Can India beat China in world trade?

A nation cannot turn almost half of its nationals as free loaders and expect them to deliver an industrious nation, which can be a renowned global commodity seller. The USA is a classic example of how an inherent hardworking capitalist nation has turned itself into a lethargic socialist nation and almost lost its natural competence to be an industrious nation again. 'Made in USA' is a misnomer in the contemporary world. The USA not too long ago was global leader for innovative and quality products globally, precisely around three decades ago. Now a fully dependent nation on Chinese manufactured products.

Unfortunately, India is also on a steady path towards apologetic socialism with political compulsions of contemporary popular politics. However, if India is smart, it should resist and not fall prey to these exemplary not-so-old case studies of nations like the USA, who failed to protect not just their massive capability to manufacture for the world, but also has lost total skill set and manufacturing infrastructure to even produce for their self-sustenance. Today these nations have been reduced to 'China dependent' for even their bare necessities such as toilet paper rolls and everything above and beyond.

Nations which are industrious stay socially, economically, physically and even mentally healthy and spirited. The steady routine of being innovative, diligent, creative, engaged and empowered keeps the citizen's self-respect, pride and self-worth high, especially when you are a very thickly populated nation and self-sustenance is an essential national economic security.

Skill-centric education

Education in India right from primary, secondary, higher to professional levels has to undergo a 360-degree transformation. Skilling should be the heart of the new education system. India currently has many lawyers / doctors / MBAs / engineers and even PHDs who have degrees but lack relevant professional skills, domain knowledge, and expertise. It's consequential either they are jobless or bring less value to their educational qualifications in real-time application. Imagine what level of skill training must be underway currently at the lower levels.

India can't challenge or be an alternate 'to-go nation' to China in global manufacturing and trade, if it doesn't turn the bottom 30% of the socio-economic pyramid youngsters of this and next few generations towards Industry categorized, sector-wise focused-skill sets. That is the only way to transform this large mass of young population into essential expert- human resource, with promise of an early career opportunity and economic empowerment. Providing the factory and assembly level skills for free across India is essential to ensure millions are trained and skilled to execute real-time production tasks professionally.

If there's one common prickly issue which almost all businesses face in India across all sectors, it's the lack of skilled professionals. This situation must be mitigated before India thinks about next level of industrial growth.

Skilled professionals are an invaluable national asset. Especially, when a nation like India sets out to achieve a gigantic goal to compete with China. China in the last four decades has honed and sharpened every inch of their human-resource-real estate to become what it has today.

Build scale-to-deliver scale

It is not inaccurate to say that India can count not many indigenous manufacturers who can produce and meet large scale global demand for any single product, or a product range, or meet a strict export delivery schedule while doing so. It is a natural limitation as none are built to that scale to produce, so they cannot deliver to that scale within a customer's demanded time frame.

Currently India is also passing through a 'scale down operational scenario' with its inability to produce at lower cost than china in a very price sensitive global marketplace. India is also getting steadily used to the dangerous trend of 'product assembly' for even satisfying local demand, as the entire process is market driven, cost driven and price sensitive. India is currently 'partially dependent' on China for most of its domestic demand for both low-involvement and high-involvement products. It will not be too long, before we become 'completely dependent' on China OEM's [Original Equipment Manufacturers], unless we make quick and decisive course correction.

This is how China has played every single large manufacturing nation, to draw them into 'complete dependence' through spatial phases of 'partial dependence'. China is executing its strategy successfully to ensure that entire world depends completely on its manufacturing capacity eventually, in different time spans for every manufactured product they wish to produce. India should have an 'executable winning strategy' to outsmart China and ahead, instead of a mere survival plan.

India should select inherently strong sectors, which also have a tremendous global demand to invest not gradually but through a 'strategic leap' to scale up operations and expand production capacities. It's essential India executes this powerful initiative sooner than later, while China is fighting the image battle with its long serving client nations. India should plan to eat into bits and pieces of China's clientele demand and eventually push to replace China with higher benchmarking in quality, price, safety, reliability and delivery standards.

The national and State governments should not only subsidise manufacturing industry capacity expansion for a decade and more, but also reward the OEM's with impeccable record of export order procurement and delivery. Staggered slabs of production capacity expansion, actual production quality and export delivery can be key criteria for special subsidies, capital support, tax breaks and special waivers.

The national and State governments can categorise efficient, ethical and quality focused export focused manufacturers to promote and place huge private and public equity with less red tape and operational intervention. Big capital inflows and fund support are critical to facilitate building of massive factories which can employ hundreds and thousands of professionals to accomplish this herculean task of being the top OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) for the world.

Quality as heart-of-operations

Global manufacturing viability and profitability lies in the scale of production, and large-scale production is directly proportionate to large scale demand. Production process efficiency, customer ordained product quality becomes the heart of generating global demand.

India should understand that while production efficiency can be standardised, product quality can't be 'one-size-fits-all' - China specialises in presenting a prospect customer a range of Quality-Price options. This unique capacity to manufacture all 'price level–quality' products ensures, that all types of customers queue up for Indian products globally, instead of specific 'bottom or top end' of the quality spectrum.

The ancient and traditional Indian values had 'Quality' as a core value in everything an Indian executes. However, since independence and over many decades, the social system has 'given-in' to lower quality in the nation's daily endeavors as an acceptable norm. No wonder, there are so many low quality and low value methods, infrastructure, service, processes and systems acceptable in the contemporary Indian economic and social ecosystem. It is essential India moves away from this trend and re-embrace the non-negotiable, high-quality bench marking standards in all India's endeavors.

Results & reputation is the only insurance

Global trade is all about result-orientation, customer-orientation, ethical-trade practices and delivery-reputation. Apart from critical market factors like quality-sensitive-pricing, production-competence and logistic-competence. Being sensitive to customer needs, product specs and delivery schedules is exactly what global customers demand. The results of India's new manufacturing endeavors should lead to 'customer-satisfaction' or better still 'customer-delight' every single time, for the global trade to pick up, one global customer at a time.

Reputation is what drives or kills global markets for a global manufacturer. Sustained positive reputation is the biggest image booster and an enduring sales promotion tool, which is a zero-cost advertising instrument globally. Even few negative results leading to bad reputation will not only impact the unit, which is responsible but also the entire manufacturing eco-system of the nation.

Indian manufactures and traders must adopt ethical-customer-orientation as a religion, if they sincerely have the conviction and aspiration to rise-to-the-occasion, as the next manufacturing giant for the world.

The above vision led, mission-mode-initiatives are just few, from a long list of 'To-Do' to set India on a path towards challenging China's unilateral hegemony, as the number one global manufacturer and trader.

India to rise, become a global alternative and even unsettling China from its current position of global leadership in manufacturing and trade is not an impossible goal to achieve. However, India needs leadership continuity with grand vision, sincere conviction, methodic planning and consistent courage to take unprecedented, historic and path-breaking macro and micro policy decisions. This mammoth goal can be realised, if we start walking towards that goal at the earliest with resolve. To realise this invaluable and worthy goal is, to positively and directly impact more than a billion lives in India both economically and socially. (Concluded)

(The writer is the chief spokesperson of the BJP Telangana State unit, a global leadership coach and an organisational strategist)