A new Pune

Pune is a city with lot of land which is being used the same manner as it was more than half a century ago. The city has grown and become a modern metropolis and many villages which were the edge  city of now become the centre of the city. Pune is now getting a transportation infrastructure of metros ring roads  befitting metropolitan area with perhaps more than 5-6 million people. There is an opportunity in this transformation to envision the future of the city for the next 50 years and reuse some of the land also accordingly. 

Agricultural College as a Central Business District 

Very prime land near the nerve centre of the the metro network where almost three metro lines Criss cross is being used for an agricultural college. 

The Proposed Pune Metro Rail Network

There is no ecosystem for agriculture in Pune city. There is hardly enough water even for its residents.  It will be difficult even for the students to practice what they learn or to interact with agriculturalist or farmers. What was once the right place place for agricultural university is perhaps now a misfit. Areas like Solapur on Marathwada or Vidarbha  which face challenges in creating a strong agricultural economy for which there is an a viable market and which is sustainable environmently. Need this college more than Shivaji Nagar Pune.  There is a strong case to to shift this university to the epicenter of areas which require speedy thinking and solutions for creating the second green revolution for Maharashtra. 

Maybe one idea may be to shift it to Baramati !

Similarly there is a need to re envision Pune and create a city in which the traffic flows and people movements are balanced. Having two three pockets like Hinjewadi or Kharadi where few lakh people commute everyday in one direction is not a recipe for a balanced development. No transport system can take skewed loads. The mistake of creating Nariman Point at one edge of the city should not be repeated. It simply destroys the life of one generation of people by eating up all their personal time in commute. It is necessary in Pune to create a central district where lots of work can be done by just walking around or by simply sitting on a small bus or an electric vehicle. Perhaps it's time for Pune to learn from what Kuala Lumpur did it and create a  City centre.  There was a racing track in the middle of Kuala Lumpur rather the city grow so much that the racing track came to be located centrally. When Kuala Lumpur wanted to reinvent itself it took up this racing track and converted into the Kuala Lumpur City Centre  with modern amenities.

The interests of entire KL was put ahead of just the Selangor  Turf club members and the results are there for the whole world  to see. Selangor Turf Club was an institution of the British Raj in Malaysia meant for the amusements of the British elites. Set up in 1800  it definitely appears to have become  an elitist institution by the time Malaysia decided to use its land for the greater good.

I think it is time to do the same thing with The Agriculture College  at Shivaji Nagar, Pune. It has about 1000 students and  the college and the farm appears to cover an area of about 100-150 acres. The College is between 200 metres to one kilometre from three metro lines- the locations for which have already been decided. With this infrastructure Shivaji Nagar would become the hub of the city and would have very high public transport connectivity.

The Government should  pay fair compensation and take over the Agricultural College and build a very modern city centre on the entire land. If government wishes it will also take over some portion of the military land abutting it and add to this areas. This will create both flow into the City centre and out of City centre using the metro rail network. . For example the line to Hinjewadi will not be like the Virar to Nariman point line,  having traffic only on one direction.  This line can bring in people to the city centre from suburban residential areas and  and can take people from the City centre to Hinjewadi. Utilisation of the metro network and the roads will be high on both directions hereby making life much better for citizens. Viability of the metro network can be substantially altered by such a development as its capacity utilisation will be high along every direction and along every line of the network.

Optimisation techniques such as  theory of constraints also suggest that the greatest benefits to any system arise when the usage of suboptimal resources is increased drastically by removing the constraints that limit their use.

The agriculture University will also benefit tremendously by being shifted to areas in which agriculture is the prime business or occupation.  It will get a place of importance in that area and will be in the right in the middle of problems and can find solutions for these problems.

 If this land parcel is developed as a dense CBD then one could expect at each acre would house 800-1000 employees. This new City centre will be very near to the dense but traditional parts of the Pune city and will be an excellent employment generator for the areas in which a large portion of the people live thereby reducing the load on the transport network. The Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai could serve as a precedent and a base upon which Pune could learn and develop this area

Raj Bhavan Pune

The White House which is the official residence of the US President, arguably the most powerful political leader in the world, is only 18 acres.  Pune is not even the capital of Maharashtra.  Raj bhavan occupies very large tracts. It is  obvious that these were created with very different idea of projecting the power of the rulers of those age.  A reading of this (Terraces of the Raj) will make it amply clear of the nature of the disconnect of this building with modern India ! Since no Governor of India is new to its weather and we now have air conditioning in buildings and cars these summer  Raj bhavans have lot all its relevance.

The Raj Bhavan at Mahabaleshwar is even more of an anachronism. It is not relevant to this discussion except to highlight this point ! 

India has progressed a long distance from the British Raj and now there are no rulers and there are now only people representatives who are there to serve The people representatives need to be accessible and not appear  disconnected  to the people they are  elected  to serve . We have to evaluate whether the people representatives need to have such large tracts of land which are hardly used in the centre of the city. This tracts of land today can be used for creating centralised business districts in which public services for which there is a large volume of traffic such as stamp duty registration courts can be housed on this premises. Incidentally Raj Bhavan also falls almost at the edge of one of the metro lines. . This may appear to be a revolutionary idea today but logical one and it should be  evaluated on the merits of the idea rather than it's being a divergent from the past concepts that we have run with so long.

It is very classist and elitist to think that only farmers land can be acquired for alternate uses and only their land can be envisioned for a different way a of land use. To be fair every land should be open for such evaluation and should be available to the service of the society upon payment  of a fair compensation. This should be true of farmers land or the agriculture University or the Raj Bhavan. To say that the right to property of the President or the Governor is different from right to property of  all citizen is to make a mockery of the constitution. The time has come to have an open constructive  debate about these ideas.

I am not an urban planner but as  an user of various city infrastructure and having lived and travelled and seen some amount of cities, I thought that we should learn from the solutions other cities came up with when they faced similar problems.  Intelligent adaptation of good ideas is actually good thing and hence I think this idea needs to be put out in public domain and discussed. Its flaws drawbacks could be looked into and fixed and, if  the idea is found a viable one  may be taken up for implementation.

Banaras and Kumbh my first hand experience

I recently had a chance to visit Banaras and Kumbh for about 6 days. This is a summary of my experiences there. I had gone there to attend the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas  (PBD -2019) and look around Banaras. The visit to the Kumbh Mela happened serendipitously.

I had come to Banaras almost 18 years back to assess if the Taj group should buy the Nadesar palace, a very large piece of land with a small palace on it. At the time I did visit the Ghats and the Vishwanath mandir  and its precincts and was horrified in the way in which this city was being managed. Air connectivity was limited and the airport very basic. Nonetheless it was evident even to  me who was merely an inexperienced 28 year old junior manager then that the time will come for this holy place. So we recommended to Taj to take over the Nadesar palace and maintain it is a boutique hotel and expanded to a very large deluxe hotel when someone will come to give the city its due. So we structured a lease instead of an out right purchase where in the lessor would get share of the revenue for whatever hotel that would come on it for a long time. The local people told me Nadesar Palace is doing very well now and charging upwards of Rs 50,000 per room night on good days ! 

As I landed I found a very modern airport with excellent connectivity to the city  that seemed capable of dealing much much more than the 18 flights that land now  daily (per the local driver). The airport looks good to take as much as 100 flights a day ! 

Although I stayed with some with some friends I did visit the tent city made in Banaras, for the overseas guests who had come to attend the PBD,  to tide over the shortfall in hotel rooms. The arrangement were outstanding and I could not have believe that this is the same Banaras I visited 18 years back.  The locals I stayed with were more astounded with the PBD event, the tent city and the ring roads. 

Banaras has now  many new facilities including a Trade facilitation centre which can hold many trade shows conferences  This is built in the village where Kabir lived (photos below). 

Once the PBD event was over,  I was eager to see Banaras with my own eyes. Banaras has now  uninterrupted power. In localities where the demand exceeds the capacity to distribute power, temporary arrangements have been made supply more power in those areas in short no excuses where tolerated. Here is a photo showing how the transformer capacity has been boosted using jugaad. This is found in many places and is not an isolated instance.

When I spoke to the locals they said that their  diesel bill for generator has come down to zero. The savings for business establishment was quite significant especially for a low cost City such as 

Banaras and it seemed to have improved the air quality also.

The first thing that struck me as I walk around the crowded areas was that there was no stench anymore. Conservancy staff where cleaning the streets at much greater intervals. Large proportion of the cups, kulhads, plates were being thrown properly in their designated areas. 

While Delhi still wondering what to do to reduce, its pollution Banaras is moved on and is using electric vehicles for mobility a very large portion of these vehicles are electric vehicles which more than suffice and  ideally suited for the small lanes and roads of old Banaras. Photos

The Kashi Vishwanath temple is being introduced to using modern temple management techniques. This ensures that there is more order and the revenues reach the temple rather than the middle man. Bank of Baroda has opened  a facilitation centre near the temple where one can go and pay the fees for any of the pooja or for fast darshan of the temple.  There are priests who take you into the temple and complete the Darshan and bring you  back to the facilitation centre. The government has recognise that the temple complex is too small in relation to the number of people who like to visit this temple and has taken cognizance of the risks of pushing through more people into such a crowded areas and also the inability of the elderly and the infirm to be able to get Darshan of  Kashi Vishwanath so they have acquired land around the temple and are in the process of constructing a large temple complex which will make the entry of people into the temple a very organised matter. Once these changes are made Ma Gange can be viewed from Kashi Vishwanath temple and there will be a long corridor from the temple to the river and all facilities will be there inside the temple for the pilgrims.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/varanasi/soon-access-kashi-vishwanath-temple-directly-from-ghats/articleshow/64072869.cms

It struck me that we need an institute of temple management in India today along the lines of IRMA which was setup to create specific management knowledge in the realm of rural and agricultural management. Pilgrimage and temple economy maybe equal in size to the dairy economy of India or even larger despite the neglect, benign or otherwise for the past 70 years, and requires a specialised body of knowledge for managing the same. There is a serious anomaly in the way in which tourism statistics are computed in India due to the fact that India is practically a continent masquerading as a country (more in this blog).

Expansion of the temple complex may seem like a small matter but the addition of the few acres and superior  management of the movement  of pilgrims and their requirements could double the economy of Varanasi along with the additional infrastructure of the airport and road connectivity.   

I went round the ghats to see for myself if indeed the river is clean in most regards. There is no floating  debris  and no odour and at the Dashashwamedh ghat you could even see the stones in the river during such a crowded season. 

You can see that the waters are getting cleaner. Here is a photo of water collected from middle of the Ganga.

I also visited the Manikarnika ghats where the funerals take place and found that arrangements have been made for proper funerals at these Ghats. Nothing is thrown into the river and seeing this I was surprised that how no one had done this before considering it was such an obvious and simple thing to do. There is something at the funeral ghats of Banaras that makes you realise how transient life is!   Visiting these Ghats was one of the best experiences of my visit to Banaras.

s

At the end of my trip I did get a chance to attend the Kumbh Mela and decide to extend my trip by one day. The road from Banaras to Prayagraj is being made into 4 lane divided highway which  will perhaps cut the commute time from 3 hours to one and half hours when completed. Work is going on at a frenetic place for its completion ! 

Arrangements at the Kumbh were simply outstanding. Law and order, electricity,  roads and signages,  water and waste management and connectivity was planned and executed very well.  Indrapastham tent city by UP tourism has well appointed tents with very good facilities to ensure that Kumbh attracts high end visitors also !

In the years to come the Kumbh will drive the economy of the places where it is held  and in the year it is held economists will say that the Kumbh economy cannot be compared to non Kumbh years  and will want to remove the Kumbh effect on the economy of that region ! Some visuals ..

The morale and the effectiveness of the Uttar Pradesh police force has gone up a lot among their own citizenry and more so among the tourist and visitors to the state. This to my mind is a very deep transformation. 

During my many interactions with the the ordinary people it was clear that they now understood the difference between governance and lack of it, leaders who could deliver and those who can't, and between lip service and walking the talk. In fact many of the common people were cribbing that government was insisting on correcting many of the anomalies and implementing the laws in letter and spirit very strictly.  It seemed to me that change in this society was now limited to the pace at which society will adapt to moving to rule of law...

It seemed that this society was now collectively introspecting as to price paid for their past choices as a collective and whether they needed the rule of law or the rule of "their man" having  evidenced the latter for better part of last thirty years ... 

In conclusion  I found a new Uttar Pradesh which is confident  and capable of finding solutions to problems which had kept them behind.  No doubts there are lot of problems and it is a long road ahead but the society seemed to have found the appetite to handle  what's ahead ... as a person who has observed Indian economy for last two and half decades and a participant in India stock market it seem to me that the road to India's social, political, and economic future clearly nows run through Uttar Pradesh ! 

Before you go I leave you with more visuals of the beautiful ghats ! Ganga maiyya ki Jai

In time whats outside of you is inside

This is a story of how things apparently outside  suddenly turn into things affecting you. Many years back a leading Indian company was expanding in Chennai and wanted to buy land. The CFO of the company who used to come on TV every result day thought he was not recognizable by public and came in torn jeans and chappals to negotiate for land. He wanted land in hottest suburb at prices of the back of beyond. His logic was when I can get land at Old Mahabalipuram Road outside Chennai for lower rate. For a company making so much money that fact that it's employees would spend 1 1/2 hours daily  extra had no consequence.  Once this mindset of this company was known to all a clever politician decided to make money out of it. He called them to a western Indian city and gave them lot of land "acquired" from farmers cheaply. So farmers paid for this billionaire promoters' freebie . This company was happy that they got land almost free and started creating 1000s of high paid jobs. It left the housing needs of a large employees -_a huge exogenous jump in the market to the market forces aka wolves many of whom were fronts of politicians. The politician sold the industrial land cheap knowing he could make it up in housing. Instead of buying land for both housing and industrial like Tatas did in Jamshepur this company only minimized what it thought was its "cost" little realizing that other costs will sooner or later be imposed on it. As real estate prices climbed 5x and people bought houses in an haphazard way the higher costs of residential real estate, travel costs, higher cosr of schooling, lost productivity, and health of employees have all been re-imposed back on this clever company and its cohorts through ever increasing wage costs. So much for the clever management ! In the end the politician had the last laugh ! Today a similar situation is prevalent in many CSR activities. CSR honchos want to fund tangible activities that are internal to their span of control little realizing that external things can become internal sooner or later.  The reluctance of the highly evolved corporate leaders to fund  initiatives that appear external to their world but will help manage things that will become internal to them is one such.  Today civic planning of cities is one such area. Government due to its past limitations on hiring and current limitation on tenure, training etc of professional skilled professionals is finding it difficult to solve problems in a manner and a time frame expected by society. When such capacity comes up as think tank/ implementation partner if corporates don't fund them they can expect longer commutes, more frequent traffic jams, higher  costs for their labour due to poor government schools, higher safety costs from city unemployment ... And all of this will fund a way to flow to their P&L.  Choice is the corporates ..

India : A Continent masquerading as a country

India is a continent masquerading as a country. We are a de facto continent though we are de jure only a country.

Most of the world world has not figured this out or at least pretend so. Our population is more than that of Europe. It has as much arable land if not more than Europe. It has more languages than Europe. Its variety of lands and landforms make it one of the geographical diverse "country". The people and their natures, the cuisines are so varied that most foreigners who want to simplify things dont understand India much.

Even if the whole  world is fooled or refuses to see India is a continent we should not be fooled and should base our geopolitical ad economic strategy of the de facto position of continent and negotiate with  the world on these terms.

When we begin to thinking  that we are de facto a country we begin to get many things seriously  wrong.

Let me give an example.

When we compare tourist arrivals into a country  say Spain which with a population of 46.4 million gets 75 millions tourists an year and then compare with  India  which gets about 10 million tourists a year we think Indian tourism is miniscule. But look closer and you will find this

Most of the tourists to Spain are from within Europe. The traffic count into Spain is like adding Tamilians and Kannadigas  going to Tirupati as Tourist arrivals.  If you consider for a moment  Europe as country then arrivals from UK, France , Germany, Italy , Nederlands etc wouldn't count and would substantially reduce tourist arrivals into Spain to about 5-6 million a 90% + reduction if computed on a like to like basis.
 
Thus  comparing foreign tourist arrivals into India  is the most absurd comparison and making comments about state of Indian tourism on that basis is way off the mark. Indian tourism has many challenges and we need to work on them but we should not think our situation is abysmal. It is very healthy.

Now contrast Spain with Tirupati a small temple town  with just one old temple which gets 30-40 million tourist arrivals a year. If Tirupati were a separate country, by the standards of the numerical illiterate elites it would rank very high on the list of tourist countries in the world. There are at least ten temples like this. If one temple can get ranked so high you can imagine how  the rankings would be if we added Katra town - Vaishnodevi, Madurai etc as separate countries in this list.

Singapore gets 16m tourists a year.  So we can safely say that Tirupati town is a bigger tourist attraction than Singapore.

Let me give one more explanation. Lets say the Eurocrats having a wet dream of Europe as a single nation get their dream fulfilled. Now they are one nation and so FIFA asks them to send one team  to the World Cup and gives them money reserved for one team like say Argentina with a population of 43 million. Would it be fair way to share the revenue when Europe brings in say 800 million + audience.  If FIFA share of TV rights was main source of revenue to nurture the game in Europe will a country share be enough to maintain the game in a continent ? When asked this way it is obvious that it isn't.

We should not forget this when BCCI negotiates its fair share of fees with ICC. Even if we are a de jure country we have to nurture the game on a continent basis because thats exactly what we are. Needless to say the TV rights have such high value only because we bring continent size audiences and continent sized value of TV audiences. Our share of ICC revenues thus cannot be country sized. If ICC indeed wants to take continent size audiences and pay us country sized amounts of TV rights then we should send them a team from a country sized area like say Mumbai which is bigger than Australia.

The Great Swimmers of Cooumville

I am going to tell you an interesting story about a town called Cooumville, its river and its folks.

There was a clean river flowing through the city. They had an annual swimming contest in the river. Everyone from the world wanted to contest and the local swimmers could not win the races due to competition. So a few cunning locals who had a special skill of swimmimg in sewage quietly found a pliant  mayor and brough him to their side and requested him to start letting sewage water into the river. While these few locals swimming ability was not the best no one could beat them in swimming in sewage charged water. Over time the mayor realized that letting sewage into the river also saved a lot of money for the city and  he duly pocketed all the sewage plant money and let the entire sewage into the river. The net result was that the chosen locals who were the only ones could swim in sewage began winning all the Cooumville races.

As the population and economy of Cooumville expanded the races became prestigious. The winners of the races were now global superstars. The locals came to dominate and win the races.  The swimmers started buying cricket teams, actresses vied to marry them and  their opinion was sought by media on all issues. Ivy league management schools came to study the utter dominance of the few local families in these races. Case studies and books came to be written about the Cooumville technique, the unique approach and the philosophy of swimming. 

Many professors built careers on specializing in giving gyan about the Cooumville way and why these few Cooumville swimmers won all races in Cooumville.

A lot of time had passed and the next generation of swimmers from these families came in to the field. They enjoyed the stardom and fruits of victory but since they had seen better having been trained abroad etc they wondered why the river had to have sewage water mixed in it. They developed an aversion to the old Mayor who did not want to improve the river. So in the next election the backed this unknown tea seller who lived on the banks of the river who had taken a vow to clean the river. These scions thought that if they could clean the river they could continue to win and have a good life instead of swimming in the stench. The good life they had seen in their overseas education and travels had opened their eyes to better life.

The elections came and the tea seller won the elections. The public anger at the old Mayor and the old gen of Cooumville swimmers who had defiled the river played not an insignificant part in carrying the tea seller comfortably to the Mayor seat.

The new mayor set about his work briskly and began cleaning the river in right earnest.  As the sewage started going to waste treatment plants the river began to clean up and slowly swimming in sewage no longer was enough to win the races. Locals who could swim started doing well too. The word started getting  around that this was going to be no longer about swimming in sewage. The few families of Cooumville swimmers now began to have some serious doubts on the wisom of cleaning the river but it was too late. The public loved the new Mayor who soon cleaned the river thus ending the era of the Cooumville sewage swimmers who forgot that their real skill was swimming in sewage ...

Sounds familiar ? :)

Krishna or his army

Some of the intractable problems sometimes dont require resources to be solved. They are misallocation of resources masquerading as shortage of resources. They require wise, intelligent and practical people to be on your side. Throwing resources  at problems when these are not yet available sufficiently is like carrying water in a bucket with a hole.

India has the capability to  develop a new model of helping poorer countries. Most of the developmental finance institutors don't understand mixed economies such as India where modern, traditional, everything coexists. They also cannot solve endemic problems that connect poverty and corrupt politics because they are intertwined problems and solving political problems is out of syllabus for them ! 

India has found unique solutions to its problems using its common sense and these can be offered to these countries to progressive leaders. Our solutions such as Aadhaar, EESL - LED , Direct Benefit ransfer Schemes, Soil health programme, NSDL for tax administration. GST roll out, demonetization, Electricity reform, water management, AMUL and Operation Flood and many others. In the next few years as we reform schooling we can add more domains to this stack which can collectively  be called the Good Governance Stack (GGS or maybe better called the "Vikastack"). Unlike developmental  institutions we would have working models with technology and partners who can go and implement and solve them. 

India should also set up OPEC like organisation to extract fair price for agricultural produce which has been suppressed by West. Ex for teas with Sri Lanka and Kenya. Spices Board should lead efforts to develop better prices by working with Sri Lanka and African countries.

India masquerades as a country but in reality is a continent. It is the  project which  Europe tried and failed but India has succeeded. So the GGS/Vikastack  which is being tested across various types of regions - hilly, river deltas, desert/arid, populated metros  provides significant advantage over theoretical models of Western educated technocrats. In this the cunningness of our some of our citizens and their fetish to break and bend rules comes as a great advantage as it makes our systems far more robust than systems coming from countries where citizens tend to obey the law without much thought.

India should offer this as help to poor African countries and countries such as Afghanistan to rapidly pull them out of their endemic problems.   Since corruption and bad politics are intertwined we should identify  new age politicians who want to change the destiny of their nations using their own resources.  Swami Vivekanand said that all poverty is spiritual and in a way we will cure them of their spiritual poverty and will help them develop their country using the resources saved from waste or plunder. This way we will develop a deep civilisational friendship instead of them developing resentment arising from pushing them into economic  slavery like China is doing to Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

PS

I urge  you to read this example in Corporate charity which highlights the above concept.

When Toyota offered Kaizen as help

The Food Bank for New York City is the country’s largest anti-hunger charity, feeding about 1.5 million people every year. It leans heavily, as other charities do, on the generosity of businesses, including Target, Bank of America, Delta Air Lines and the New York Yankees. Toyota was also a donor. But then Toyota had a different idea.

Instead of a check, it offered kaizen.

A Japanese word meaning “continuous improvement,” kaizen is a main ingredient in Toyota’s business model and a key to its success, the company says. It is an effort to optimize flow and quality by constantly searching for ways to streamline and enhance performance. Put more simply, it is about thinking outside the box and making small changes to generate big results.

Toyota’s emphasis on efficiency proved transformative for the Food Bank.

The Food Bank for New York City is the country’s largest anti-hunger charity, feeding about 1.5 million people every year. It leans heavily, as other charities do, on the generosity of businesses, including Target, Bank of America, Delta Air Lines and the New York Yankees. Toyota was also a donor. But then Toyota had a different idea.

Instead of a check, it offered kaizen.

A Japanese word meaning “continuous improvement,” kaizen is a main ingredient in Toyota’s business model and a key to its success, the company says. It is an effort to optimize flow and quality by constantly searching for ways to streamline and enhance performance. Put more simply, it is about thinking outside the box and making small changes to generate big results.

Toyota’s emphasis on efficiency proved transformative for the Food Bank.

Jobs ..thither ?

Lot of discussion these days revolve around where the jobs for the next generation will come from.

While it definitely appears as though the growth in easy jobs and careers that drove the economy may be coming to an end it is not true that job growth is coming to an end. There are massive unsolved problems and unmet demands that exist both within India and outside India and fulfilling them will provide massive impetus to job creation in the years to come.

Here are some massive job creation opportunities

1. Fruits & fruit based products - mangoes, lichis etc are eaten only  by a very small portion of the population typically well off. As the nation gets richer more people will want to consume these products.  Alternately growing more and making these products affordable could vastly expand these markets.

2. Pure food- herbs and spices . today shortfall in production is made up by adulteration in a legal or illegal manner which keeps prices down. As consumption goes up and adulteration becomes difficult this will lead to sudden spikes in prices.

3. Temple tourism and Temple economy is a very huge part of the Indian economy and can be a even bigger part. It is and will be recession free sector and  its demand arises from need for spiritual tune -up. This can provide demand for infrastructure, services and revive arts. It also has potential for pan global tourism. It is also very people intensive.

An immediate doubling of rail passenger capacity will greatly aid this process.
Rebuilding temple towns especially a 2-2 kms area around temples using modern management techniques will help increase traffic that temples can handle. It will also modernize and beautify  these areas and change the entire experience

4. Vegetarian delicacies - India is a continent with areas with different climate . This provides inputs of a very varied nature and has lead to development of tens if not 100s of cuisines of very different nature. The much reviled  caste system  has also expanded the variety of foods made. This is a global opportunity for showcasing through tourism and exporting processed foods. For political reasons our vegetarian cuisine  heritage is not getting showcased in the correct manner and this is a massive opportunity loss especially when we compare how countries like Germany are proudly becoming leaders in vegetarianism

5. Getting water table up again- free electricity has led to over exploitation of water table. Water bodies have not been maintained properly. There is one time work in capturing all tge rain eater and charging tge earth so that water table rises up. There is continuous work in maintaining these water bodies.

6. Green products - India is energy short and has does not have too many friends inrye energy surplus world. There is needless antagonism to India due to its Hindu civilizational roots. We need to develop a very low carbon foot print in relation to our GDP. The solutions like LED need to expanded into fans  ACs, public transport systems. As we drive high adoption rates in India we can shrink our carbon footprint to GDP and  we can export these tested and proven solutions to many countries. This brings us to our next point

7.Quality movement & water tight GST - if we can ensure a water tight GST evasion as a a strategy of business will collapse and efficiency and quality movement will become tge only viable strategy for a very large number of businesses . at that stage these. Businesses will find that they will make very good profits domestically and the absorption of their cost base by domestic operations will allow them to export and make substantial profits leading to good gains in margins. This will allow them to reinvest quality, design, R&D and further climb the value chain. The  Indian consumer base of 1.26 billion is a very large one and will allow for low level of  fixed costs also.

8. Tree based economy -  there is massive unmet demand for sandalwood. It is not grown due to poor law and order. This should be fixed and a grower coop like Amul should be set up and house to house growing encouraged. This has potential to completely change economic fortunes of families over 25 Years. Instead of investment products people can plant sandal wood trees to fund children education and marriages.

9. Afforestation - converting of wastelands into woods and forests could be a very large employment programme. BAIF has run a wadi programme for many years in Maharashtra doing this.

10. Circular economy / Waste recycling till we reach 100%  waste recycling : There are jobs in waste management in collecting segregating recreating  products from waste. If suitable laws are made and investments made in outreach programmes to change the mindset of people this can be a huge employer.

11. Bio-waste fertilizers : Indian soils are now seriously carbon deficit because nitrogen fertilizers were sold way below cost and farmers didn't have awareness of their soil health. If we can create bio waste based fertilizers that will drive up carbon in soil it can be a large occupation .

11. Holistic health treatments: Western medicine has serious limitations. Traditional medicines and therapies offer global opportunities for creating jobs for Indians

12 Flower based and honey based alcohols  essentially non grain based alcohols -mahua flowers could be a good start. India had a wise tradition of never using grains to make alcohol as it would affect food security of the weakest  and poorest. This is very different from Western model. Many alcoholic beverages were created using honey flowers. Recreating this and marketing them globally will create new industries.

13. Non gluten product exports such as jawar, bajra, and ragi. Gluten allergy is rising due to lifestyles. India offers many raw materials that can afford people to eat the foods they like without worrying about gluten allergy. This is a massive export opportunity.

14. Sports leagues to target sports which require ekagrata and have a lot of global money such as golf, tennis. One will provide high financial returns  and raise India's standing among world citizens and among a particular set of population

15.Sports leagues which will have lot of domestic attraction such as archery due to traditional affinity for such sports. This will entertain the masses in sports to which they can have access  at low cost and can hope to excel and become superstars.

16 Governance stack : India is rapidly developing a governance stack which can transform a poor country rapidly. IMF, World bank may have many ideas by they  do not have such tested working solutions especially ones tested in a country which is actually a very diverse continent. Solutions includes Aadhaar, Direct benefit transfer, Passport Seva Kendra, Energy  efficient devices through ESSL, Soil health mapping, NSDL for tax administration, world class stock exchanges, IRCTC. We should sell them to African countries especially to  new political formations which want to reduce corruption, improve delivery and use the money saved for infrastructure instead of going with begging bowl to hostile foreign powers.

17. Creation a workforce with education and skills to tap the above areas.