Going by the sequence of events that were unveiled since the New Year, one gets the feel that the world economy is in the grip of a very difficult growth trajectory. Discussions on the US recession are now getting out of board rumours and gossips to public domain. Corporates are chalking out strategies to cope with such eventualities. In Europe, the manufacturing sector has slipped its performance. There are forecasts that world trade and capital flows will slow down. Every day cynicism about growth is gaining ground in newspaper columns and TV shows. Back home, mayhem in the capital market had shaved off trillions
worth notional assets of the people. Housewives, who professed to know the nuts and bolts of the stock market and tirelessly talked about the killings that they had from stock investments, are closing the subject in their chattering sessions. BPOs are facing undersea blackout and still pondering in their private talks whether it is a conspiracy, accident, or an act of God.
Murphy’s law of management is not an exclusive knowledge domain of the high and the well-heeled. Granny or man in the street knows that once something goes wrong, everything will go haywire (basic principle of Murphy). But Murphy, the scrolls of paper reports floating around, informed and uninformed, do not drive me or the so-called expert opinions aired in the news channels. I believe in the adage “tough times never last but tough people do”. Yet, there is no denial that the world economy is passing through difficult times, led by the so-called slowdown in the US economy. I am not an economist to discern the reason for the complex reasons behind it. As a businessman and human being exposed to different cultures and schools of thoughts, I have my own views on all these unpredictable developments. My first principle: No economy can be built on greed; rather, I would say greed begets greed and blocks the prosperity and the so-called coinage “inclusive growth”. The term “inclusive growth” has a wider ramification. It is not only confined to the citizenry in a democratic dispensation but transcends beyond that.
Equitable growth should be the basic principle of world growth and capital flows. Growth is also not sheer numbers being rolled out as Gross Domestic Product, Per Capita Income or, for that matter, the number of palatial buildings or the luxury cars owned by the people. Growth, to me, has several creative dimensions. It is a process of emancipation and empowerment. It connotes distributive justice and fair distribution of income. It also means that poverty is the greatest crime on earth. Complete equality is Utopia as much as conscious deprival is criminal. We have to keep these paradigms in mind, when we are doing the realty check as to why stock scams are more pronounced now, across the world compared to what it has been a few years back, why the undersea cables connecting the nations and, more importantly, the medium for sharing wealth between the rich and poor nations get snapped all of a sudden affecting businesses worth billions (still I do not believe that as a conspiracy) and many more such things.
These are the digressions that I often make in my column; wandering on issues trivial or otherwise. Yet, I have to focus on my main theme: What would be the impact if the US slips to recession? What would happen to the software and BPO industry? What would happen to the world trade? If your neighbourhood economist is frightening you pouring his/her predictions and predilections, you can seek a respite from this column. I do not feel that recession or slowdown will not affect us in India, thousands of miles away, as much that we are apprehending. First, BPO is an all-weather phenomenon; it has to be resorted to both in good and bad times. Assuming that the recession is true and its ugly pangs would be reverberated in the coming months, the US Administration should be more accommodative to its corporations. To cut the cost and the wage bill, they may have to outsource their works – and you know what would be the preferred destination.
Secondly, in the entire software and BPO chain, there are some pockets called inelastic domains. I shall explain the same. In the context of inelastic demand, the consumers irrespective of its price variations will demand goods. In the Indian context, it could be rice, wheat, etc. Whatever be the price band, people will have to buy these things. Similarly, I believe there are certain segments in BPO and software segment, which hold good for India be it good times or bad times since we have developed the unparalleled domain expertise. Thirdly, in the shifting paradigm, I believe that it is now the time of Asia. By doing so, I am not parroting the Prime Minister, but letting you know what some people are concerned and others are excited. We have proved the Malthusians wrong. Our young population, the youngest in the world, imbued with quality education and exposure, can beat the vicissitudes of time, fatigue and, more importantly, a scenario where you have to maintain more elderly people.
I have not come to my fourth canon of hope and that is the adage that I quoted earlier: Tough times never last but tough people do. We are tough since most of our population is not given to comforts. They can survive in any situation. Most of us do not feel desperate when the water trickles down from the tap and undergo the harrowing experience of fetching water from wells kilometers away. We do not feel diffident when we have to travel in a crowded public transport or pass through a filthy road. Most of us do not panic when the train runs late for hours together. We may have developed these attributes on account of our misery, but such attributes can make us tough not physically alone but mentally and intellectually as well. But we have to harp on these attributes only for making us tougher and not for justifying the fact of misery and deprivation.
