Industry
Narendra Jadhav*
It is a matter of great pleasure to be invited by the Bombay Chamber of
Commerce and Industry to participate in the Seminar on ‘Growth Resurgence:
Expectations and Strategies’. The Bombay Chamber, being one of the oldest has been on the forefront in promoting the industrial growth of the country through the ages. I am, therefore, particularly delighted to have the opportunity to share some of my views on globalisation and Indian industry. May I underscore that views expressed are entirely my own and should not be attributed to the Reserve Bank of
India.
As many of you might agree, ‘Geography is history!’ is the new maxim in today’s milieu. The breath-taking changes in information, communication and technology (ICT) are now redefining the national borders, even rendering them irrelevant. Rapid technological change, shorter product cycles, and developments in ICT have combined with privatization and liberalization of trade and investment to produce a global economy, which is distinctly different. Today, even a localized cyclical downswing could get protracted into a structural one in the wake of global competition (Rajan and Zingales, 2003, p 302).1
Powered by the ICT revolution, trade-capital flows and cross-country exchanges have seen explosive growth in recent times. Indeed, the last two decades have witnessed a policy shift towards openness in a number of emerging market economies – either spontaneously so as to reap the benefits of greater trade and investment or under compulsions out of their unsustainable domestic imbalances.
Although the growth performance of Western Europe and Japan was rather lackluster during most of the 1990s, the strong revival of trade was led by the US with support mainly from China and East Asia (especially prior to the 1997 crisis).
Principal Adviser, Department of Economic Analysis and Policy, Reserve Bank of India. Dr.