May 2015

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 30 may 2015

Entrepreneurship is a critical component of economic growth and contributes to development, industrialization and employment generation. For entrepreneurship to thrive requires a facilitating ecosystem with government's proactive business policies, participation of private sector, accessible markets, availability of venture capital, readily available skilled human resources, and environment of risk taking. In 2015 GEI (Global Entrepreneurship Index) India is ranked 104th and trails all BRICS economies. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) study in 2013 pointed out that entrepreneurial attitude is relatively low in India when compared to other BRICS countries. Only 61% of the adults (age 18-64) surveyed looked at entrepreneurship as a desirable career option. Moreover the enterprise surveys from World Bank reveals that the new firm density, described as number of new corporations created per 1,000 working age (16-64 years) individuals, is found to be dismally low in India. Although recently constituted Ministry of Entrepreneurship (with Skill Development) by the Government of India is a step in right direction to boost entrepreneurship focused policy and decision making but concrete visible actions are to be taken soon considering the highly competitive and fast paced world of entrepreneurial ventures. Amit Kapoor, President & CEO of India Council on Competitiveness and Chairman of the Institute for Competitiveness, points out the issue of entrepreneurship clusters and why India has faltered in a coherent cluster approach that enables enterprise creation. According to him, 'The fact that exports from the country have not been able to keep pace with the imports points to rising domestic demand. In addition, it also points to a failure on the part of India to 'make' and equally importantly 'market' our goods and services well in the global economy.' He further adds, 'The thrust on Make in India is thus understandable. Augmentation of large corporations with the development of MSME clusters, especially with newer enterprises and entrepreneurs, will go a long way in bettering prospects for the future.' He suggests the following key elements to nurture an entrepreneurial ecosystem in India - Education that promotes independent thinking and risk taking; Expand the funding opportunities; Technology development by talented and expert individuals; Improved access to infrastructure like electricity, internet, land etc; Social and cultural support by accepting failure as an inherent part of learning; Better regulatory environment; Stringent IP (Intellectual Property) protection regime; Collaborative environment with trust and teamwork between institutions, networks and people. He finally adds, 'In our view, specialization, innovation and marketing (SIM) should be the basis of entrepreneurship that would drive more value creation in the Indian context. Newer business models that focus on society, scale and simplicity would better the outcomes for India in the future.' Read on...

moneylife: Building an entrepreneurial ecosystem in India
Author: Amit Kapoor

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 21 may 2015

Value of data lies with how it can be utilized for better and improved decision-making and subsequent beneficial actions. Governments collect and hold substantial amount of valuable data on variety of parameters. Open data movement intends to give wider digital access to public data to increase government transparency, efficiency and accountability. A report by McKinsey Global Institute estimates global economic value of open data at US$ 3 trillion. Open Data Research Network, funded by Canada's International Development Research Centre and led by World Wide Web Foundation, is exploring the emerging impacts of open data in developing countries and how it can help address specific challenges. In Chennai (India) researchers found that existing municipal data on the urban poor is unreliable. Lack of data on the number and location of public toilets, hinder public sanitation investments to reach vulnerable communities. Local officials with the help of researchers significantly improved their procurement processes by creating and connecting different open databases. Another case study in India focused on the extractive energy sector, where no publicly available data has hindered regulatory enforcement in the production of coal, oil and natural gas. In Phillippines, researchers looked at how business, media, civil society and other groups benefit from national open data policy introduced in 2011 that required local governments to disclose financial and procurement related data on their websites. This project identified where local governments can be more accountable. Read on...

Phys.org: Strengthening governance through open data
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 18 may 2015

According to S. Ayyappan, Secretary of Department of Agricultural Research & Education (DARE) and Director General of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), 'Multidisciplinary research and applications are required to improve agriculture in India.' He suggests, 'The future of India and the world lay in everyone becoming interested in the outcomes of agriculture, since it's everybody's business.' Vijay Chandru, Chairman and CEO of Strand Life Sciences, says 'Innovations are happening in genome sequencing and it might soon become personalized and a precise way of diagnosing diseases. There is need for biologists, bioinformaticians and information scientists to collaborate in this regard.' Read on...

The Hindu: Research needed to improve agriculture, says expert
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 may 2015

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases and cardiovascular disease, are a major healthcare concern for India. They cause more than 60% of deaths and amount to 70% of healthcare spending. Health economist Dr. Kenneth Thorpe, chairman of Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease, is working with Indian government to develop a policy framework to effectively tackle India's healthcare issues and concerns. According to him, 'It's got to be public-private partnership (PPP). So today, India spends about 4% of its GDP on healthcare. About 1.5% of that is the government and the rest is private. So we just need to scale that up - probably proportionally to something like 5-6% of GDP.' He further adds, 'We really need to build up the primary care infrastructure. We need more manpower, more hospital beds, but we really need capacity - building up primary care clinics, primary care models that really deal with identifying chronic disease, preventing it and managing it...The government has to play a role in funding, particularly low-income populations - the poor that live in rural areas, urban poor...The government's got to play a leadership role...We need to sort of change the way that healthcare services are paid for. So today in India, 60 percent of spending is out of pocket. So we need to change that from out-of-pocket buying to something like a primary care package (subscription) or an insurance product.' Read on...

Reuters: Primary care centres key to reforming healthcare in India - Health economist Kenneth Thorpe
Authors: David Lalmalsawma, Robert MacMillan

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