Indian bureaucrats ‘policy’ making continues
30 September 2011
During the last few weeks that I have been in hospital, the world has indeed changed.
I see that the Libyan ‘revolution’ gathered pace and an unpopular dictator (and his notorious family), with an oil ‘high’ was displaced after four plus decades.
England has had, as yet inexplicable riots negating any prospects of my going to London for the Proms after recovery. The US debt was downgraded by S & P (led at that time by an Indian from a small Indian town).
The Euro continues to totter despite the best intentions of Germany, and China complains of Islamist terrorists trained in Pakistan (China’s all weather friends) camps attacking targets in Xinjiang province. Google takes over Motorola Mobility, Apple, along with Microsoft, take over Novell’s patents and RIM helps in the take-over of patents held by bankrupt Nortel and those of IBM.
But here in India, some things never change. The Government, despite the failure of its earlier grandiose ‘policies’ especially those related to semiconductors, in mid August announced a new ‘hardware manufacturing policy’ (along with a new manufacturing policy due later in Sept.2011). The new policies deal with self reliance, security concerns and also hopefully to compete directly with China in the electronics manufacturing space particularly focused on IT hardware, telecom networks and other electronic hardware items.
In addition to addressing the above aspects, the Government Ministry of Communications and IT suggests that this policy will create some 100 million direct and indirect jobs by 2025.
I know Indian bureaucrats love writing these reports and making new policies that sound good in the media, but one wonders how many actual pragmatic engineers were involved in the exercise. Did anyone bring up the issue of letting market forces work and enabling and strengthening such market forces? After all it was the absence of Government interference and policies that got the Indian Software business into a world leadership position, so that even global electronics production equipment manufacturers have their development centres in India but no direct outlets.
Market forces and local market specification demand driven Indian owned companies, starting virtually from scratch, are already assembling huge quantities of mobile phones and have managed to knock a significant market share off the leader Nokia, even though the latter does its manufacturing in India. According to the research firm Strategy Analytics, the Indian company Micromax is now the 12th largest handset manufacturer globally shipping some 15 million handsets annually.
Locally assembled Android-based tablets are now in the Indian market with prices ranging from $150 to an apps bundled, 3G-enabled data handling, 7in tablet running on an 800MHz processor at under $300. These products are already taking away large market shares from leading players like Apple and Samsung. Yet, there has been no Government ‘policies’ promoting such products. These Indian companies have just been responding to market forces and succeeding in a big way.
Even in the sphere of more professional electronics, Sloka Telecom, a local company established in 2004 with its own in-house technology, is now a leader in wireless communications equipment. Sloka’s revolutionary new technology and architecture enables it to make very compact and cost effective base stations and consumer premise equipment. This enables much smaller radio access networks such as for WiMAX, and eliminates the need for expensive cables, storage areas and air conditioned housing units. All of this is just responding to market forces.
I have no objection to relevant Government organisations ensuring full security compliance with imported, as well as locally produced communication systems, especially those meant for sensitive defence and governmental sectors. So let them ensure that even the locally assembled products of Nokia Siemens Networks, Ericsson, ZTE, Hua Wei etc. conform to laid down standards. But another manufacturing policy without a thought for market forces seems like a bureaucratic ‘Alice in Blunderland’ exercise!
As always, the opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of EMTWorldWide. If you would like to comment on this article please contact the Editor at: alistair.winning@imlgroup.co.uk.
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