Booming economy back home beckons Indians
The filing of bankruptcy by the Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch selling itself to Bank of America, and AIG turning to the Federal Reserve for emergency funding, has changed the way the global economy performed not just US. It sent shivers down the spines of bourses across the world and India was a no exception. However, the developing economy that India is, with its huge pool of young blood holds a lot of promise as Sanjeev Sanyal, who works in the Deutsche Bank, has written in his new book "The Indian Renaissance: India's Rise After a Thousand Years of Decline. He feels that India is at a very extraordinary turning point. "My book is a celebration of the economic boom. For the first time in 1,000 years, we have a generation who can take on the world.We had shrunk inwards after the 11th century since crossing of the seas was banned.The inward looking socialist policies protected ourselves from the evil external world, but now there is a fundamental shift in the way we perceive ourselves," says Sanyal.
The best example of 'India Rising' could be the fact that 75 percent of this year's graduating class from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore opted for jobs in India with more growth opportunities being the prime reason.Another statistics says that between 1964 and 2001, 35 percent of graduates from the seven IITs moved to the US for work or studies. But at around the time when India's economy achieved near double-digit annual GDP growth rates, the number of IIT graduates leaving for the States dropped sharply. From 2002 onwards, only 16 percent have opted for the US jobs.
With multinationals looking to India as the biggest market after China and shifting their manufacturing operations to India, jobs are bound to increase. Just days back Pepsico chairperson Indra Nooyi declared that PepsiCo will invest $500 million in India over the next three years to triple the turnover out of one of the top five markets for the group by 2014. The investment, towards capacity upgrades, infrastructure, research, new products development, environment sustainability and agriculture, will create 50,000 more direct and indirect jobs.
Driven by strong economic growth salaries in India are expected to increase by 16% in 2009, one of the highest in the Asia-pacific region, a latest report by the Hong Kong-based compensation firm HR Business Solutions (HRBS) says.This pay increases in the Asia-Pacific region is likely to grow even as the economies are expected to be impacted by the global slowdown. "The forecast pay increase in India averaging 16% is one of the highest among all the countries," the report stated.
India's economy has grown by more than 9% for three years running and has seen a decade of 7%+ growth. This has reduced poverty by 10% but with 60% of India's 1.1 billion population living off agriculture and with droughts and floods increasing, poverty alleviation is still a major challenge.The growth rate of the service sector was 11.18% in 2007 and now contributes 53% of GDP.The industrial sector grew 10.63% in the same period and is now 29% of GDP. Agriculture is 17% of the Indian economy. Over all the scene seems optimistic enough to lure back Indians.
- Editor
