Core Competencies

Of Leisure and Knowledge
Dipankar Dey

The center of gravity of global economy has shifted to East Asia. Now policy makers at Delhi have been constrained to 'look to the east'. The plethora of regional and sub- regional trade agreements (at least twenty-five in numbers) the Indian government has entered into, with the countries of East Asian and Pacific regions, during last one decade, clearly indicate the growing importance of the Eastern and North Eastern India, once abandoned as a dying region, to the sultans of Delhi.

In this changed circumstance, West Bengal (India) is destined to play its historical role in the economic and political development of this subcontinent. And to execute this responsibility, effectively and efficiently, the political leadership of the state should formulate a long term strategy taking into account the emerging opportunities and core competencies of its resources-both natural and human.

Core competencies, the concept originally advocated by C K Prahalad and Gary Hamel, are those capabilities that are critical to a business achieving competitive advantage. It can take various forms, including culture, such as employees' dedication to their organization. Though originally applied to business, the concept may also be used in analyzing the competitive advantage of a nation/region.

The core competences of Bengal could be (a) its fertile land; (b) capability of its inhabitants to appreciate leisure- the essential ingredient of any civilization.

The most important natural resource of this state is its fertile land. And this fertility of land has offered huge scope of leisure for its inhabitants, who in turn, have contributed, immensely, in the development of arts, crafts, music, literature and science. It cannot be denied that all civilization is the product of leisure. While manual repetitive work is always unpleasant, leisure is undoubtedly a pleasant experience.

Thanks to mechanization, ideally people no longer need to work as much as their forefathers had to do. But the very social system forces people to work more than necessary thus depriving the large section of the population 'the pleasure of leisure and creativity'1 (Russell, 1932). Through this process, leisure is now reserved for the enjoyment of the affluent few (for obvious reason, unemployed people generally don't enjoy leisure) thus hundreds of potential contributors to civilization have been made 'workaholic' who eventually become culturally/aesthetically dumb. This struggle for livelihood by millions of workers to satisfy the greed of few has led to over exploitation of Earth and unsustainable economic growth.

So there is an urgent need for the replacement of the present social system with one that requires less work and allows more leisure. There is no doubt that civilization would benefit if leisure is given equally to all.

While developing agricultural and industrial policies of West Bengal, the unique characteristics of its land (fertility) and inhabitants (capacity to appreciate leisure) have to be kept in mind and be given due importance.

It is often alleged that Bengalis (Bangabasis) are 'idle' and are reluctant to repetitive manual work. Instead of considering this trait as a 'weakness', the policy makers should treat it as a 'strength' and develop appropriate plans to make Bengal the 'cultural and knowledge capital' of the country.

During last three decades local enterprises were suppressed as the leaders thought, quite rightly, that once these entrepreneurs had gained economic power, they would have challenged the political hegemony of the left parties. This fear compelled the previous Left Front government to welcome national and foreign capital (as these would not have strong political ambition) discarding the huge potential of local capital. Jute, textiles (handlooms) and hundreds of agro based traditional industries, which were pushed to the wall during last three decades, can be revived with minor intervention and support from the state. All these traditional industries are knowledge intensive and evolve around the traditional knowledge and skill of an individual or a community.

The traditional craftsman- weavers, sweet makers, potters et al should be treated as knowledge workers. And to preserve these diverse traditional skills, which are scattered across the state, a massive documentation program has to be undertaken urgently.

The present government has appropriately conferred a high status to land it deserves and decided not to use state machinery to acquire land from farmers. But without state intervention, large scale acquisitions of land, a prerequisite for mega production centers, is not possible. So the focus of the new industrial policy should be on Small and Micro Enterprises which, over decades, have contributed substantially in the economic development of the state. Most importantly, as these enterprises do not need huge space to operate, government intervention in land acquisition will not be needed.

In addition to traditional industries, various new industries have come up in recent past. For these new ventures, technology and capital will be needed. If the government does not provide land and various incentives, as demanded by most of the large industrial groups, then big players (say Infosys) will not be interested to invest in the state. Then what should be the strategy to attract capital, both national and foreign, to Bengal?

To attract foreign capital, the developing and least developed countries (LDCs) usually follow two broad approaches, namely (i) 'race to the bottom' approach; (ii) the 'beauty contest' approach.
(i)   'Race to the bottom' approach : During last century, most of the countries, however, followed the first approach where developing countries competed, among themselves, in a 'race to the bottom' by offering competitive tax incentives on foreign direct investment (FDI) where foreign firms ended up appropriating most of the benefits associated with their investment. Few examples,
(a)  In 1996, Intel decided to build a $300 million semi-conductor assembly and testing plant in Costa Rica, a low income country with a population of 3.5 million. Costa Rica was chosen over alternative sites in Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and Chile. In late 1990s, there were 190 companies in eight industrial parks in Costa Rica's Export Processing Zone where they enjoyed a series of tax breaks as long as they were engaged in production.
(b)  In 1992, Portugal paid Ford Volkswagen a subsidy of US$ 2, 65,000 per worker. In 1996, Brazil extended a subsidy of US$3, 40,000 per worker to Mercedes- Benz. Compared to this in 1980, US paid a subsidy of only $4000 per worker to Honda.2
(c)   In 1997, for agreeing to build a plant in a lightly industrialized area–Rio Grande do Sul of Brazil, the General Motors negotiated a subsidy, amounting to $250 million and a tax incentive having a potential to equal $15 billion, over a fifteen year period.
(d)  After liberalization in 1990s, different Indian states also followed the same approach to attract foreign and national capital to their respective states. The previous Chief Minister's desperate attempt to attract Tata Motors’ Nano project to the state (West Bengal) is one such example. Though Tata Motors had abandoned the Singur project in October 2008, till date it has not returned the land to the farmers. Decision to abandon the Singur project had helped Tata Motors extract huge concessions from the Gujarat government also. Interestingly, Tata Motors followed the same strategy General Motors had followed in Brazil in 1997. Tatas' decision to abandon the project midway was nothing but a well planned strategic retreat. They will return back to Singur at a most appropriate time.3
(ii)  'Beauty contest' approach: It is argued that as an alternative to this strategy, developing countries should follow the 'beauty contest' approach of attracting capital. This means, making the state more attractive by educating their labour force, improving the quality of infrastructure and institutions. It is argued that education level of labour force may determine the type of capital one receives. A highly educated state will attract quality capital in high end sector where knowledge spillover would be higher. On the other hand, an uneducated labour force would attract capital in mature industry that wants to use cheap labour only. Knowledge spillover from this type of capital is likely to be low.

Bengal should also explore this alternative path. During the last two centuries, academic institutions of Bengal had played a significant role in the socio- economic development of this subcontinent. However, due to various reasons, most of these institutions have failed to adapt themselves to the fast changing realities of the 21st century. The basic infrastructure is already in place to make it emerge as the major knowledge economy of this subcontinent. It only needs appropriate plans to unleash its trapped potential.

West Bengal can regain its leadership position if the state develops and implements a unique model of education system of its own. The present trend of centralization and standardization of secondary (and higher secondary education) through aggressive promotion of CBSE / ICSE et al has to be reversed. The state governments should develop effective strategy to strengthen and upgrade its own state boards to compete with the central boards. There cannot be a 'one size fit all' model for secondary education in a large and culturally diverse country like India. The issue is not only academic, it is also socio political.

To begin with, the West Bengal government may consider the following suggestions to upgrade its secondary education system.
1.    It may be made mandatory to all the schools of West Bengal (irrespective of their Board of affiliation) to include a course on local history and geography (of the respective district in which the school is situated) in VII standard. Kolkata schools will teach the history and geography of Kolkata and schools at Jaynagar will teach the history and geography of South 24 parganas. Appropriate text books may be written, in advance, to ensure that students don't face problem once it is prescribed. Teachers from local colleges may be involved in these projects.
2.   In VIII standard a course on local ecosystem (again of the respective district) may be introduced. It will teach the students about the existing water bodies, forests/trees, birds, fishes, flowers, medicinal plants, fruits, various types of rice and agricultural products of the district. The focus should be on biodiversity. Students may be assigned live projects (unlike the present trend where few school stationery sellers decide on the projects) to explore the natural surroundings she lives in.
3.   In every Budget the Governments, both Central and State, allocate funds for various development projects. Large sections of the citizens are not aware of these schemes and in most of the cases, due to inaction, such funds remain unutilized. A course on development programs (title could be different) in X Standard where students would be expected to know about the various Central and State government schemes on social welfare, status of implementation of those programs and procedures to get benefits out of them. To access the latest information on those schemes, the concerned social science teacher will coordinate with local the National Informatics Center (NIC) and the Block Development Office (BDO).
4.   Bio-piracy is a real threat, especially in post WTO era. The 'biodiversity registrar' is the only safeguard against such threat. Every Panchayat should begin the documentation of local resources and traditional knowledge as per the format recommended by the Government of India. This document is important to challenge any patent/copyright, if issued to an unscrupulous company, by any Patent office or organizations like International Patent Organization (IPO). The document will establish the legal rights on local knowledge and community resources which, as per the Convention of Biodiversity (CBD), are not patentable. The biology and social science teachers of a local high school are the right persons to document bio-resources and community knowledge of that locality. They will work under the supervision of competent faculty members of the local colleges. The State government should begin this project, involving the teachers and students, at the earliest.
5.   On few basic areas of human health and hygiene, India's achievement is pathetic though the economy has been growing fairly rapidly during last two decades. Bangladesh, which became independent only in 1971, has achieved much better,4 vis-a vis- India, in various aspects of public health. Primary and secondary school teachers may be involved in spearheading a public health movement. During summer and Puja vacations, workshops on 'public health' and 'first aid' should be organized on a regular basis in each block. Participation of the teachers from each school should be made mandatory. The trained teachers in turn will organize such workshops for students in their respective schools. Public health is a political issue and historically teachers in Bengal have shown keen interest in politics. It may be expected that, given a choice, most of the teachers would love to get themselves involved with a larger political movement in public health instead of squabbling on petty political issues.
6.   To save the education system from the clutches of coaching centers and 'note books', the government should ban school teachers (of private and government schools) from extending tuition to any student of the same school the concerned teacher is associated with. At this level, the teaching pedagogy should be 'school and teacher' centric. Later, at the graduation and post graduation level, it could be made 'student' centric.

If properly planned and implemented, students will know about their community and ecosystem better. This will strengthen their bondage with nature and community they live in. And most importantly, it will immensely contribute to the documentation and development of the crafts, music, indigenous technology, traditional medicines and healing practices.

This new secondary education system will act as the backbone of the knowledge economy of the resurgent Bengal. ooo

References :
1.    See, Bertrand Russell, 1932,'In Praise of Idleness'
2.   The subsidy amount was calculated, in 2000 by C Oman, on the basis of estimated value of financial incentives supplied by national and sub-national governments to a particular investment projects, divided by the number of jobs the project was expected to create directly. Ref: Inter -American Development Bank, 2001
3.   Dipankar Dey, The Nano Story, The Frontier,Weekly Vol. 41, no 49, June 2009

• 4. Under-five mortality (per 1000 live birth) in 2010: Bangladesh (48) and India (63); Percentage of children under age 5 who are under weight for their age in 2010: Bangladesh (41%) and India (42.5%). Source: UNDP Human Development Indicators, http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/default.html, visited on April 25, 2013

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 48, June 9-15, 2013

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