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EDITORIAL

Population Control

While addressing Commission for National Population Prime Minister A B Vajpayee has announced creation of Population Stabilisation Fund. The second pertinent point mentioned by him relates to making family welfare programme ‘area specific’. It has been the experience that family planning programme started in right earnest in fifties was found loosing its sheen so much so that its nomenclature had to be changed as ‘family welfare programme’. Many incentives resulted in realising reasonable rate of success on population control. These included supply of free contraceptives, advice, vasectomy and tubectomy operations as also cash incentive for those motivating or performing the operation....more

Price Reduction

While token reduction in the price of wheat and rice supplied through Public Distribution outlets is welcome, it brings into sharp focus ....more

By Dr Andareas Peter
Productivity denotes the effi-ciency with which various in-puts are converted into goods and services. Productivity signifies relations between output and input product is a combination of raw materials, machinery.....more

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Speak a lie a hundred times and it becomes a truth. It has actually happened in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). The State Chief Minister and National Conference (NC) President, Dr Farooq Abdullah, and his close lieutenants wanted us and the media...more

EDITORIAL

Population Control

While addressing Commission for National Population Prime Minister A B Vajpayee has announced creation of Population Stabilisation Fund. The second pertinent point mentioned by him relates to making family welfare programme ‘area specific’. It has been the experience that family planning programme started in right earnest in fifties was found loosing its sheen so much so that its nomenclature had to be changed as ‘family welfare programme’. Many incentives resulted in realising reasonable rate of success on population control. These included supply of free contraceptives, advice, vasectomy and tubectomy operations as also cash incentive for those motivating or performing the operation. Then started the slide down in terms of availability, acceptability and fraudulent games besides dilution in budgetry support. Motivators vanished. Money thus allocated was siphoned off enroute and it was solely left to the individual to adopt small family norm or carry on with large family size. With the birth of the billionth child named Aastha, the population clock has added up another thirty lakh mouths since logging of the billion mark. There is renewed awakening, concern and realisation that at this rate of growth the country is doomed because all the development gains and those accruing from IT revolution would get negated unless population is checked. This concern is reflected in establishment of National Commission for Population that has reeled out certain time frame for the next fifty years so that population stabilises at the stipulated figure.

After obtaining all the needed inputs it has been found that the villain States happen to be Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Together, they log above forth percent of the total population of the country. These States are rightly nomenclatured as ‘Bimaru’ States. So when Prime Minister declares that thrust areas would be specified, he has in mind these Bimaru States where highest growth rate continues to disturb the national average. Incidentally, it is in these States where illiteracy is maximum and to that extent ignorance remains predominant. Unless guided properly and motivated systematically these people just don't know what family welfare means. Welfare obviously stems from having small family when a couple of children can be better looked after in terms of health care, education and dietry regimen. This point has to be brought home very convincingly. Such a job involves dedication and meaningful pursuit. It is here that role of primary health centres as also NGOs become quite pronounced. With ushering in of Panchayati Raj, association of panches and sarpanches with the family welfare programmes can yield very encouraging results. Mostly female workers have to be organised so that they can have easy access to the ignorant women folks to educate them about small family norm and how it could be achieved. These workers besides the primary health centres must be fully supplied with easy-to-use contraceptives so that women folks could adopt it even without the concurrence/knowledge of their hubbies. So the thrust area is the woman and it is she who holds the key to the success of any scheme meant for checking population growth.

As per feed back already in hand, 90 districts in the Bimaru States have been identified where anything between 6 to 10 children are produced by the ignorant couple quite unmindful of consequences. At this large size the offsprings not only become a liability unto themselves but also fail to get the gains of development. Prime Minister obviously has in mind to make entire population programme to take these 90 districts as the first target area. Besides controlling size of the family, other areas like access to schooling for the girl child in particular, looking after nutrition requirements and health care are also to be taken as part of the area specific programme.

As regards creation of Population Stabilisation Fund, the idea is to segregate it from usual budgeting which has failed to percolate to the targeted population. Many scandals of wholesale diversion and/or siphoning off have surfaced particularly in the Bimaru States. Separate corpus fund and making it area specific with 90 districts as the prime target is meant to produce positive results. It is certain that some sort of monitoring system will also be in place so that the entire programme becomes result-oriented. Prime Minister has given enough of indication that NGOs would be involved in a big way for implementation of the area specific programme. It shows Government is genuinely concerned about the burgeoning population. It has also identified the factors that continue to disturb the national average. States like Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka have done very well on population control. Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra also get good marks. Population growth in north eastern States and W. Bengal has other factors like large influx of Bangladeshis which has to be tackled as a separate issue.

In the above context one is constrained to refer to former Finance Minister's statement when Dr Manmohan Singh bemoaned, "Funds are not the constraint. It is the siphoning off the funds enroute due to lack of any monitoring mechanism that development programmes continue to suffer." This also includes family welfare programmes. Strict monitoring thus becomes first priority so that Population Stabilisation Fund is duly accounted for in terms of positive results.

Price Reduction

While token reduction in the price of wheat and rice supplied through Public Distribution outlets is welcome, it brings into sharp focus how mindless pricing policies work to the disadvantage of the people even as it makes mockery of the PDS. While hiking the prices a few months back, the Government conveyed the impression of having reduced subsidies. The hikes were in rupees. It happened at a time when there was surplus production which made the open market prices less by almost 30% than what it is in the PDS. Another reason was that in its anxiety to wide off the subsidies, it lost sight of the export competitivenes where too wheat prices of FCI far exceed the international prices. This happens when production cost in India is less due to cheap labour and highly subsidised inputs. The pricing policy thus suffers from gross infirmities as manifested by paltry offtake from the PDS system. As a result FCI godowns remain full to the brim and all bulk purchasers continue to have their buy from the open market. Such defective pricing policy has affected Jammu dealers severely in that they also find no takers for the rationed atta which is costlier than what is available in the open market and that too better quality wise. The habit of pegging up artificially wheat and rice issue prices must be given up and on no account FCI should be allowed very large margins over the procurement price. Even procurement prices must not be based on appeasement of farm lobby but strictly conform to cost-factor and its relative competitive edge vis-a-vis vast export potential at least when the production exceeds the demand and storage cost and capacity tends to come under excessive strain. It is certain that even a few paise reduction will fail to attract rationees to the PDS outlets unless the reduced price is less than the open market price.

Improving productivity

By Dr Andareas Peter

Productivity denotes the effi-ciency with which various in-puts are converted into goods and services. Productivity signifies relations between output and input product is a combination of raw materials, machinery, workers time, power, and various other related factors. In production each of these factors becomes an input and is transformed in the manufacturing process into a finished product or what can be called an output. Output is the quantum of goods and services produced while input consists of productivity resources like manpower, money, machine and material. Thus the increase in productivity means an effort towards increasing the output with the same input or greater output with the less incremental inputs. To a common man it can be stated that productivity implies providing more and more of everything for more and more people with less and less consumption of the real resources. Productivity also reflects an improvement of quality or rather standing for better quality.

It is quite difficult to measure productivity in an organization where a variety of activities are going on. In such a situation it may be better to look at the productivity in segments like labour productivity, material productivity, capital productivity, machine productivity while other factors do not change significantly. To determine productivity in the industrial sector, value added by manufacture will be better understood than value output. To estimate the value added in industrial production, the value of a raw materials, fuel and payments to others for services done are deducted from the value output. In addition, the value of depreciation is also deducted. The balance is value added. The value added divided by the amount of capital employed is capital productivity. Thus, productivity is governed by the technology systems, procedures, techniques employed and also leadership. The manufacturing organization, therefore, needs to have judicious emphasis on these factors to promote productivity.

Industry in India has experienced growth. However, productivity increases have yet to make a mark. The low growth in productivity both in the technological as well as non technological areas in the Indian organisations are mainly attributed to factors such as technological obsolescence, uneconomic scale of operations, high cost of finance, poor quality/high cost of raw materials, over staffing and low labor productivity, infrastructure bottlenecks, industrial relations etc. All over the world, the major factors contributing to productivity are competitive market, technology, organizational structure and methods and management. The factors relating to improvement in productivity and rate of productivity growth should be properly understood and attempted. These are related to the scale of production, technologies that master low cost, decentralized production through ancillerisation, quality improvement human resource development (HRD), focussing on R&D, inventory control, materials usage, maintenance, planning marketing techniques, improving brand image etc. The most important thing to note is the competitive environment, in which the industry has to survive, has to form a strategy to reduce the cost and enlarge the size of the market. This calls for concern for innovation denotes conceiving new things and new ways of doing the things, creativity means improvement in quality and usefulness. Unless one thinks of new projects, there will be no desire to improve their quality.

The productivity growth has basically two components, namely (1) technological progress and (2) improvements in efficiency which yield higher output being the result of good management practices, better industrial relations, competition (both domestic and foreign), skill development, infrastructural availability and the overall growth prospects for the economy. Technological progress has a crucial role to play in boosting productivity. The introduction of new technologies leads to the expansion of the production and yields higher output even with given input resources. Upgradation in the existing technology or breakthrough in new technological development can help to improve both quality as well as productivity. Therefore, technological progress may be considered as one of the most important element in the drive to improvement in productivity. Innovations should emerge through incremental improvements in the use of raw material, methods of the production and improvement in product designs and specifications. Such technological development or making available the latest technological inputs will not by themselves be sufficient to improve productivity unles the technology is absorbed and adopted. For technological adoption, one has to think of factors such a s entrepreneurship, credit facilities, market availability, etc. As regards credit, facility of venture capital relatively new concept in India is fast gaining acceptance.

The venture capital assistance is now available for financing cost of fixed assets, operating and market development expenditure, start up working capital. etc.

The present policies stress on performance improvement, quality consciousness, competitiveness, efficiency of operations and completion of the projects on time. The new industrial policy has the following four important facets :

* Emphasis on deregulation, decontrol and debureaucratisation.

* Focus on competition and efficiency.

* Opening of the industrial sector, globalization and export promotion.

* Shift in governments role from being regulatory to promotional.

In pursuance of these objectives aiming at the progress of our economy significant changes have been carried out in the policies relating to various sectors of the economy such as trade , industry, foreign investment, etc. These economic reforms are aimed at accelerating growth, improving production efficiency, global integration, deregulating the economy and stimulating foreign investment series of measures related to macro economic stabilization, structural adjustment and economic reforms have been introduced for the removal of barriers and control which hindred the production and productivity growth in the past. As such, the liberal industrial environment with fewer restrictions, greater freedom of trade and less administrative control prevail in the country.

UNPRECEDENTED EXPANSION

In the last few years, there has been an un precedented expansion in the global trade which created vast markets for globally standardized products, especially in the wake of unification of the European Common Market. With a view to boosting the exports, our industry has to be competitive and quality conscious. Quality management is the most important factor that would influence the future shape of our economy. ISO 9000' Standards define minimum quality standard for acceptability at the international level for various items like farm based products, food articles, textiles, automobiles, leather goods, machinery etc. Obtaining ISo 9000 cerrtification by the Indian copa ies is gaining momentum. Various organizations/associations have launched a drive to train the personnel in the total quality management. Although we have achieved international standards and in many cases with the help of imported technologies which are relevant and innovative, it will be necessary to transform many of the industrial units from being production oriented to quality improvement for achieving global competitiveness.

Within the framework of policy goal of reducing dependence on foreign countries, the Government has taken effective steps to promote technological upgradation. It has given incentives to the development of R&D. A number of national laboratories have developed new technologies. Some of these indigenously developed technologies have found their way abroad. However, dependence on foreign technologies has not been diminished which is evident from the large number of collaborations/import of technologies opted by the industrial units. In terms of productivity drawing a line of demarcation between locally available and non-available technologies needs increased conscious view.

It is worthwhile to mention about another important aspect of productivity related to labour. The persons involved in the organisation influence the improvement in productivity to a great extent. No organization fighting to survive and succeed in a competitve environment can ignore the human side of productivity. In order to improve the quality of workforce, it is necessary to bring about the positive changes in the work attitudes, knowledge, skills and opportunities. Attitudinal changes come gradually but once they are deep rooted, they translate into the culture of the organization Job satisfaction is directly related to productivity. Higher job satisfaction results in higher productivity. These are the qualitative aspects of management concerning the people which have positive impact on organizational culture as well as productivity.

Productivity improvement is not just doing the things better. What is most important is doing right things better. The organizational effectiveness will enhance through emphasis on right approach and methodology which effecting changes in the various aspects responsible for productive improvement. An integrated approach is needed at the organizational level, which ultimately results in better performance. The new industrial policy whose three main building blocks are deregulation, competitive efficiency and globalization conveys the message to the proponents of the industrial sectors that quality and productivity are the key elements to withstand in competitive domestic and international markets. Competition and efficiency will therefore form the pivot for sustained growth in the future. The industrial sector in India is in the midst of important structural changes. In the new era of liberalizaion, competitive strength would lead every organization to the path of success.