After liberalization in 1991 and 1999 NTP policy where all the policy targets like providing equal level playing field for all players and make affordable and effective communication targets were met little has been done in implementing the policies framed by government later on. Apart from policy paralysis their regressive policies like taxing Vodafone has sent a wrong signal to foreign investors looking to invest in Indian telecom sector. Apart from this is the infamous 2G scam where lots of foreign companies who had invested in Indian telecom companies and lost their licenses due to Supreme Court ruling felt cheated by their Indian partners and Indian judicial system as many of these companies were unaware of the bribery in which their Indian partners were indulged. Along with these factors are some other factors which are acting as bottlenecks in telecom industry’s growth. Let us now look at these factors one by one.

BROADBAND

The government in the form of national telecom policy has laid down a preposterous target of providing 175 million broadband connections by the year 2017 and 600 million by the year 2020.This target comes under the NOFN project of the government which proposes a plan to connect all the 2,50,000 gram panchayat (GP) in the country through optic fiber in order to provide high-speed data which many terms as unviable since in order to achieve its’ target government has planned to invest around 20k cr while many believe it should be of 40k cr .

Also the govt. has proposed to offer this technology at 1.4 lakh per gram panchayat while Gujarat is employing this same scheme at 40 lakh per gram panchayat which led to fears of another scam in making after 2G scam. Another thing which creates the heavy bunch of cloud on this scheme is that it this project was envisioned in 2011 and was expected to be completed by oct 2013 but nothing concrete has been achieved till now. Another impeding factor has been the government’s reluctance to allow active infrastructure sharing by Infrastructure provider companies for optical fiber cable access networks which has kept these companies from investing in developing access network which requires huge capex.

Measures to improve broadband:-

• Active infrastructure sharing should be allowed
• Government should implement the provision of high speed Wireline broadband infrastructure in the building code of buildings like South Korea has been implementing Emblem policy which is a requirement that buildings obtain and display certification indicating the level of internet connectivity available to residents at the premise while china has made mandatory for new buildings which are to be constructed in an area where a public fiber optic telecom network is available to be equipped with fiber network connections.
• Government can also lessen or do away with the burden of spectrum usage charges on broadband revenue.
• Government should encourage infrastructure provider companies to build the optical fibre access networks which can be shared by multiple service providers
• Government can look to implement Project Loon which will enable them to provide internet broadband services in rural areas at cheaper price.

SPECTRUM

Despite government making billions from auctions the quality of voice calls remains poor and nothing much can be written about broadband and data services across the country. Government has failed to efficiently allocate and utilize the available spectrum as several chunks of spectrum are lying unused with several government departments with a major chunk lying unused with Defence ministry.

Also the government has failed to provide telecom operators with contiguous spectrums which are required by higher technologies like 3G and 4G for smooth operation without any impairment. Apart from this government’s stand on spectrum sharing and trading is needed to be made clearer since spectrum sharing and trading will not only help in efficient utilization of spectrum but also will generate revenues for telcos.

Measures for Efficient Spectrum Utilization:-

• Government should free up spectrum under the control of their departments which is largely unused for an auction to the telcos
• Provide with telcos contiguous spectrum blocks as high speed and quality data transmission has become topmost priority for telcos
• Policy on spectrum sharing and trading should be made clear
• In-Building solutions/Distributed Antenna Systems should be planned for big and high rise buildings which will not only save on spectrum but also significantly improve quality of transmission

TAX

Despite telecom industry being reeling under huge debts has not government from imposing undue taxes on it. For a long time now telecom sector has been milch cow for governments of India. The taxes paid by Indian telcos are 30% of their total revenues while it is only 5% for other countries in Asia-pacific region.

What is more baffling is that the telcos have to pay Universal Services Obligation Fund of 5% for providing services in commercially unviable places, hence, rather than supporting rural mobile penetration government is rather discouraging telcos to provide connectivity in remote and rural areas. Another bone of contention is the high custom duty on import of telecom equipment, with indigenous equipment manufacturing industry relatively weaker high custom duty has been hurting telcos pretty badly.

Measures needed to be taken:-

• USO fund levy and spectrum usage charges should be reduced or totally scrapped as these taxes are totally unjustifiable.
• Commercial debt should be available to telecom sector as banks have reached their sectorial limits.
• GST(Goods and Services Tax) should be introduced as quickly as possible as it can reduce the product cost by 20% which will encourage local manufacturers to manufacture telecom equipment at lower cost than foreign manufacturers enabling telcos to purchase equipment from India rather than importing.
• Since telecom sector has been awarded the infrastructure status, it should be given benefits of this status in parity with other infrastructure sectors like tax holidays, reduced interest on debt, sourcing of funds from special funding agencies and priority availability of grid power.

Other Governance Issues:-

Government in 2010 came up with preferential market access policy which was then limited to only government sector for procurement of telecom equipment with security implications. Subsequently it was extended to private industry to give domestic manufacturing a boost. This policy send the bad signal to the companies like Alcatel-Lucent , Ericsson who have already invested heavily in our country and other companies who are looking to invest India hence posing a serious threat to foreign investment in India.

However the government in 2013 backtracked to exempt private sector from this policy, this policy needs to be completely abolished.

Other policy issue has been regarding tower installation. In order to set the tower multiple approvals are being required and there also has been delay in processing of applications. Also, multiple levies and charges are being imposed on tower infra installation resulting in a slow rollout of towers. Hence, these concerns need to be taken care of as recent estimate indicate requirement of more than 1.5 lakh towers to support increased data service demands and expansion of telecom to various parts of the country.

Hence, considering all these governance issues immediate steps are required by the new government to rectify the steps taken by the previous government and get the once blooming industry right back on track by taking all the measures discussed above into its consideration. Also, the importance of telecom sector can be attributed to the fact that every 10 percent teledensity rise leads to 1.2 percent rise in GDP rate and also telecom has been contributing at least 6.9 percent annually to GDP and employs 1.5 cr of India’s population. Hence it is imperative that immediate steps are to be taken to let Indian telecom realize its full potential and write a successful story for the Indian economy.

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In order to understand why big data has created such a buzz in the tech world, one need to look at the fact more than 90% of the data in the world has been produced in just last two years. This clearly shows how all of a sudden data explosion has taken place, which majorly is a result of growing internet and smartphone penetration combined with the increased no. of hours people spend on internet as people have now evolved from information consumers to producers. Hence, in order to store and process this high amount of structured and unstructured data, big data solutions have become absolute necessity for achieving organizations’ goals and objectives.

Everyday exabytes of data is being produced, which makes it imperative for the companies to use this data and draw such meaningful insights out of it to achieve competitive edge over their competitors.

Out of the all the possible applications of Big Data analytics, marketing has been the most exploited one with marketing departments across numerous companies are spending major portion of their allocated budget on it.

Earlier, where advertisements channels were limited to only newspapers, television and radio, this landscape broadened itself to websites, social media and e-mails, providing more options to the advertisers to reach their customers.

Considering that people nowadays spend more time on internet than any other media platform, advertising agencies are focusing more on digital media and since mobile is mobile is major driving force of internet, major efforts by them are being made for mobile and smartphone platforms.

Emergence of e-commerce companies has revolutionized the marketing initiatives of the marketers. Since, many people now purchase products online, with the help of big data analytics; advertisers can draw out key insights about customer’s purchase behavior, their likes and dislikes and can then provide them targeted advertisements based on it.

Marketers with the help of social media website and blogs which contributes to the major share of internet time of people can determine the success of their marketing campaigns by analyzing the feedback their consumers had posted on these social websites and blogs.

Also feedbacks posted on social media regarding company’s products and services can be utilized to make changes to their product and service offerings according to the needs of their customers. This can save billions of dollars which companies invest for marketing research purposes.

Marketers can also use social media platform to find their potential customers by analyzing the profile of the person and determining his preferences and purchasing behavior, which can tell them whether their product offerings match his preferences or not.

Service provider marketers on the other hand with the help of data collected by heir CRMs can determine the service usage pattern of their customers and can also determine the services their prefer to use. Based on this collected data they can offer customized service usage plans designed specifically for them.

Marketers can also use big data analytics to proactively detect and control any customer churn which can happen in the future by analyzing the usage pattern of the customers. If customers are found out to be reducing their purchase of goods or services or have posted negative feedback about them then it is a clear indication that those customers will churn out in the future. Marketers can use this information to provide discount offers or some other sort of benefit to their customers to prevent them from churning out. They can also directly interact with the customer to clear their apprehensions or doubts about the product or service. These endeavors by marketers not only enhance customer satisfaction but leads to high degree of customer loyalty.

Hence, by looking at all the benefits provided by big data analytics to the marketers, there is no doubt that big data will continue to play a prominent role in their future efforts to acquire more and more customers while retaining the existing ones. Also with the technology enhancements in data processing techniques and costs associated with it becoming more affordable, it is expected that more companies will adopt bid data solutions as only few are using it for their operations.

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Sales automation is a technique used by companies of today to automate the business tasks of sales department which includes contact management, information sharing, inventory monitoring, customer management, sales forecasting, order tracking , employee performance analysis etc.

Sales automation software is generally the CRM software which holds the information pertaining to the customers regarding their preferences, personal information, payment history, purchase history etc.

CRM is the central repository of data which holds all the important information required by the enterprise to achieve to their marketing and support objectives apart from achieving sales objectives.

Sales automation software automatically takes note of all stages in the sales process. It includes the contact management system with tracks all the contacts made with a specific customer, the purpose of this contact and any follow-up which might be required in the near future to ascertain that all the needs of the customer pertaining to the product or service are being taken care off. This ensures high degree of customer satisfaction while eliminating the risk of repeating the sales effort which might irritate the customer.

It also has sales lead tracking system which contains list of potential customers and information about them which helps the sales person to target them with offer that is most suitable for them .This central management system ensures that no two persons cater to the same lead and also they have the complete picture of the potential customer before pitch him with their offer.

Another important component of sales automation software is order management system while helps both customer and company to track their purchase order. Company uses it to track their order from vendors and suppliers while customer use it to track their product order from the company itself. It also helps the company to issue a purchase request automatically to the vendor when the once the inventory reaches below the threshold level configured by the company making the whole process more efficient.

Sales forecasting though sales automation software can be done by analyzing the past trends and data available to the enterprise which is displayed to the person operating it in terms of graphs and other relevant visualizations through which he can effectively forecast the future demand of particular product with respect to different regions where the company operates. This helps the firm in effective financial, inventory, and manufacturing planning.

It also helps the enterprise in managing the credit made available by it to its customers. Based on the past track record companies can fix certain credit limit for each and every customer, which if breached would be informed by the sales automation software to the enterprise about it and then the enterprise can either limit credit to the customer or can ask for immediate payment from the customer. They can also feed credit cycle or bill cycle for the customer, which notifies the company of payment collection once the cycle comes to an end. Same process can implemented for vendors which will inform the company to pay the amount to them once the bill cycle completes its course. Contract renewal notification is another important feature of this software which notifies the enterprise of the date when the existing contract terminates and need to renew it with their existing vendors and customers.

Hence, sales automation adds a great sense of proficiency and efficiency to the operations of an enterprise while significantly cutting down on costs and errors which an enterprise might endure during the normal course of operation. It also helps the firm to increase its revenue through customer acquisition and by increased customer loyalty. It also presents the firm with hot selling and cold selling opportunities which further augments their revenues.

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Home automation system has reached a revolutionary stage, where any person with home automation at his place can control action of its home appliances with just a touch on his screen and everything then is done by appliances itself. But with predictive analytics coming into picture, even that functionality is not required on the behalf of the person but rather machines are slowly by slowly using business intelligence and analytics tools are analyzing the behavior of the person and are conducting actions on their own.

One of the major steps being taken in this direction is by mood sensing technology. Mood sensing is latest phenomenon which big every company is trying to pitch for. Currently Apple and Microsoft are the big names which have claimed to invent this technology and have claimed for its patent, similarly Kaist a Korean company has claimed patent for the same technology. Mood sensors works by sensing any tiny changes in the goose bumps known as piloerections. These tiny changes can reflect the person’s mood and could be used to determine everything from their experience of music, online ads, TV programs, temperature etc. Moods sensors can analyze your moods and accordingly adjust the brightness and color of room lights for you; it can also adjust the type of music and tv program to be played on Tv by analyzing your mood for you.

The most important feature of mood sensing technology is advertisements which are one of the major sources of revenue for the companies like Google and Facebook, which is prompting other companies like Apple and Microsoft to explore this space due to its potential to offer great revenue generation opportunities for them. One of the major scenarios in online ads has been Location based ads, where the service provider sends ads according to the current location of the customer but the satisfaction level or lead generation opportunity for the service provider highly depends on the current mood of the customer.

If the person is in bad mood then he might ignore the ad, while message delivery cost of the service provider will also go to waste and it might also create the negative mindset in the person for the service provider, leading to the customer loss for it. Hence, through mood sensing technology the service provider can not  only bring higher satisfaction level for its customers but can also get more loyal customers while also optimizing their costs(as they will be sending ads only when the customer is in good mood). Apple through mood sensing is most likely going to attempt at controlling the timing of out-and-about push advertisements, like getting delivered a coupon for a latte when you stroll past your local coffee shop. The filing reads that Apple will include “deliver content that is selected, at least in part, based on the inferred mood.

Some of the products regarding mood sensing have already hit the market .The technology to tune your music to your running rate has been around for a while, with devices such as the Nike+, and adaptive playlisters like Songza can select music according to your mood – even letting you give a “thumbs down” to stuff that doesn’t match. There are also headphones, made by Japanese company Neurowear, that scan your brainwaves to select the music on your smartphone that matches your frame of mind. While for the skin sensing technology wristbands are considered to be the most suitable wearable device.

Data flow(home automation)

• Skin sensors in wristband or headgear on the head will detect your mood analyzing changes in your goose bumps erection or brainwaves.
• This information will then be send to the home gateway which will control the devices around your environment to switch according to your mood.

Data flow (online ads)

• Skin sensors in wristband or headgear on the head will detect your mood analyzing changes in your goose bumps erection or brainwaves.
• This information will be send to your mobile phone which is connected to the wearable mood sensing device through any of the near field communication technologies but considering Bluetooth is most used technology in mobile world , most probable technology which is going to be used is Bluetooth.
• The mobile collecting this data and GPS location of the user will send it to the service provider’s cloud or data center through the app of service provider being installed on your mobile handset.
• The data center then will deliver the ads according to your mood.
• Apple’s mood detection plan – Apple’s unobtrusive mood-detection plans rely on sniffing “recently consumed content” such as “a digital media item, a social networking activity, and/or an invitational content item response. Examples of digital media items can include apps, digital audio, digital videos, digital publications, webpages, invitational content, etc.

Challenges–

• Devices have to be compatible with the mood sensing technology .They should have the intelligence to switch channel or track no. according to the mood.
• Skin sensor technology still not fully developed and has not been implemented even though many companies have filed patent for it.
• Accuracy of mood sensing technology is still under radar and lot of work still needs to be done on it.

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Disinvestment as a tool is used by governments throughout the world to give up their stake partly in public enterprises mainly to fund their fiscal deficit, balance of payments, infrastructure projects, public debt, and investment to encourage spending in an economy or Social programs.

The global disinvestment started in 1980’s in United Kingdom where it was met with tremendous success, countries like Germany, Russia, Canada, Japan and Western European countries soon followed the suit. Even China relaxed its Marxist approach and partially indulged in disinvestment and privatization approach. This is because of the benefits of disinvestment and privatization in terms of increased efficiency, acquisition of new markets and advanced techniques, provisions of capital increase and recognition of interest of foreign investors. While India continues to debate on benefits of disinvestment, globally disinvestment trend continues to grow up reaping great benefits for these countries.

Disinvestment in India started in 1991 when India’s high balance of payments forced Indian government to open Indian economy by adopting policies like opening up of foreign trade and investment, deregulation, privatization and inflation control measures. Part of this policy measures was disinvestment to curb balance of payments and to allow more private players in government firms to improve its efficiency as many public sector undertakings (PSU’s) were not doing well at that time under government rule and also to invest the gained money in improving economy but in subsequent years disinvestment was only used to cover the fiscal hole of government.

The main objective behind opening PSUs was to build infrastructure and rapid economic growth but over the years with the increase in competition from private sectors and loss of monopoly and protectionist regime has seen the decline in market share of PSUs. Also in many instances PSUs have found themselves unable to match technological superiority of foreign and domestic private companies. To make matters worse constant government interventions and inefficacy in operation of PSU has led many PSUs to be highly inefficient and debt-ridden, while many PSUs are there to just fulfill the social welfare programs of the government rather than making money for its own self e.g. of which is BSNL which is used by government to provide network connectivity in rural and remote areas which is a highly loss making proposition.

Even in midst of this unfavorable scenario for PSUs many government firms like Coal India, ONGC, LIC are sitting on huge piles of cash and indian government has been regularly liquidating stake in these companies to take advantage good liquidity and equity base of these companies. But noteworthy point is that these firms have huge cash reserves not because of their good performance but rather because these enterprises command resources that a resource constrained economy needs and even these companies are facing problems mainly of bad corporate governance like other PSUs. Rather than utilizing these cash reserves to scale up their operations these cash reserves are kept idle throughout the year to either provide high dividend payout to government or to buy back shares ultimately in order the serve the ever growing fiscal deficit of government, which is mainly there due to the bad policies of the government for which the PSUs have to pay. Also in many cases the government has not changed the ownership of the PSUs and has kept the majority stake with themselves which defeats one of the purpose of disinvestment to privatize the operations of the government firms to bring in much better management and industry practices and business know how to bring in more efficiency in business operations. This raises questions over commitment in disinvestment by government as even after 23 years of liberalization policy adopted by India they still want to have their control over the PSUs and this can be seen from the fact that only few PSUs up until now have been completely privatized or have minor government stake (notable examples being VSNL, BALCO, Modern food industries) ,which were mainly loss making companies, while government has been regularly falling short of their disinvestment targets by huge margins over the years showing their lack in disinvestment commitment.

Government’s reluctance to give up their majority stake has kept private investment at bay in PSUs since private investors don’t see any benefit in investing in loss making PSUs which is under government control and is suffering because of government interventions and bad governance .While in case of profit making companies government either buyback their shares or get money through huge dividend payouts or divests their shares to either national banks or financial institutions like LIC which are again government enterprises and hence it ultimately maintains complete control over these firms to fulfill their vested interests. Sometimes government even abstains from distributing the disinvestment prospectus freely which raise the question of lack of transparency in the deal.

Moreover financial institutions, mutual funds and banks who government forces to buy shares are not willing to list their shares or trade their shares since it would reduce their control over PSUs and sometimes they indulge in insider trading which has led to low valuation of equity restricting government to fully realize benefits of disinvestment process and hence they get low disinvestment returns. Also disinvestment policy of liquidating only partial stake to private investors results in crowding out of private investors where investment by government overpowers the investment by players which is mainly because private players due to their low subscription does not put much capital in the business and shows little interest in monitoring and managing the operations of an enterprise which was one of the main reasons for divesting stake to private companies at the first place. Hence disinvestment policy by India results in capital consumption rather than capital generation.

Considering that government firms under the control of government don’t benefit neither in terms of capital generation and nor in terms of scaling up of operations and good management practices while government use them only for their own benefits, hence, they are better in the hands of private players who work for the benefit of the firm. This can be seen from the example of BHEL where government gave up 32% stake in 2001 and in the following years BHEL witnessed increased profitability, reduced debt and high growth rate. Lots of these kinds of examples can be seen from developed countries where mostly companies are privatized now and are generating better revenues than when they were under government control.

Disinvestment is not only beneficial for the firm but also for the government since through it, government gets money to cover their fiscal hole and can focus more on core operations like education, healthcare, infrastructure, poverty eradication, employment, defence and other activities which ultimately help the country in the better way while reducing the no. of ministries and bureaucrats required to handle these firms ultimately reducing the government spending. Also even if the money from disinvestment is not used to reduce fiscal deficit, it can be used to finance core operations of government which will benefit the tax payers in long run since less tax money would be required for these purposes.

But to realize the full potential of disinvestment it is required that government gives up their majority stake and give up their desire to keep PSUs under their control as the unhealthy implications of partial disinvestment have already been talked about. Also government should also look for in-house revival of the firm by using industry best practices before divesting the firm to get better valuation for the firm as greater the disinvestment money the greater benefits will be accrued for the economy. While many industry experts debate between in-house revival of the firm and disinvestment I believe in-house revival should be limited only to get better valuation and the firm ultimately should be divested as we have already seen benefits of privatization over government rule both domestically and globally.

But not all firms can be completely divested as some PSUs are used by the government to fulfill socio-economic considerations of the country and these firms come under the strategic sector of the economy. These firms are normally from power sector, mining sector, oil sector, defence sector and many other sectors which are concerned with natural resources, social factors and security concerns of the country which if come under private sector might not fulfill the social welfare of the country as private sector’s main objective is profit maximization while main objective of these firms is welfare maximization. Hence, government should only divest partial stake in these companies while it should divest the controlling stake in non-strategic sector companies.

The new government under the leadership of Narendra Modi has brought a new ray of hope for the reigning economy of India, mainly because of his tremendous success in Gujarat, where he showcased impressive results with growth and overall development of Gujarat. The optimism in Modi can be seen from the fact that after having seen Modi led government winning by a clear mandate, India’s publically listed companies saw market capitalization crossing 1.5 trillion dollars with PSU’s rallying the most by 22%, as foreign investors were seen regaining their trust in Indian growth story with Modi becoming the popular name worldwide known for his quick decision making and policy implementation. Hence, looking at his past track record it is hoped that Modi will replicate his success formula of Gujarat to entire India and will revive the economy and will also implement the successful disinvestment policy by eliminating all the loopholes in it.

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China and Pakistan’s relations dates back to 1950 when Pakistan alongside Cuba were the only two nations who extended their support to People’s Republic of China(present day China) while ending their diplomatic relations with Republic of China(present day Taiwan) after the world witnessed a long period of civil war between the two founding parties of these regions. This was the beginning of strong and successful relationship between these two nations which can be very well witnessed even today, where both nations have been beneficiaries of each other by forming the Pakistan-china axis and changing the shape of Asia’s geopolitics.

Pakistan and China’s love for each other started with their mutual interests in countering the threat from their neighbor, India, as India has had border disputes with both these nations and has seen wars with both of them. As a result we have seen China supporting Pakistan on Kashmir issue while Pakistan has always supported China on issues of Tibet, Arunachal Pradesh, Taiwan and Xinjiang.

China, who has always considered Pakistan as its younger brother, has always helped it by providing it with military, economic and technical assistance. China has assisted Pakistan in setting up of nuclear power plants and in various infrastructure projects. China also has free trade agreement with Pakistan which makes China 3^rd largest trade partner of Pakistan .China has also in the past has provided Pakistan with scientific expertise in its nuclear programs which has helped Pakistan to counter the nuclear threat from India which itself has successfully conducted several nuclear programs and has considerable amount of nuclear firepower. In return Pakistan has been critical in improving the relations of China with muslim nations and America while providing China access to its coastal line to augment trade with middle east nations and have more strategic role in Indian Ocean waters against India. Hence, both these nations have helped each other to curtail India’s emergence as an economic and military superpower.

India on the other hand has always tried to maintain friendly and peaceful relations with both China and Pakistan even though both Pakistan and China have been continuously raising the border issues with India while having no justifiable and rightful claims on the regions of India which they consider as their own territory. Pakistan and China both have made numerous insurgent efforts into the Indian border while Pakistan being the more proactive of the two, has relentlessly violated ceasefire pact and has sponsored the proxy war against India by providing the financial and military aid to the terrorism against India. China on the other hand has always shown tendency to maintain friendly relations with India but has not curtailed its activities in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir which is a disputed area and has been building roads and hydro-power there to enhance its presence in that region disrespecting the friendly relation it always claim to have with India.

India being mindful of close relations between Pakistan and China has been over the years strengthening its relations with USA and Russia and while it has always made efforts to improve its relations with both Pakistan and China .One of the significant move in this direction was providing Pakistan the Most Favored Nation status to improve trade with Pakistan, which India has granted only to few other nations even though Pakistan not doing the same for India while signing several peace pacts with them but both Pakistan still sees each other as their no. one enemy and regular terrorist attacks and ceasefire violations are not helping it .On the other hand with China India’s relations have improved over the past decade, where insurgent activities and raising up border issues by China has seen a decline mainly because China has realized that India is upcoming economic superpower and China by having friendly relations with India is bound to gain from it . This can be seen from the recent promise made by China to invest around $20bn dollars over the next five years in India.

But China’s recent decision to invest $46 billion dollars in economic corridor between China’s western region and Pakistan’s Gwadar sea port which will shorten China’s route to middle east countries for their oil imports by about 12000 km, has raised new concerns of China forming a pearl of strings around India i.e. working on a strategy to encircle India by forming their naval bases in Indian ocean and hence posing a serious security threat to India. However, China has declined forming a naval base in Gwadar port and has ensured India of using it only for trade purposes. India’s importance to India ocean region can also be laid to the fact that most of the trade to India happens through this it and nearly 89% of India’s oil imports are done though its waters. Hence, even though might not be working on pearl of strings theory still poses a serious threat to India’s trade by increasing their influence in Indian Ocean waters ,as they might use their increased presence in it to choke or block crucial trade channels of India, bringing India’s economy to a standstill .Considering China-India’s past relations such fears not unwarranted .However India has realized this threat from China and has made diplomatic progress in increasing its co-operation with Seychelles, Mauritius ,South Africa, Madagascar and Mozambique, but still China poses serious threat and hence the matter needs to be taken up with Chinese president when Indian Prime Minister will visit China on 14^th may.

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India’s Education Sector: A crucial brick in India’s Prosperity and Development

India’s education dates back to institutions such as Nalanda which was home of students which used to come from across the globe, such was the highly advanced and powerful education system of India known for its supremacy throughout the world. But talking about the current state, India lacks far behind other countries in the world, most of which were far behind in civilization and education system when institutions like Nalanda was considered like Harward is considered today. This dreadful situation of India education system can be attributed to lots of factors most of which dates back to India’s 200 years long rule under the British Government which was once a golden bird but after the British rule was not left even worth a nickel. This forced India’s later governments to focus more on development and poor upliftment while focusing greatly on agriculture and later on industrial development rather than focusing on India’s education. As a result India’s literacy rate till date stands at only 75% while countries like China(95%), Brazil(96%),South Africa(94) which are also emerging economies like India are far ahead of India in terms of education. Not only that, even countries like Sri lanka, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Vietnam which are way behind than India in terms of economic development are also way ahead of India in education clearly indicating the state of education in India. To provide you with more shocking statistics, India has highest no. of illiterate adults at 287 million amounts to 37% of the world’s total.

But things have improved over the past two decades as India’s literacy rate has improved from 46% in 1991 to 75% in 2011, also the number of institutes offering higher education is much more in India when compared to China and the US. A latest report by Ernst & Young states that the number of institutes offering higher education in India is 44,668. Of that, 33,668 offer various degrees and the rest offers diplomas. The total number of institutes in China is 4,192, while in the US, the number is 6,500.This monumental change can be attributed to the Liberalization, privatization and globalization policy being implemented by India in 1991 as the focus has shifted from public sector to private sector as private institutions now account for 64% of the total no. of institutions in India an increase of 48% from the decade ago.Also India which historically restricted foreign higher education providers from establishing institutions in-country has recently have relaxed regulations in that regard. This move has increased competition and has provided for globalized education system on par with the best in the world.

Despite all these efforts India does not have many world class universities and only Indian Institute of technology consistently makes it into the Times Higher Education University Rankings of the 400 top universities and colleges. Further, employers state that less than a quarter of engineers and MBA graduates in India are employable after graduation showing the low standard of quality of education in India. The major challenges faced by India in the higher education sector are a lack of trained faculty; underfunded research facilities, libraries, and information technology systems; low quality research; and politicization of staffing appointments. In addition to these, there are widespread regional, rural-urban, and gender disparities in student enrollment where quota systems are overpowering the merit system for selection of the candidates leaving out rightful candidates with good quality education.

Apart from this, public institutions which still contributes to 36% of total no. of institutions India and which are majorly responsible for rural education have serious teaching quality issues wherein the recent research has shown that more than half of fifth graders in rural government primary schools is three grades behind.Also many cases have come to surface wherein the teachers of these institutions have failed to failed to answer basic questions such as Who was Pythagoras ?, How do you spell Mathematics (questions were asked from maths teacher) etc. and have been taking bribes from  students to pass them in examinations explaining why most these students are unemployable. Reasons attributing to this dreadful situation are outdated curricula, inadequate teacher training, and poor infrastructure as many schools are underfunded.

Also, although India has made huge economic strides over past two decades one-third of its population still lives below the poverty line, as a result children faces issues like malnutrition, pressure to earn an income for their families which significantly degrades their efficiency and output which ultimately led to high dropout rate of these students which at this tender is unable to cope pressure of both education and earning for families. Another concern for India is vocational and skill training being provided to people involved with industries like textile, chemical, manufacturing etc. where India again lags far behind other countries with only 10% receiving any form of skill training impeding the growth India’s industrial growth due to shortage of acute manpower for these industries where whatever employees are not efficient and hence reducing the desired output and increasing the total cost per unit of goods being manufactured making Indian goods costlier compared to that of other countries like China, Taiwan, Indonesia etc.

India today compared to major economies of the world like Japan, China, Russia etc. whose population are aging has highest no. of young people in the world .With such high population, cultivating an educated workforce offers many social and economic opportunities for India as a whole. But, currently, only 17.9% of India’s young population is enrolled in higher education. Hence, if India has to become a major economic superpower as it aspires to in the future it has to increase significantly its investments in its education sector and lot of policies have to be formulated keeping education in focus.

New Indian government under the leadership of Mr. Narendra Modi unlike its predecessors is putting special focus on revamping the education system of India .It has formulated the  National Education Policy to boost quality, research and innovation in the education sector . Mr.Narendra modi has already shown his eagerness to improve education system during his stint as a chief minister of Gujarat where he had significantly improved the education system. Some of the key steps which central government plans to implement in this direction are:-

• Including skill enhancement and entrepreneurship in the syllabi at the school level, setting up of 2,500 multi- skilling institutions , and setting up  of institutes for entrepreneurship development in various centres including upcoming smart cities .
• The Government of India plans to open a national vocational university that will administer and control all Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), a move to improve standards and bring uniformity among the schools that supply workers to the manufacturing sector.
• A memorandum of understanding (MoU) has been signed between Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) and Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Ltd (SPMCIL). This has been done to enable collaboration on research, training and professional development and exchange of technical expertise in areas of mutual interest such as material sciences and testing capabilities.

Apart from these various government initiatives, steps have been taken to bolster distance learning besides focusing on new techniques like e-learning and m-learning. Presently, Government of India has taken several steps including opening of IIT’s and IIM’s in new locations as well as allocating educational grants for research scholars in most government institutions. With steps like these India’s education system promises to grow in significant manner to support India’s ambition to become an economic superpower in the future.

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