Partners Column

Dear friends Beloved Narendra Modi, our Prime Minister delivered sterling speech on Independence Day celebrations from Red Fort which has ceased of the challenges of Bharat,  set the direction for his Government and also reiterates the responsibility of each one of us, the citizens of India. I am overwhelmingly impressed by few ideas and initiatives, which I would like to share:

• Come, Make in India, Come Manufacture in India – We all know our manufacturing sector is plagued with various challenges in terms of availability of capital, unfriendly labour regime etc., which resulted in the stagnation of manufacturing sector.  We must bring back the focus to manufacturing which can create employment for our youth, helps balance of payment situation etc.,
• Clean India – Lot of our fellow citizens don’t have common amenities like toilets and even schools don’t have toilets for girl child. While basic amenities are missing its difficult to achieve bigger goals as 100% literacy, eradication of poverty etc., Few corporates like TCS, Bharati group have responded to this cause immediately and committed to build few toilets.
• Mera Kya and Mujhe Kya – This is another big attitude issue which the society is facing. The prime minister called up upon the society to give up this selfish attitude.

  I strongly believe all the problems in the society can’t be addressed and resolved by the Governments alone.  Government’s efforts have to be collaborated with that of entrepreneurs and social enterprises. Every country needs strong entrepreneurship eco system (ECS) so that it can address varied societal problems, create and distribute wealth. It’s amazing to see the evolving ECS in India over the last few years with incubators, accelerators, angel investors, mentors etc., First time in Indian Independent history, the central government has announced number of schemes to strengthen ECS in India in the current year budget such as –

• 10000 crore startup fund for new businesses;
• National accelerators & incubators for start ups;
• 100 crore agri-infra fund;
• 100 crore startup village entrepreneurship for rural population;
• 200 crore for scheduled caste entrepreneurs.

  Another thing, which I follow closely and like to see is our ranking in ease of doing business. This used to get focus in the financial newspaper whenever world bank would come out with the annual rankings with a criticism. Modi’s visit to Japan brought a lot of attention to this subject. Modi committed the Japanese investors that ‘Only Red Carpet, No Red Tapsim’. Lets hope that by next world bank report, our ranking improves significantly, of course government has to do lot of work to streamline processes,  remove bottlenecks etc., I am happy to share I have been elected as the President  of Abhaya Foundation (http://www.abhayafoundation.org/)  for  2014-16. I have been closely associated with Abhaya since its inception 2006 and Abhaya has been able to do good work and impacted lives of few thousands of people over the years. With best regards Raghu Babu G Partner raghu@rna-cs.com