Critical for Success- City Planning Management

India is a strong country on many terms. Large Human resources bases, intellectual capital, sound financial policies etc. I am a city boy and from my observations the biggest threat to India in terms of Human Development Index (HDI) is the coming up of unplanned cities. This is a grave threat to both people living in such cities as well as the micro environment surrounding that area.

Though it’s almost impossible to control nature’s fury like floods or earthquakes preparing for it can be ideal thing to do. The age old saying prevention is better than cure still holds true. Mumbai floods would not have happened if proper planning had gone into the setting up of the infrastructure. Here is where we need a course on City Planning & management. I am not too sure if a course on this exists elsewhere but I am sure it’s a much needed course in India.

I am neither academician nor an expert on how city planning should go about. But I believe it can be add on to the current MBA course as it covers the elemental Human Resource Management, operations & finance. A civil engineer or Architectural engineers are not the only people who can do this course. But we need people who are creative so as to plan the landscape, Bio Marine experts who can manage the water bodies and various other experts form diverse domains. We need marketing people to find out what the needs of the users are and also for their negotiating and communication skills.

Yes there are a number of private players building their townships but the need of the hour is the participation of the Government and the Public Hand in Hand. Yes there is a huge cost involved in rebuilding but an opportunity exists to work on the smaller towns and municipalities. As the saying goes, “Rome was not built in a day”.

India - Focus on agriculture for a strong Future

The Turn of centuary saw India emerging as a strong economy. This was attributed to the strong policies and a young and vibrant democracy; Acadmically inclined youth and a desire to succeed. But one of the main reason other than the opportunities for business here is the fact that wages were lower compared to the more developed economies. But has anyone wondered why the wages are low. Its simply coz the food cost is low. Food consumption is the major driver of the economy. Consider this, The money earned by a person is primarily spent on food , clothing and shelter. As far as India Is concerened food and clothing we are self sufficient. This helped us in keeping the prices of these commodities low.

So here is the catch. In this season of inflation we should ask ourselves what is happening? The country is not able to meet the food requirements of this nation with a vast poppulation that with sufficient spending power. The continued increase on prices of essenstial commodities would result in an upward salry demand. This would on the long run result in India not being a preferred partner in trade as salary would match that of developed nations. This may happen within the next 25 years at the current inflation rate. The prices of goods are expected to be 5 times of what it is now.

The only way to prevent that and protect the country's growing stature is to ensure food security. There should be a strong focus on agriculture, and the next 5 year plans should give prime importance to this. A green revolution and a white revolution made India what it is today. Thanks to the efforts of Swaminathan and Kurien we are a nation that rarely imports food. But times are changing and if we are not prepared to meet the increased demand, a good chance that the inflation would consume us and result in slowing down of industrialisation. A consumer state is always on the tenter hook. This is what happened to US in the recent times. A reason why they had  to go for outsourcing.

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