Outlook For the Indian Optical Industry
Industry expert, Mr Ramachandran Parthasarathy shares his views on the Economic Survey of India, its relevance to the optical industry
The Economic Survey released recently before the budget this month underlines the key areas of policy focus in the short and medium term both at a macro level and sectoral level & the survey draws out some of the key areas of policy focus to ensure that India’s growth continues unimpeded, crossing the milestone of becoming the third largest economy of the world on its way to scaling greater heights.
Some of the key elements as reproduced in parts from the Economic Survey are.
Generating productive employment: According to UN population projections, India’s working-age population (15-59 years) will continue to grow until 2044. The chapter on Employment estimates that the Indian economy needs to generate nearly 78.51 lakh jobs annually in the non-farm sector to cater to the rising workforce.
However, to create these many jobs, there is a need to create the conditions for faster growth of productive jobs outside of agriculture, especially in organised manufacturing and services, even while improving productivity in agriculture.
Be it manufacturing, retail, distribution, technology, sales and marketing, e commerce-Omni Channel there are ample areas to work on and ride the wave. For this, its time to move out of our past mindset of small-scale business units and look at a global scale to target opportunities within India and the rest of the world.
Skill gap challenge: Sixty-five per cent of India’s fast-growing population is under 35, and many lack the skills needed by a modern economy. Estimates show that about 51.25 per cent of the youth is deemed employable. In other words, about one in two are not yet readily employable, straight out of college.
However, it must be noted that the percentage has improved from around 34 per cent to 51.3 per cent in
the last decade.
Helping India Build a Skilled, inclusive, workforce for the Future: The Annual Report further goes on to enumerate the challenges in the skilling and entrepreneurship landscape in the
country, such as
- Public perception views skilling as the last option meant for those who have not been able to progress/have opted out of the formal academic system.
- Skill development programmes of the Central Government are spread across more than 20 Ministries/Departments without any robust coordination and monitoring mechanism to ensure convergence.
- Multiplicity in assessment and certification systems leads to inconsistent outcomes and causes confusion among employers.
- A paucity of trainers, and an inability to attract practitioners from the industry as faculty.
- A mismatch between demand and supply at the sectoral and spatial levels.
- Limited mobility between skill and higher education programmes and vocational education.
- Very low coverage of apprenticeship programmes.
- Narrow and often obsolete skill curriculum.
- Declining labour force participation rate of women.
- Pre-dominant non-farm, unorganised sector employment with low productivity but no premium for skilling.
- Non-inclusion of entrepreneurship in the formal education system.
- Lack of mentorship and adequate access to finance for start-ups.
- Inadequate impetus to innovation-driven entrepreneurship.
The Economic Survey has captured relevant issues that are faced in our industry. There is a shortage of skilled workforce to address the uncorrected refractive error, especially in smaller towns and villages.
There must be a concerted effort of the industry to come up with a recommendation to the Ministries concerned to bridge this gap.
The government has launched several schemes, such as the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana and the Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises, aimed at providing affordable credit to MSMEs which currently have an estimated credit gap of around Rs 20-25 lakh crore.
Are we availing of the schemes? How do the associations help or share the information with all the players in the optical businesses?
The Economic Survey also addresses China's dominance in manufacturing and some of the extracts from the survey are reproduced below.
The questions that India faces are: (a) Is it possible to plug India into the global supply chain without plugging itself into the China supply chain? and (b) what the right balance is between importing goods and importing capital from? It is pertinent to note that some Chinese goods are so cheap that no amount of tariff can reduce their price competitiveness. To boost Indian manufacturing and plug India into the global supply chain, it is inevitable that India plugs itself into China's supply chain. Whether we do so by relying solely on imports or partially through Chinese investments is a choice that India has to make.
The optical industry relies heavily on Chinese imports and we need to derisk. India needs to certainly accelerate manufacturing of all eyewear products to cater to the domestic demand and the globe. In order to achieve this the Govt has recognised the challenges specific to China in the Economic Survey.
As a first step, all Multinationals should look at India as a global manufacturing hub in addition to large Indian business houses and families in the business, SMEs to support the ancillary supplies the eyewear sector can grow manifold in India in the area of manufacturing. Time is ticking and we must now have Apex All India eyewear, spectacles, contact lenses, and primary screening services industry body in place to highlight the opportunities and challenges to the Govt of India and State Govt. Hopefully, we will have this in place before the next India budget in the year 2025.
Ramachandran P
Fellow, Institute Of Directors (IOD) Eyewear Consultant And Hon Advisor – India Vision Institute.
