Self Reliant India

It's about 3 months that we are in a situation of lockdown. Most of us are sitting at home, some working from home, some on salary cuts, some on loss of pay leave and many have lost their jobs. Please doing small business like shops are not able to open their shops because of the lockdown. Everything is sort of in a stand still mode.

Amazon, Flipkart and all the online shopping companies stopped deliveries, as they were not allowed to. It was the local Kirana shops or super markets which were open with some restrictions to serve the needy. Transporation by all means was stand still. No imports, no transportation between states, not even between districts too.

The place where i was stuck during the lockdown was surrounded by farms and other natural resources. I was able to get fresh fruits and vegetables from the nearby farms.

We were running out of products like face masks, hand sanitisers, gloves and other related products because we used to get it imported from countries like China, Malaysia, etc. Looking into the situation, India started manufacturing facemasks, PPE kits and similar need products. India within 2 months became second in PPE kit manufacturing. India could make 1000's of ventilators.

This situation of Covid 19 has taught us one very important thing, we need to be self reliant. We need to make almost everything we need and even we should be able to cater to the needs of other countries.

We can do this and to do this we need to have a sold plan. In this process we will be able to become one of the most developed country, create big brands, give jobs to everyone and create a better India

Some history of Globalisation

During my childhood, I could see and use only limited products. You would be lucky if you could see an imported car or use an imported perfume. The cars that we could see were the Ambassadors and Premier Padmini, sometimes the Contessa Classic. Scooters on road were Vijay Super, Bajaj, Bullet and so on. Even a Sony music player was seen only in houses where someone was an NRI or someone filthy rich to buy these imported or smuggled gadget.

Then came the move toward globalisation in the year 1992 and a big credit goes to Dr Manmohan Singh. We saw the Maruti Suzuki and then now we have all the best brands in the world. We have official Apple stores and Mercedes Benz show rooms.

How to become self reliant ?

There are many factors that we would need to look into to make India self reliant. I am trying to list out some of them to the best of my knowledge and experience.

Patriotism
Proper supply chain system
Accountability - Curruption free country
Use of technology
Strong quality control measures

Why Patriotism is the most important factor for self reliance ?

Every Indian should be a brand ambassador for every Indian product, should use Indian products, should sell Indian products. If we are able to make all of us agree to this, we are done with more than 50% of the work. Demand would grow and so will the production and subsequently jobs and economy. If all of decide to use only products that are made in India, why can't we have bigger brands from India?

Supply Chain System

A strong system for buying and selling goods should be established. Farmers should focus on farming, they should not have to search for buyers. As soon as harvesting is over, the buyer should pay the farmer and take the goods. Price should be fair so that every person working should be paid reasonably to live a good standard of life.

Not just agriculture and small scale industries

We need to be self reliant in everything possible like automobiles, IT, infrastructure and so on. We should have our own whatsApp, YouTube and TikTok. Do you know that India is growing the fastest in terms of internet usage and all these social media companies are making tons of money from India.

Local tourism is another sector which we can focus on. India is a country with so much of diversity, different culture, languages, food, nature, etc. We have states like Kerala which is popular for food, back waters and culture. Then we have states like Sikkim, Andamans which I feel are nothing less than going for any other part of the world.

Pharmaceuticals is something which we are dependent on countries like China and USA, we need to do a lot of work to come out of this. [Source]

Food - I mean restaurants, promote fresh local fruit juices instead of cola, eat at local restaurant instead of starbucks or Dominos or KFC

Teach of next generation the importance of our local food and culture.

Accountability - Corruption Free India

Remove all the red tapes and help every person who want to do something. We should have a very transparent system so that all hardworking Indians can work towards reaching our goal of self reliant India.

Use of technology

Everything needs to be automated. India has the biggest online identification system in the world, the Aadhaar. Now we are working on Aarogya Setu App, one of the most download apps on Google play store and Apple app store. Every department should be digitalised and every process should be automated and transparent. This will help in speeding up process and chances of currption can be minimised.

Quality - We need good products

You know we have so many manufacturers who manufacture products only for exports. There are many who manufactrure the same product in different qualities, one for local use and other for exports. Why can't we have the best products for Indian market? It is very important to make sure that we have proper quality control mechanisms to make sure that the products made in India are at par with international brands or even above them.

Exports only after taking care of local needs

It should be made sure that the local need is fulfilled before exporting any product.

Pure Indian Brands

There are so many pure Indian brands which are really doing well around the world. Tata, Reliance , Aditya Birla, Airtel, Hidesign, Amul, Ashok Leyland and many more really big brands. We need more and more brands to come up in industries like IT, Pharmaceuticals, etc

So can India be self reliant in all sense?

If we all work together with the will to become self reliant, we can do it. We need to identify the products that we are lacking and work towards achieving it.

We should start of with basics like food, clothings and infrastructure and then step into industries like automobiles, smartphones, social media, etc. India is one of the biggest market for smartphones , social media , internet , education, etc. We need to make the best products so that nobody would need to look into other options.

I will not say that we need to be 100% self reliant, we should be self reliant at least for all our basic needs.

Advantages of being self reliant

We save a lot of foreign exchange. We cannot import goods with our currency, instead we need to buy forex like the USD or Euro for importing goods.

We will be having more manufacturing, jobs and subsequently better economy. More importantly, we will not be at the mercy of any super powers.

Final Thoughts of India towards localisation - Self Reliant India

Yes we can do it to a certain extent over a period of time. We all need to change, we all need to understand the imporatance of local products and support every person producing local product.

More and more need to be invested on making local products the best in the world, so that we can sell our products to the world.

Kishore Asokan

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