Resumo de Hr In India - Country Report

HR in India - country report
India is second only to China when it comes to a growing economy and size of its potential workforce. Yet the two countries are as diverse as their cultures when it comes to the HR issues and challenges being faced.

When studying human capital issues in India, it is critical to get a grip on the idea that it is not just sections of the Indian economy that are booming - but the entire nation is progressing rapidly. From an outsider's perspective it is easy to be mesmerised by the strong performance of the IT industry in India. This burgeoning industry, including the country's massive business processing operations (BPO) capacity, has become a focus of intense overseas interest in recent times. It is wrong, however, to believe that the Indian economy is driven by ever increasing hordes of call-centre employees. With the entire economy growing, HR ramifications are felt across industries.

The Indian economy is currently the world's second fastest growing with a growth rate of 8.2% in 2003-2004. The growth phenomenon can be understood better by looking at the contribution of some of the component sectors. In 2003-2004, the agriculture sector grew by 9.1%, manufacturing by 7.3%, and the services - which includes the IT and BPO industries - grew by 6.8%.

Liberalisation and growth of economy
India's journey towards the globalisation of economy started in the '90s with the liberalisation of economic policies by the government. Years of state-controlled, semi-socialist economic strategies - with high tariff regimes and high government ownership of enterprises - had stymied economic growth to a standstill. The present Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spearheaded the movement towards liberalisation as the then Finance Minister. The performance of the economy has vindicated Manmohan Singh's policies.

A growing workforce with complex HR issues
With its population resting at 1.02 billion, India is the world's second most populous nation. It confronts a complicated range of human capital issues, which need to be worked through for the economy to progress in the right direction. Furthermore, 54% of the population is aged less than 25 years; meaning India will need to manage the forces of an expanding workforce in the coming years. This contrasts with economies like Japan and Europe where the ageing workforce feature as a notable factor in the human capital equation.

With respect to the middle class in India, this group alone includes around 110 to 150 million people. They are unaffected by poverty and have the motivation, and the income to maintain high education and technical standards in the next generation.

By 2013, the projected net addition to the productive population (say, between the ages of 25 to 44-year-old) will be a further 91 million people. This is a growth rate of 33% in the workforce in just nine years from now. The growth in size of this working population brings with it several HR issues.

On the negative side lies the unchecked growth of population that is the destroyer of poverty alleviation because, as the national wealth increases, so does the cumulative demand on that wealth by the new population. On the positive side, the growth in workforce means that India will be able to sustain the well-educated workforce which has underpinned the country's expansion in the IT and BPO sectors.

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