In our Corporate Strategy project on Nokia India, we saw how Nokia could foresee in early nineties the forthcoming telecom revolution in India. Most of the other companies then would have found the idea of the illiterate villagers evolving in mobile technology users as amusing. Today, Nokia India is an important unit of the parent company, to the extent it even makes up for the lost sales in some other parts of the world.
There are a number of similar revolutions which have only started to unfold and their real impact will be visible in a few years from now. One of them is in the field of Agriculture i.e. in the procurement and marketing of the food grains. Some years back we were learning the ways to protect the small and marginal farmers, from distress sale of their crops, through the intervention of the Food Corporation of India (FCI). Today in parts of the country, FCI faces problem in meeting its procurement targets as market forces are paying more for the farm produce. ITC’s chaupals signify the tip of the iceberg.
In the field of Agricultural Commodities exchange, a lot of changes in the legislation along with the ways and means of food grain procurement could be expected in days to come. And to make the field more exciting, trade based upon the expected future prices of the grains could be common. And the prices could be governed by the global market prices instead of those dictated by the local trader in local ‘haat’ or ‘mandi’.
Beyond trade when we talk of services- ask the experts and they will enlighten you that in the days to come Government will be mainly involved in Health, Primary education, and infrastructure and defense sectors. But that is similar to the oversight of the basic facts about the telecom sector many years back; but which revolutionized the sector i.e. the importance of communications for millions of out migrating rural people.
So as long as the poorest of the poor rural people continue to pay more than the people in cities to the ‘quack doctors’, there will be necessity of organized industry intervention. And as long as untrained individuals continue to flourish with their ‘Montessori’ schools on Bangladesh border, there will be requirement for organized teaching institutions. This coupled with the fact that most Government employees have ‘permanent’ postings and politicians need re-election every five years, the delivery of the ‘official mechanism’ can be improved but at most ‘little’.
And it doesn’t take a genius to guess the magnitude of the ‘industry’ which is waiting to be organized by proper ideas and the knowledge of the grass roots; and about the size of the market, may be the ‘next billion’ for the first step.
There are a number of similar revolutions which have only started to unfold and their real impact will be visible in a few years from now. One of them is in the field of Agriculture i.e. in the procurement and marketing of the food grains. Some years back we were learning the ways to protect the small and marginal farmers, from distress sale of their crops, through the intervention of the Food Corporation of India (FCI). Today in parts of the country, FCI faces problem in meeting its procurement targets as market forces are paying more for the farm produce. ITC’s chaupals signify the tip of the iceberg.
In the field of Agricultural Commodities exchange, a lot of changes in the legislation along with the ways and means of food grain procurement could be expected in days to come. And to make the field more exciting, trade based upon the expected future prices of the grains could be common. And the prices could be governed by the global market prices instead of those dictated by the local trader in local ‘haat’ or ‘mandi’.
Beyond trade when we talk of services- ask the experts and they will enlighten you that in the days to come Government will be mainly involved in Health, Primary education, and infrastructure and defense sectors. But that is similar to the oversight of the basic facts about the telecom sector many years back; but which revolutionized the sector i.e. the importance of communications for millions of out migrating rural people.
So as long as the poorest of the poor rural people continue to pay more than the people in cities to the ‘quack doctors’, there will be necessity of organized industry intervention. And as long as untrained individuals continue to flourish with their ‘Montessori’ schools on Bangladesh border, there will be requirement for organized teaching institutions. This coupled with the fact that most Government employees have ‘permanent’ postings and politicians need re-election every five years, the delivery of the ‘official mechanism’ can be improved but at most ‘little’.
And it doesn’t take a genius to guess the magnitude of the ‘industry’ which is waiting to be organized by proper ideas and the knowledge of the grass roots; and about the size of the market, may be the ‘next billion’ for the first step.
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