THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 19 August 2019 (A new approach to industrial policy (The Hindu))

A new approach to industrial policy (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Industrialisation
Mains level: India’s economic growth and development process

Context

•  India wants to grow its economy to $5 trillion. People want jobs and their incomes to grow.
•  The country needs its industrial sector to evolve to absorb the millions of people coming off agriculture, as they will, with productivity in the agricultural sector improving.
•  India cannot rely only on its service sector it needs industry and manufacturing to grow much faster to create jobs with good incomes and to enable the economy to grow to $5 trillion.
•  Ergo, the country needs a good policy to grow industry at this juncture in its economic history.

Wither industrial policy?

•  India had avoided framing any industrial policy after the liberalisation of its economy in 1991, because ‘industrial policy’ had become taboo in the ‘leave it to the market’ ideology of the Washington Consensus, which said that any deliberate attempt by the government to grow industry would always be counter-productive.
•  The only way to grow a vibrant, entrepreneurial industrial sector was for the government to get out of the way of the unleashed animal spirit of entrepreneurs.
•  It said, ignoring the history of industrialisation in all countries, including the US, where governments have nurtured industries and meddled with trade policies to foster industrial growth.
•  Now, even the US, confronted with the growth of China’s industries supported by its government’s policies, is feeling the need for an industry-cum-trade strategy to counter China. India cannot avoid, any longer, the necessity for a good policy to grow its industries.
•  The problem is, what sort of policy should India have — how much should it leave to the market, and what should be the government’s role? Any policy, and the way it is made, must fit the system and the situation for which it is required. Therefore, one must step back to understand the process of industrialisation.

What’s industrialisation?

•  Industrialisation is a process by which a large system acquires capabilities to do what it could not do before.
•  Their suppliers learned too, while managers and workers within the industry were rapidly learning and improving their skills. Alongside them, the government facilitated the process of building capabilities in industries and learned along with them too.
•  Complex systems acquire capabilities they do not have when the interdependent sub-systems within them learn to do what they could not do before. Industrialisation is a process of a complex system and its parts learning in action together.
•  Beyond raw material resources, the only source of competitive advantage a nation has is its ability to learn and improve its competitive capabilities faster than all other nations.
•  With a participative process of shaping industrial policy facilitated by the government,

System structure

•  Systems can be sorted into three archetypes: engineered-controlled, open-chaotic, and complex self-adaptive.
•  The structures within engineered systems are designed by experts. Experts can manipulate and control the system if they understand the forces within completely.
•  Technologists have designed amazing machines with which human beings have been able to do what they could not do before — like fly to the Moon.
•  In an engineered system, the designer sits outside the system while designing it.
•  This approach to designing an industrial policy will not work, because the policymaker must be a participant within a dynamic system, learning within it through multiple feedback loops.

Way forward

•  Unregulated markets can become chaotic, as the world realised when the financial crisis happened. Government regulation is necessary.
•  However, India will not want to go back to the ‘engineered-controlled’ model of industrial policy, which is inappropriate for a dynamic, learning process. India should adopt the third archetype, of ‘complex self-adaptive systems’, which is the appropriate model for industrial growth.
•  Industrial policy is not a document; it is a process. It is a process of learning in action that brings together the constituents of the industrial system.
•  The Indian industry is not a clean sheet upon which a policymaker can impose a policy. India has a rich industrial ecosystem with competent industries in many sectors and millions of large and small enterprises.
•  Each constituent within the system will see the system from its own perspective and will lobby for its own interests.
•  It is essential for the policymaker guiding the process, and for the constituents too, to foresee the consequences of fixing any one part of the system on the other parts, to avoid fixes that can backfire elsewhere, or later on, and harm the system.
•  Inverted duty structures, which harm industry, arise when changes are made to make life easier for one industrial sub-system but damage others. Lopsided labour reform to make firing easier can produce shorter-term benefits, harming longer-term processes of capability building.

Conclusion

•  India has recognised the need for an industrial policy and groundwork has been done, with consultations with many stakeholders, both by UPA-II in the 12th Five Year Plan, and by the previous Modi-led government.
•  Both times, the need for an ongoing, consultative, learning process was stated.
•  The government should take a bold step soon to install this process if it wants to grow industries, create jobs, and take the Indian economy to $5 trillion and beyond.

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Prelims Questions:

Q.1) Consider the following statements about the Genome India Initiative:
1. The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has initiated the project.
2. A genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA, including all its genes.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
a) 1 only
b) 2 only
c) 1 and 2 only
d) All the above

Correct Answer: C
Mains Questions:
Q.1) To make India a $5-trillion economy, policymakers must bring all the constituents of the industrial ecosystem together. Comment.