(Julian Yu, Unsplash)
As one of the world’s fastest-growing large economies, India occupies a prominent position on the global stage – and its ambitions are high. The Modi government aims to turn the Indian subcontinent into a $5 trillion economy by 2024. To do this, it will have to expedite its current rate of expansion and achieve growth at a rate of more than 12% per year.
Unsurprisingly, the rise of advanced technologies and digitalization has been identified as a vital enabler of growth for India and its neighbours. The OECD’s Economic Outlook for Southeast Asia, China and India 2018 was devoted to the topic, noting that each region has enthusiastically embraced this new wave of change.
As a result, internet penetration – the basic prerequisite for participation in the digital economy – has rocketed. According to the market research agency Kantar IMRB, India’s internet users will register double-digit growth this year to reach 627 million as rural areas are increasingly switched on. Meanwhile, government and private businesses have led the charge on digital identity, artificial intelligence, fin tech, cryptocurrencies and the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or drones.
There’s no doubt that hastening the adoption of these and other technologies that come under the umbrella of the Fourth Industrial Revolution could help India come close to or achieve its ambitions and leapfrog to an advanced state of development.
However, the OECD report also highlights that while digitalization undoubtedly presents many opportunities, there are considerable challenges in realizing its potential to support inclusive and sustainable economic growth. It’s right to do so for two reasons:
- The issue of effective governance is of crucial importance if new technologies are to be successfully adopted and deployed. That means encouraging citizen engagement, putting in place safeguards around data and security, designing responsible policies and monitoring social changes, particularly with vulnerable populations – both within and across national borders.
- Sustainable growth is only possible when economic gain is pursued in a way that does not cause other significant problems, such as a lack of equal opportunity or reduced quality of life. While the words inclusive and sustainable are increasingly bandied about in popular discourse, it only takes a glance at progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to realize there is much still to be done.
Findings by the Business Roundtable – a lobbying organization that represents many of America’s large businesses – give an insight into the effects of prioritizing shareholder interests, including customer distrust and employee discontent. As such, 181 CEOs have signed up to rethink the purpose of corporations and committed to lead their own businesses for the benefit of all stakeholders. Though not directly involved, India’s Tata Steel has echoed the sentiment of the roundtable’s initiative: “We have amply demonstrated that our definition of stakeholders is much broader and goes beyond just shareholders.”
Multiple studies suggest that embedding sustainability in company agendas strongly correlates with creating shareholder value – the Dow Jones Global Sustainability Index (DJSI) has closely tracked and performed slightly better than the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) in recent years, for example. As an A.T. Kearney colleague wrote earlier this year, the notion that there has to be a trade-off between shareholder and stakeholder value is becoming an increasingly false dilemma.
With India on the threshold of advanced economic development, the leapfrogging opportunity is not only relevant to digitization, industrialization and economic growth; its governing administration and corporations also have the opportunity to overtake their international peers in terms of achieving growth with purpose.
In this respect, two vital aspects of India’s make-up will both contribute to and benefit from this:
1) A large and fast-growing youth population
By 2022, the average age in India will be just 28, in contrast to 37 in China and the US, 45 in Western Europe and 47 in Japan. This means its workforce will be dominated in the near future by millennials and Gen Z-ers – groups that place more emphasis on trust and shared values than their baby boomer and Generation X predecessors.
This applies both to the companies they want to buy from and the organizations by whom they want to be employed. A.T. Kearney’s Global Future Consumer Study finds that younger generations actively look and are willing to pay more for environmentally friendly and socially minded brands, while, according to Amanda Hammett, an expert on millennials, the number one thing that drives young people to quit their job is a lack of trust.
2) A heritage as one of the world’s least wasteful economies
Disproportionately affected by climate change, India has nevertheless built on its heritage as one of the world’s least wasteful economies. It took the top position in the World Economic Forum’s 2017 Greendex report, which ranks consumer response to environmental concerns.
India also played a leading role in shaping the Paris Agreement and has implemented forward-looking policy measures including efforts to reshape its energy mix in favour of green sources and phase out single-use plastic.
India
What is the World Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit 2019?
Under the theme, Innovating for India: Strengthening South Asia, Impacting the World, the World Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit 2019 will convene key leaders from government, the private sector, academia and civil society on 3-4 October to accelerate the adoption of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies and boost the region’s dynamism.
Hosted in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the aim of the Summit is to enhance global growth by promoting collaboration among South Asian countries and the ASEAN economic bloc.
The meeting will address strategic issues of regional significance under four thematic pillars:
• The New Geopolitical Reality – Geopolitical shifts and the complexity of our global system
• The New Social System – Inequality, inclusive growth, health and nutrition
• The New Ecological System – Environment, pollution and climate change
• The New Technological System – The Fourth Industrial Revolution, science, innovation and entrepreneurship
Discover a few ways the Forum is creating impact across India.
Read our guide to how to follow #ies19 across our digital channels. We encourage followers to post, share, and retweet by tagging our accounts and by using our official hashtag.
Become a Member or Partner to participate in the Forum’s year-round annual and regional events. Contact us now.
However, there are signs that results have yet to trickle through to the corporate world. In the 2019 Global 100, which highlights the world’s most sustainable corporations, no Indian companies were included. Clearly, more effort is needed by the private sector, and quickly, if true progress is to be achieved.
At A.T. Kearney we talk about “essential rightness”. This really means doing the right thing and acting in our clients’ best interests, so relationships are based on trust. I urge India’s businesses to follow their government’s lead and do the right thing for all of their stakeholders. This means putting equal emphasis on inclusion and sustainability as economic goals. By doing this, India as a whole can pursue growth with purpose and provide an ethical economic model for others to follow.
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The INDIAN Steel unit is an IDEAL MODE OF RAISING CASH and MONEY LAUNDERING w/o limit ,even w/o mining activities.dindooohindoo
• Steel was subject to ED (Excjse Duty), which is a MODVAT able tax
• In a 20 million tons steel plant,2-3 % of production can be explained to the state as wastages, yields, input mix issues,variation in power factor ,deviations in material quality,vagaries of supply chain,production mix etc.
o 2% of 20 million tons is 5,00,000 tons,and the steel unit will NOT record that production in the logs and that production will be met from CPP and not from Grid Power (as power is a proxy for output).This production will be sold OFF the books
• If 4-5,00,000 tons of steel, is sold in cash – there is enough cash generated by the steel unit – and the steel is sold, free of VAT, to a user,who does not need VATABLE steel (as his product is VAT exempt or his supply chain is financed by cash)
o If inputs are bought in cash,then more and more steel can be sold, in cash –as the sales HAVE TO BE OFF THE BOOKS OF ACCOUNTS
The Steel unit makes the ED/GST invoice of the 5,00,000 tons of steel,for steel which has been sold already in cash (This is a paper sale – there is no movement of steel)
o THE ED/GST invoice (of the 500000 tons) is then sold by the steel unit,to a steel user, WHO CAN AVAIL OF THE VAT BENEFIT – AT SAY,40% OF THE VALUE OF THE VAT/GST INVOICE
THIS STEEL USER IS ACTUALLY USING STEEL BOUGHT IN CASH (but in the past he has recorded some steel product sale, like say a steel gate, in the books as a ED/VATable sale.TO OFFSET the VAT on that Sale – the steel user is BUYING this ED/VAT invoice from the Steel maker).If the steel user is buying a VAT component in an invoice of Rs 1 crore at 40%, he is paying Rs 40 lacs and using Rs 1 crore VAT credit to offset from HIS VAT LIABILITY – A super profit business ! Buying and Selling Paper)
• THE STEEL USER MAKES A WIRE TO THE STEEL MILL, AND THE STEEL MILLS PAYS THE CASH TO THE STEEL USER, FOR THE BASIC STEEL PRICE BILLED
• THE CASH PAID TO THE STEEL USER BY THE STEEL MILL, IS GENERATED FROM THE 500,000 TONS OF STEEL, SOLD IN CASH
o THIS SYSTEM OF TRADING IN CASH AND TRADING IN GST AND TDS INVOICES, IS A METHODOLOGY DEVELOPED BY MARWARIS, AND THE TAX POLICIES OF THE STATE, HAVE BEEN MADE, TO ALLOW AND PERPETUATE THESE METHODOLOGIES