"Things take forever to change in India" is a common phrase heard amongst India watchers. Being an Indian, I am tempted to respond that at least India has been trying! However, that is not a good enough response from a management practitioner.
Going through the history of independent India, a large number of large scale programmes have been launched. All of them with very noble intentions but have been rather slow (very very slow) in achieving the stated objectives.
There is a change that one observes in the recent past. This article is to show the contrast in the achievement of programmes with very strong lessons for the Business Teams to take home the message that Indians have evolved and continue at a much faster pace like a S curve. I will take 2 examples each from the long past and recent past to demonstrate the change.
1. Indian Elections and voters
India jump started the democratic process early in her independent life with first national elections held within 7 years of independence. Equal rights to women was a hallmark of the design. Elections have been held at a national level almost every 5 years ever since (16 so far). On top of it there are state elections where the same voters get to vote for the provincial government almost every five years. The eligible voter turnout in national elections has moved from 58.9%% in 1952 to 70.3% in 2014. Sate election voter turnout is not significantly different on an average. So a compounded increase of about 1.19% with every election i.e. 5 years
2. Population control
India was the one of the first few countries to create a legal framework for population control volutarily by people. Laws were made to allow abortion, government promoted use of condoms by free distribution, massive campaigns on small family etc. The programme met with a success over a period of time.
By ApostleVonColorado - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18073093
This shows that birth rate moved down from 40 to about 23 in about 40 years.The change is approx -3.63% p.a.
Now shifting gears and look at two initiatives of recent past and see a change.
3. Polio Eradication campaign
Polio has been endemic to India for a long time. The campaign to eradicate the disease started in 1978. A new programme was initiated in 1985 and then again in 1992. The coverage of children with vaccine moved to 40% of children in phase I leading to 95% on the 3rd phase. (For those who may not know, the vaccine needs to be given to entire population almost simultaneously every year. Hence the figures cannot be cumulative)
The final push started in 1995 when the programme was synergised with government, WHO and a lot of social bodies (Rotary was a big force in this campaign) and covered the entire population by 2005. And India did not have any case of Polio since 2011. The campaign continued till 2013 with same vigour.
So it took 1978 to 1992 to cover 95% of children and then 1995 to 2005 to cover 100% children every year.
4. Aadhar
Aadhar identification programme (a UIDAI - Unique Identification Authority of India initiative) is India's Social security Number tool.
After a lot of deliberation, UIDAI was established in 2009 to make a blue print of enumerating Indian residents (not a citizenship identification drive). The authority started delivering on the Identification number named AADHAR starting 2010.
From the start, there are more than 1,000,000,000 (right, more than ONE BILLION) Aadhar numbers issued. Each number is allotted after an exhaustive check and record including ALL finger prints and iris scan done in person for all people.
This shows the change of pace in programme implementation in India. This has been achieved with a mass involvement and no external influences have been injected that may have caused the change but the change itself.
There is a lot that such initiatives cane deliver to businesses in India. Telecom industry is one such example where more than one billion mobile connections have been achieved in last 20 years. One new player, Reliance Jio is making soundbites of doing what has not been done earlier and at an unprecedented pace.
India seems to on a take off situation.
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