Power To The Powerless

There seems to a kind of paradox in the world of manufacturing. On the one hand, there’s the government and the bureaucracy that is promising of being ready to include the industry in the process to transform the lives of millions of people by innovative thinking which includes ease of doing business. On the other, the government’s latest quarterly survey reveals that the manufacturing sector alone lost 87,000 jobs between April and June last year. Probably the results scared them too.
Not that this government has been sitting idle. There have been several visible initiatives to match the speed and aspirations of the industry with a host of actions to bring in ease of doing business. If going by the announcements made at Magnetic Maharashtra, there seems to be a transformation. The government and the bureaucracy say they are ready to include the industry in the process to transform the lives of millions of people by innovative thinking which includes ease of doing business.
While large industrialists can take care of themselves, what the government needs to focus on is helping the MSMEs raise their manufacturing capabilities and make them next generation wealth creators. For wealth creation, it is necessary to enable institutional framework, resource availability and providing timeliness credit for the MSMEs. More importantly, it would help if they could avail of easy finance that will allow them to scale up in terms of infrastructure and machinery. Training them would be an added bonus.
Today, manufacturing clusters are not evenly spread across the country. The few and far between (where large enterprises can employ thousands) are located in certain pockets of the country. This needs to change so that rural to urban movement in search of jobs is contained and manufacturing can become a popular form of employment.
Considering that 4,106 MoUs worth over Rs 12 lakh crores were signed during the three-day event of Magnetic Maharashtra, one just might see this sector get another long-pending shot in the arm, if everything moves quick pace.