India, post–coronavirus: A SWOT analysis

The fight against the pandemic, Coronavirus or Covid-19, is like waging war against an unknown enemy. The whole world has turned out as a battlefield and there are no rules and restrictions. Once the virus hits, means, very little room for survival. India is honestly fighting, to survive.

Covid-19, infectious disease caused by coronavirus, doesn't discriminate between: rich and poor, king and subjects, young and old, men and women, and a great leveler. This crisis has multiple dimensions – healthcare, social, political, economic etc.

The response for the epidemic by developed countries like US, UK, Germany or Italy, appear to be insufficient, but even India did not show its preparedness in terms of healthcare facilities. We are in mid-way.

For instance, according to reports, China has 18 doctors per 10,000 people, we have only 8 doctors per 10,000 people and moreover we have only 40,000 operational ventilators, which are insufficient to any level if the virus spreads the next 3 months.

According to experts, the measure of Lock-down only will contain the spread of virus but it will not totally eliminate the virus, and it may even occur later days, once we (the people) take the conditions softly.

Having understood, to some extent, the conditions of the epidemic, let us analyze how the epidemic impacts our economy.

Will India withstand to the present crisis, which the present leadership has not come across? Can this ancient country show way-out to the world?

Is there any opportunity that India can overcome from the present crisis? Can Indians transform these challenges into assets/strengths?

In its "South Asia Economic Update" the World Bank estimated that the Indian Economy will decelerate to 5 percent in 2020 and for the fiscal 2021 it may touch baseline at 2.8 percent.

Knowing well, that the Indian economy is already suffering and the present spell of epidemic is further impacting. The World Bank further opined that the Economy may rebound in fiscal 2022 provided the virus subsides and the government enhances its support with encouraging fiscal and economic policies.

In fact, we don't require any big analysis to say that the economy is in trouble, now that the planners have to look for quick rebounding options and quicker implementation. For which, let us go through SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis.

Strengths

1. Our strength is our people and their willingness to work hard. Despite differences on various issues and divergent society of caste, creed, religion, languages and cultures, the country together has shown their willingness to follow the orders of the Central Government and even though there are serious disputes and arguments between states and Centre, all the state governments came on a single platform when it comes to fight the epidemic.

This nature of oneness will definitely help the country to fight against the poor economic conditions in the post-epidemic era.

2. Coupled with this strength, the constitutional support of freedom of speech and expression and highest level of tolerance among the people is an added advantage to India to become global production centre.

Especially, after China loosing grip over the world majors like Japan, who wanted to withdraw from that country, it is opportune time for India to harness its growth focusing Japan.

3. Having second-largest English spoken people in the world, India had already established its supremacy over Information Technology sector by providing largest contingent of IT professionals to the world.

And lately, the country is poised in management education and now offering CEOs to the world majors. This knowledge based work-force offers much strength to the country, at a time when the H1B holders in US and other countries are worried of loosing their job owing to the Coronavirus.

Even the IT work contractors are feeling out of waters as they may end contracts abruptly. If the country uses these workforces, who are masters in their respective fields, India would definitely transform global development and production centre.

More so, when all the developed countries are tumbling in managing the epidemic, India is in a position to offer work platform, provided we further contain the virus.

4. Coming to its own industry, India requires focusing in newer sectors like alternative energy, infrastructure and supply chain management.

Further, we have established strong capabilities in terms of manpower management having managed the largest contingent post-offices across the length and breadth of this country and also running largest rail network, besides spreading optical fiber network. We should know how to transform these strengths into future opportunities.

Weaknesses:

1. All these above strengths would not absolve us from troubles. We do have certain weaknesses to plugging in. One such weakness of this country is poverty.

As the people of this country are ready to take-up any assignment to make two square-meal a day, and our children are suffering with malnutrition. The governments have to take special schemes to protect people from these problems.

2. Further, the country is suffering with religious differences, and despite rights and freedom offered the country's minority religions claim they are inadequate.

To take along with these people, who are about 20 to 30 per cent of the population, the governments have to take the group leaders into confidence and patch-up the differences, if any.

This measure will give the world industry credence on the government to put additional investments into the country, to popularise the slogan "Make in India".

3. Another issue India is facing will be reservation policy. The people criticise, that India prefer reservations over intelligence, and that the result of it is the large-scale brain-drain.

Now the time has come for the government to attract the talent back to India. We have to work out common rules and common Acts.

Opportunities:

1. Primarily being knowledge driven economy, India may now offer large-scale back office facilities to the world industry/services.

Towards this, the country must offer robust communication systems like high penetrable internet facilities and allied services. The target must be that India must become focal-point for all IT related services to the world.

2. India is major supplier of bulk-drugs and formulations to the entire world, besides very recently the country is expanding its foot-print in the biotechnology sector.

These sectors are the new growth centers considering the present outburst of epidemic. The country must be ready to exploit the opportunity to its fullest length.

3. The other sun-rise sector is startups, which are giving birth to various newer sectors like venture capital, private equity funds in the area of finance, and Artificial Intelligence, robotics etc.

4. The original strength of this country is Agriculture. And the governments have to utilize the large non-technical working class in this sector to exploit to its full length, but strengthen the supply side management including exports to reduce the losses to the farmers, who are still an unprotected group.

The agricultural allied sectors like meat, poultry, dairy etc must get emphasis to expand their foot-print in the domestic and international.

Threats

1. The greatest threat to this country is religion. Despite lot of debate between the groups there exist unhappiness and disliking, more between two major religions. In each of troubles the country faces, the religion will automatically enters to play its role.

The conditions are more prevalent even in the educated families and main culprits are politicians from both the religions and more so the people also believe their own religion persons.

Interestingly, the religious institutions are sitting on huge properties, be that temples, mosques or churches or any other religion. Hence, this threat will continue and we should know how to mitigate the problem, if arises.

2. The other threat is Corruption, which is a perennial issue. Though the subsequent governments are trying hard to bring the incidence of corruption to lower levels, we can say, they still not succeeded in their task.

We have corrupt people in all walks of life and fighting against corrupt is herculean task.

3. And slow justice is another threat the country is facing. Lately the apex court has directed all the high courts to clear the backlogs.

(The author is a ex-senior journalist and a practising advocate)