I just came across this article. Few excerpts...
While India grapples with 2G, dropping quality standards, calling 256 Kb/second speed as broadband and 3G Spectrum, the world has moved on. In UK, British Telecom is already offering 8 Mb/second speeds to household users. More importantly, closer home, China has tested its own 4G technology for mobile telephones.
In short, what is being said is that we have no hope in hell to catch up. When foreign companies set up manufacturing facilities in China, their government extracts commitments from them on R&D, sharing of knowledge and royalty payments waivers.
In India, we make necessary noises like making it compulsory to manufacture if overseas companies want any government contract. But what they do in the garb of manufacturing is known to all except the benign powers-that-be.
So, whether it is Nokia or Ericsson or Motorola, all of whom incidentally are setting up 'manufacturing' bases in Chennai, or whoever else, they are contributing zilch to India's knowledge bank.
They merely assemble products here using their patented parts and set their cash registers ringing, while our own manufacturing initiatives lie in tatters.
There has been this constant clamour from domestic hardware manufacturers for incentives from the government. However, none except the service industry has seen anything come their way.
Our infrastructure (Rail, Roads, Ports, Airports, Power, Water, Sanitation, Health, Education, Housing etc) is poor even compared to China/South East Asia. Take for example, New Delhi, we have constantly been facing power shortage (esp in Summer and now even in Winter) since last 10 years or so, and still no govt did anything to generate additional power, upar se I read somewhere that 50% of the electricity is lost in Delhi (Transmission + theft). Roads/old flyovers, poor maintainance...worst thing about us is that we are ZERO at maintaining things, PWD/CPWD builds new flyovers and within weeks/months they look like years old, roads are no better..even in the India Gate circle (I daily cross it on my way to office/home), there are potholes. Lawns around India Gate/Rajpath are poorly maintained...all I can say is that they look embarassing. Water, same old story every summer, water shortages all around, 24 hours water is a dream...many people are forced to buy water for daily chores. Same story again, 20-30% of water is lost due to leakages/theft. Yamuna River is a stinking nallah. Upar se itni gandagi, dust...pollution...trash. This is Delhi so it gets national coverage, situation in other parts of India must be worse. Upar se we do not have any civic sense, kahin par bhi spit karo...nose blow karo...traffic rules break karo...and so many small small but important things.
Our cities stand nowhere close to even Bangkok, Indira Gandhi IA looks like a Train Station...after thinking so so many years finally Airports are getting renovated(?)...we are TOO slow in taking and implementing decisions, projects never get completed on time.
And we still keep boasting about our 8% GDP growth rate, India being a developed nation by 2020...and a Software/BPO/KPO Superpower...blah-blah. In our obsession with IT we seem to have forgotton about other sectors, IT may be contributing handsomely to our economy but it would be a mistake to ignore Agriculture/Manufacturing sectors as these are the sectors which generate maximum no of jobs. Look at China, they have become the factory of the World while creating millions of jobs and hence pulling out countless people out of poverty.
The pathetic quality of netas/administrators is not helping us a bit and not to forget our own callousness.
Phew...I could go on and on....
Kumkum Bhagya
