“Standard of living of a country is dependent on its ability to produce goods and services.” – Gregory Mankiw

In the book “Toyota Production System” Taiichi Ohno quotes Toyoda Kiichiro’s words that “Catch up with America in three years. Otherwise, the automobile industry of Japan will not survive”! That was in 1945, after that Toyota grew to arguably be the best automotive manufacturer in the world. How different are these times compared to when he wrote this book?
Today, this is pretty much the state of many nations, including India, in the technology space, particularly Semiconductor and Manufacturing.
We need to visibly commit ourselves to catching up with the other countries within the next few years.
Otherwise, our contributions to the digital world will not be significant. We will still continue to use somebody’s inventions rather than we generating any meaningful intellectual property. There are sectors of strategic Importance the government has identified. We need to allocate the resources and fix a time frame to catch up on the global competitiveness (ref; GCI, WEF).
Now, why should India catch up with China or Germany or the United States? Having a population of about 20% of the world, an underperforming agricultural sector, sub optimal manufacturing processes and lack of quality research has made it imperative for India to accelerate economic growth to generate adequate local employment. Not just from a competitiveness standpoint, but also to improve the standard of living. Economic growth can come only through improving exports and minimizing imports.

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