Indian R&D Scenario; A comprehensive coverage

The Potential:
By 2008, forecasts McKinsey, IT services and back-office work in India will swell fivefold, to a $57 billion annual export industry employing 4 million people and accounting for 7% of India's gross domestic product. That growth is inspiring more of the best and brightest to stay home rather than migrate. What India requires today is to analyse the amazing growths achived by countries like China, Vietnam etc and use the huge manpower resources effectively.
(I have given an idea to achieve this utilisation here)

Facts:
For all its R&D labs, India remains visibly Third World. IT service exports employ less than 1% of the workforce. Per-capita income is just $460, and 300 million Indians subsist on $1 a day or less. Lethargic courts can take 20 years to resolve contract disputes. And what pass for highways in Bombay are choked, crumbling roads lined with slums, garbage heaps, and homeless migrants sleeping on bare pavement. More than a third of India's 1 billion citizens are illiterate, and just 60% of homes have electricity. Most bureaucracies are bloated, corrupt, and dysfunctional. The government's 10% budget deficit is alarming. Tensions between Hindus and Muslims always seem poised to explode, and the risk of war with nuclear-armed Pakistan is ever-present.
So it's little wonder that, compared to China with its modern infrastructure and disciplined workforce, India is far behind in exports and as a magnet for foreign investment. While China began reforming in 1979, India only started to emerge from self-imposed economic isolation after a harrowing financial crisis in 1991. China has seen annual growth often exceeding 10%, far better than India's decade-long average of 6%.

Strengths and Weaknesses (India-China):
Still, this deep source of low-cost, high-IQ, English-speaking brainpower may soon have a more far-reaching impact on the U.S. than China. Manufacturing -- China's strength -- accounts for just 14% of U.S. output and 11% of jobs. India's forte is services -- which make up 60% of the U.S. economy and employ two-thirds of its workers. And Indian knowledge workers are making their way up the New Economy food chain, mastering tasks requiring analysis, marketing acumen, and creativity.

Future Vision:
India also is working to assure that it will be able to meet future demand for knowledge workers at home and abroad. India produces 3.1 million college graduates a year, but that's expected to double by 2010. The number of engineering colleges is slated to grow 50%, to nearly 1,600, in four years. Of course, not all are good enough to produce the world-class grads of elite schools like the IITs, which accepted just 3,500 of 178,000 applicants last year. So there's a growing movement to boost faculty salaries and reach more students nationwide through broadcasts. India's rich diaspora population is chipping in, too. Prominent Indian Americans helped found the new Indian School of Business, a tie-up with Wharton School and Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management that lured most of its faculty from the U.S. Meanwhile, the six IIT campuses are tapping alumni for donations and research links with Stanford, Purdue, and other top science universities. "Our mission is to become one of the leading science institutions in the world," says director Ashok Mishra of IIT-Bombay, which has raised $16 million from alumni in the past five years.

If India manages growth well, its huge population could prove an asset. By 2020, 47% of Indians will be between 15 and 59, compared with 35% now. The working-age populations of the U.S. and China are projected to shrink. So India is destined to have the world's largest population of workers and consumers. That's a big reason why Goldman, Sachs & Co. (GS ) thinks India will be able to sustain 7.5% annual growth after 2005.


Source: Businessweek Dec 8,2003