My mother is an ardent devotee of Lord Ganesh and prides in having an envious collection of various forms of the Lord. But she is upset these days and is planning to stop buying and collecting the idols. According to her, these days most of the new forms of Lord Ganesh are not in made in India. They are all made in China and she doesn't want to pray to a Chinese Ganesh. More often than before, we are witnessing our Indian companies importing finished goods from China and market them under their respective brand names. According to government figures, Chinese imports leapt from US$ 32.45 billion in 2008/9 to US$ 52.25 billion in 2012/13.
Many Indian marketers feel that importing goods from China is cheaper than manufacturing these in India, be it idols, toys, bathroom fittings, textile machinery or diesel engines. The contribution of the manufacturing sector to our country's GDP is stagnated at 15 percent for almost 30 years as compared to China with the same sector contributing 34 percent and growing, year-on-year. 23 percent of Indian workers are in the ‘industry', with 50 percent in the construction sector and the remaining in the manufacturing.
What makes china so attractive? A key reason is it disciplined work-force, which is both skilled and semi-skilled, besides being cheap. Another advantage is the country's favourable currency and economies of scale, especially in manufacturing low end engineering and high-volume products.
Even though, the labour force in our country is the second largest in the world after China, India has had the highest number of labour related disputes and unrest in the world, leading to loss of man hours affecting productivity, sometimes even lock outs. The most affected sub-sectors in this regard are the manufacturing, quarrying and mining sectors. Such unfortunate incidents have led to huge destruction of property and sometimes even deaths of senior management, to recall, a few reported untoward incidents include those that occurred in Maruti, Sunbeam, Micro-Tech, Bajaj, Denso and at other manufacturing plants.
Management failure
Main issues for labour unrest are companies not allowing the formation of unions, contract labour, and offering low wages. In some cases the work gets so hectic that workers hardly get time to use wash rooms, have very short lunch breaks and are heavily penalised for late comings and absenteeism. Many a times, the management fails to understand the culture of the region where the manufacturing unit is located. ‘Industrial relations' has already become neglected in management education, thanks to the high growth of the services sector in the country.
