Vibrant Gujarat: Looking Outward

Just concluded Vibrant Gujarat summit in Gandhinagar has created Gujarat centric image to outside world..at least reflected in the documents released on the MoU signed, Investment promised and employment destined to be generated. Great! to achieve a milestone in absence of the national support. One may wonder..when the state would acknowledge the support of the national government and vice versa. So much for the industrial investment that, state has pioneered itself in tagging 'Davos of India'. True to an extent till the internal competition rises amongst the states.

The 50 lakh jobs created in a state, when total about 170 crores working population, 100 crores in primary and tertiary sector, with less then 2 percent employment level would result in lack of human resources and skills to cater to such industrial investment. There is an effort to train the manpower to cater to the demand, but its falling short very fast. The manpower in key sector, like power, automobiles, Information technology etc is simply not available as per the requirements.

Now its upto the state and industry to transfer the vast pool of workforce from across the country and attract them in their newly established townships (to be constructed) in future. Whether this would lead to migration of work force? May be from the states where infrastructure is not available and has surplus man power. The costly labour intake in the industries might prove competitive of the state entrepreneurs in long run and thus idea of doing away with labour laws would also work.

We hope most of the claims seems to regular success rates of promises and simple routing the various investment through government channel (Vibrant Gujarat). What else do you think of partnerships which is as simple as internal investment on projects like housing colonies, urban infrastructure, irrigation projects, etc and even investment by MSME. These are regular investment where in government has only regulatory role to play. Government is party to any investment happening in the state, only this time its one page MoU (form) given to INDEXb to maintain the data. Good for marketing the state..smart move indeed.