One side of the coin is aiming to become a superpower in next 50 years and the other side is depressed, fearful, scattered and see a shady future. Last six months there are news about companies firing employees all over the world, the impact is significant in India as last 10-15 years had been a booming time for Indian economy.
There are many experts and zillions of algorithms which are working day and night to predict the next second economic ups and down around the world. In last 40 years few of the major economic crisis the world had seen are;
- Latin Sovereign Debt Crisis – 1982
- Savings and Loans Crisis – 1980s
- Stock Market Crash – 1987
- Junk Bond Crash – 1989
- Tequila Crisis – 1994
- Asia Crisis – 1997 to 1998
- Dotcom Bubble – 1999 to 2000
- Global Financial Crisis – 2007 to 2008
Millions of life get affected during these crisis and in urban landscape everyone is so entangled in the borrowing loop like housing loan, car loan, personal loan, credit card borrowing, private borrowing etc. When suddenly there is a lay off the entire cycle of payment breaks for the people who are working in various organisations around the globe. This leads to crisis in relations, break ups, divorce, anxiety, depressions, suicides and the list is endless.
This is further grave in the Indian context where we have no direct monetary benefits from the government under any of the social security scheme, as the western countries have. Ours is a country with a huge population which have deep impacts in economic slowdowns, because a lay off stops the entire income and disturbs the economy of the family.
In last 15 years India had seen a boom in the IT industry and was dreaming to become a “Super Power”. Which is contradicting, a country can never be a super-power having the base of service industry. Our neighbour country China had emerged as a big economy keeping “Manufacturing” as the backbone of the economy. Thanks to the former Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh who devaluated the rupee which had seen a significant growth in the manufacturing segment as buying from India became cheaper for other countries, because they now had to pay lesser for the goods they buy from India.
Our country is a agriculture based country where 70% of the population lives in rural India and they all are dependent on agriculture directly or indirectly. What we should learn from the past global crisis is to promote more business related to farming, promote rural entrepreneurship, promote entrepreneurship in the entire country starting from school level awareness towards the subject and motivate more Made In India against “Make In India”.
Regards, Mangesh Manikrao Wankhade
The Rationalist 