India - U.S $ 2 Trillion Economy!! So??

Off late I've been trying to read a little about the macro-economical perspective and happenings of the various countries. Being a B-School grad but having failed to interpret the economical shift that's taking place across globe is the primary reason for me to dive deep into such subjects and make an effort to understand a little more about what's happening around the world.

Just as I was busy reading about the reasons behind the depreciating value of Rouble - the Russian currency and the economic trouble that Russia is facing, I realized that two of the world's respectable economies i.e Russia and Japan are expected to register a negative GDP growth rate in 2014 as compared to 2013. Interestingly what caught my eye was the same report by IMF published in December 2014 which predicted the negative growth rate expected India's Real GDP to grow at about 5.6% to help India to enter the U.S $ 2 Trillion club soon, this brought a little cheer to me. 

Having secretly celebrated the fact about India's expected growth rate, I continued reading a little more about India being a U.S $ 2 Trillion economy by FY 2014. Just as I progressed with my reading I encountered a lot of questionable facts and stats that brought my celebration to halt. The first and foremost reason being the sorry state of Human Development Index in India. India continues to stand at 135th position out of 187 countries that were surveyed by United Nations and shows little or no sign of growth in that perspective. The world average of HDI is about 0.700, however India as a nation manages to score 0.583(even our neighboring island country Sri Lanka ranked better than us), I don't wish to comment further on this parameter as a yardstick to measure India's glory.

With a marginal growth in the IIP (Index of Industrial Production) of about 1.2% in the period of April-December 2014 and the widening of Current Account Deficit by 2.1% in the last financial quarter due to increase in imports over exports the ambiguity in the India's growth story continues to loom. This draws my attention towards one of the widely talked about initiative by the government of India, 'Make in India'. As a lot of hopes and euphoria is build around the 'Make in India' campaign what remains the biggest challenge is the ever pending Land Acquisition Bill and complex tax structure (GST Bill) that has prevented a lot of multinational organizations from investing in India and the infrastructural vulnerability that India has been facing since ever, has been adding to the country's woes. 

Government of India strongly needs to revise the APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committee) Act which remains inefficient in resolving various issues in the Agri-Sector. Since past few months GoI has tried really hard to bring down the minimum support price to the farmers as a measure to keep the inflation low, however this has had an adverse effect on the demand in rural India which comprises of around 60% of India's population. A concentrated effort to revive the inadequate storage and transport facilities and corrective measures to bypass the presence of middlemen may help to improve upon the present situation.

Having talked on various issues and challenges that stand tall ahead of a U.S $ 2 trillion economy one of the bigger concerns for India is, the faster growing young population. For any nation a young population is just like a double edged sword, if you fail to turn them into an asset by giving them adequate employment opportunities you are just adding on to your liabilities. India accounts for over 15% of global work force, however over 276 million of India's work force continue to earn less than U.S $ 2 per day (as per the India Labour and Employment Report 2014). 

All these and many more reasons, theories, factors and results interest me to learn and unlearn about  India as an emerging economy. My blogpost doesn't aim to demean India's growth story but to highlight a few observations and information that I happened to read in past few days or so.

References:

Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2014/05/a-crossroads-for-india-and-its-business-landscape/

International Monetary Fund: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2014/02/

United Nations Human Development Report 2014: http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/table-1-human-development-index-and-its-components

Knoema Data Atlas: http://knoema.com/nwnfkne/world-gdp-ranking-2014-data-and-charts

Institute of Human Development : http://www.ihdindia.org/ILER.html

and a few more

Open for any feedback / recommendations / suggestions.

iPhone 6 does the trick!

Not too far ago on September 19th 2014 when iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were launched, Tim Cook and the Apple Inc. drew a lot of attention across the globe just like any other launch of an Apple product does. However the event received a mix response from the tech gurus universally. Some accused Apple Inc. of losing its technological edge over the period of years in the 'Tim Cook era' to its competitor, Samsung while others applauded their latest development in face of iPhone 6. 

Having known this, it still didn't stop Apple to garner a pre-order booking of over 4 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in its first 24 hours of availability and another 10 million devices were sold in next 3 days, this in itself was a record by any cellphone manufacturing company. In India, Apple has managed to sell over half a million iPhone 6 in last three months.

Over past few days, I have been wondering what has made Apple the most valuable company in the world, when its market share in cellphone category is just about 10% and that in the computer and peripherals category is about 8%. Only when I read through few articles I realized that in last one year or so Apple products have seen a considerable rise which has added a lot to the brand and its value.

Apple Inc. has now taken the world by the storm by posting a mind boggling sale of over 74.5 million units of iPhone 6 in just three months since its launch. Apple's profit have now risen to the all time high of U.S $18 billion with over 37% increase. No company on this planet has ever achieved such a high till date.

Tim Cook and team have been under a lot of pressure to fill in the void after Steve Job's demise in , but by looking at Apple's performance in last few quarters I am sure Steve would be proud of his successor as Tim has successfully managed to take the Apple Inc. to the heights which Jobs always aspired for. Steve Jobs and his aspirations are not new to this world, and it is only when you Aspire you can manage to reach where Apple Inc. is. 

Meanwhile it will be interesting to see what Tim and Co. deliver in the month of April when they reveal Apple Watch as the Apple Inc. is know to scale the pinnacles of technological advancement each time they deliver a product.