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Actually, the US is sitting on a powder keg and it could go out of control any time in terms of the social cohesion. It may take say at least ten years for that economy to recover since it has to reimbibe the virtues of domestic savings and living within means. It has to go back to its protestant puritan work ethics and it has to recognise that the axis of economic power has shifted to Asia and it has to accept alternative currency to dollar and it has to do hundred different things to get its fourth position -after China Japan and Indiain the world. What India Inc should do? The current crisis offers opportunities for our companies to look at the vast domestic market. There is a crying need to look at our large organisations like EPFO, ESIC, Ports, Posts, Election Commission, Income Tax, Passport, Customs, etc. They all require software solutions and Netbased speed and efficiency. The implementation of the software packages in railways for bookings etc has reduced corruption phenomenally and also introduced hassle-free travel and enhanced efficiency. This was not due to our top four IT firms but due to a then government owned IT Company. Large number of state government departments/corporations requires IT solutions. They claim they are web-enabled. Their offices have cobwebs and that is the only enabling feature of these government departments. Introduction of IT apart from increasing efficiency and speed also reduces the corruption due rule based transactions and moving away from relationship based transactions. For instance if there is an accident involving say two cars in a city this information is not available to insurance companies unless it is reported by one of the parties. In many western countries the traffic police is inter-linked with the insurance companies and immediately the information is passed -including say drunken drivingand it is impacting the premium to be paid next time. Given the fact that we have more than 300 million cell phone subscribers it is possible to think of innovative methods to integrate cell phone, net and lap tops and IT spheres. For instance, many state governments have social security schemes for children, widows, poor people, disabled etc running into lakhs of crores and it is generally conceded that there is substantial leakage due to corruption in these schemes. Actually, the IT companies can implement solutions for many of these social security schemes by quoting rates which include a percentage of the saved leakages. For instance, there is a old agewidow pension scheme for below poverty line people which entail disbursal of around two crore every month in a state, that implies annual budget of nearly 25 crore. If the leakage is say 15%, then around 4 crore is wasted due to corruption .If that can be saved due to introduction of identificationcards, electronic funds transfer system etc then a part of that corruption savings should also be given to the IT company.
In other words these system cleaners can quote for jobs including share of leakage savingsit is like providing incentives to whistleblowers. Same logic applies to many other companies of India Inc. Nano has shown that there exists a huge market for low-priced cars and Kevin care showed the same for Shampoo in satchets. There is a huge domestic market crying to be served and the margins may be lower but the market size is very large. India Inc which has traditionally focused on cherry picking and premium segments should accept the challenge provided by this crisis to look inwards in to the domestic market. That is the clue to their survival and growth and not looking at the movements of Dow and musings of Obama and Bernanke.