BRITAIN’S vote to exit from the EU signals the end of the globalisation era and shows that countries increasingly do not want to participate in global formations, according to Infosys co-founder and former UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani.
Providing an ‘Alternate view of the future’ in his capacity as mentor of the Indian Software Product Industry Roundtable (ISPIRT), at Microsoft’s ‘ThinkNext’ start-up conclave, Nilekani said: “Whether they vote in or out is not the point, the very fact that they are voting is the point — the fact that countries are now saying that they no longer want to participate in global formation.”
Quoting Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of global tech giant GE, Nilekani said, “Today, globalisation is being attacked as never before. The era of globalisation and growth that we have had for 40 years is now under threat. Around the world, this is the trend.”
Elaborating on the subject, Nilekani said: “Trade deals are slowing down. The WTO has not signed a deal for many years. Even if you look at the Trans Atlantic or Trans Pacific partnerships, they are stuck in various types of wrangling. Globalisation as we saw in the last 40 years is slowing down. Global trade is slowing down. The value of global trade has been coming down for the last six-seven quarters.”
Stressing that the future of India’s economy lies in domestic consumption and not exports, Nilekani said that the domestic economy, the services economy and the “multiplier effects of innovations, spawned by the ‘India Stack’, would be the drivers of India’s growth’’ in the future.
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The author of ‘Imagining India’ and ‘Rebooting India’, Nilekani said: “The conventional wisdom for India is that we should be export-led, that we have to grow the way South Korea or China grew, we have to be a manufacturing super power… Make in India and all that… and that we need these large companies that employ thousands of people because that is the way we are going to create jobs.”
Pointing out that the service economy will be key to growth, Nilekani said: “Services are labour intensive and the incremental return on capital in services is more than in factories. There will be services in sectors like tourism that will create jobs. The rural economy will be driven by services.”
According to the Infosys co-founder, the technology era will see fewer large employers. “Uber has 6,500 employees but supports 1.5 million car owners and drivers. What is going to happen is that as you platformise different areas, a company will have a small number of employees but the job creation in the large ecosystem will be millions of jobs,’’ Nilekani said.
The proliferation of smartphones, the unique identification system and the Internet will result in massive technological innovation that aligns market goals and social goals, he said.