Crucial Decades Ahead [June 2012]

June 19, 2012 12:46 pm

“Demographically the next 30 years is supposed to be considered the next golden period for India similar to the one that took place in China 20 years ago”- T K Ramesh, CEO, Micromatic Machine Tools
The eastward driftThe manufacturing sector, as far as the metal cutting business which includes automotives, auto ancillaries, general engineering, transportation, and space is concerned contributes a small percentage in terms of units and value from the business point of view and global perspective. According to TK Ramesh, CEO, Micromatic Machine Tools, “The recent trend reveals the metal cutting manufacturing moving eastwards and the countries into play are China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia. The reason being high cost of manpower in the western countries. A look at the emerging markets even in the two-wheeler or four-wheeler segment is again taking an eastward turn due to availability of manpower”.
The general perception is that the performance is currently down in comparison to what it was a year or year and a half ago. Mr. Ramesh feels, “This is a temporary phase and post the second half of this year, a positive outlook is expected. From an outlook and need point of view, the market looks extremely good”. Emphasising further he said, “Will India get its due share and how much of its due share we will be able to get will largely depend on our thoughts, infrastructure and policy”.
Slow movement a concern“The Indian industry is moving in the right direction as far as achieving manufacturing excellence is concerned”, comments Mr. Ramesh. “With the right kind of investment being made, the right kind of emphasis on quality systems, training systems happening across organised sector, corporate sector, medium and small scale sectors, proves that the direction is right. The only concern though is the pace which seems to be a little slow. We need to put more emphasis and invest more money, doubling the speed would really help”.
He further added, “Large investments, policy impetus is required. The government and policy makers such as CII and other relevant bodies should take things seriously. If the government can concentrate on speedy infrastructure and then include manpower also as a part of infrastructure, then things will really change”.Land reforms requiredAvailability of land and speculative nature of land as a resource is not at all being utilised. “Our land reforms is highly speculative, if somebody wants to double its capacity, he simply cannot afford to do it in the city where the company is, forget Mumbai or Bangalore even if he is in a place like Hosur, Kolhapur or Belgaum, the cost is going up”, said Mr. Ramesh. “The only choice left therefore is people need to move interiors which is totally because of the cost perspective. The minute one starts going interiors then there is no optimisation because there is land issue, there is agriculture that needs to be made into industry”.
The sector has to do a lot of non-productive, non-manufacturing or non-core oriented kind of work even to get things off the ground. This is one factor. Less manpower in the interiors is another worry. Another situation is people live in cities need to move to interiors for work purpose where infrastructure in terms of education for people, workman and supervisors is lacking. “The single largest bottleneck seems to be in our handling of policy of infrastructure, the government or the public private enterprise should really concentrate largely on infrastructure creation, education, which is not good enough. So these are areas that needs lot of attention, leave alone optimising, first of all the fundamental policy direction itself is where a relook is required”, added Mr. Ramesh.

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