially for higher quality, cutting edge education) cannot be met unless a very large amount of non-government resource mobilisation into this sector—both from within India and overseas—is done.
The game changing ideological shift in the healthcare sector has to be that India urgently needs good (not necessarily the best) quality healthcare that is affordable and easily accessible to the bottom 1 billion of the 1.2 billion population. For this, as much as $500 billion in additional investment has to be mobilized over the next 10 years and then an additional $500 billion over the next ten. The policy shift requires a slew of fiscal measures encouraging setting up of healthcare infrastructure in all but the top-20 urban centres, with focus on achieving accessibility and affordability.
In the real estate sector, many reforms can be undertaken. Perhaps the single most important one to make housing and commercial space more affordable is an intelligent relaxation of FAR norms without the charade of regularising illegal colonies or sanctioning additional floors on already densely built and populated city centres. If Hong Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Singapore can tackle acute land shortages by having appropriate FAR norms, why should the urban development ministries in India continue to live with archaic beliefs and norms?
For giving a fillip to multiple sectors including agriculture, real estate, small and medium scale manufacturing, and exports while creating tens of millions of pan-India semi-skilled and skilled jobs, the game-changing ideological shift is to intelligently understand the role of modern, organised retailing. The sector needs and can absorb tens of billions of dollars of investment, and there should be no ideological resistance to direct or indirect investment from overseas. Further, once the ideological baggage on this issue has been shed, the government must support investment activity at one go rather than come up with complicated norms and press-notes.
Indeed, India—both the government and the industry—does need game-changing thinking. Hopefully, there will be encouraging evidence of this in the coming days and weeks and years.
