Marc Andreessen on the significance of software

Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape, the company which kicked off the original Internet boom, has an interesting article title "Why Software is Eating the World." "Eating" is not meant in a negative sense here -- the article is about how software is used across the economy, in increasingly innovative ways. There's nothing particularly new about what he says, but it's nicely articulated. The punchline for Andreessen is that software is where the US economy can flourish and keep growing. That led me to think that the same implications could hold for the Indian economy. For now I'll just pose that as a question -- the precise benefits of software for the Indian economy will differ from those for the US, but what are those differences? Of course, India's software firms can keep servicing the advanced economies with software services. But what about domestic needs? Something to articulate for India's policymakers and business titans, just as Andreessen has done from a US perspective.

Navigating the Next Crisis

Is a new economic crisis coming? Is it just a playing out of the financial crisis of 2008? What should India’s policymakers do? These may seem like just a tough set of questions from a civil service exam. But they are real challenges that face India's leaders. Unlike their counterparts in the US, Europe and China, India’s leaders actually have significant room to maneuver. What should they do, and why?

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My talk at the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco

Recently I gave a talk on what we can expect for India's economic growth.

You can hear a podcast here

India's National Manufacturing Policy

India’s new National Manufacturing Policy (NMP) is just around the corner. Newspaper reports have provided some glimpses of the thrust of policy changes, with stated goals of creating 100 million jobs and increasing the manufacturing sector share of GDPhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif from 16% to 25% by 2025. Several innovative proposals have surfaced. One is to provide capital gains tax exemptions to small-scale enterprises, allowing them to raise equity by selling inherited land. Another is to create joint sinking funds in specified manufacturing zones, allowing speedier resolution of payments to labour that loses jobs. Much has been made of greater flexibility for environmental clearances. Unfortunately, this is probably going to result in greater social costs, and may not be the main culprit in constraining manufacturing growth, despite the recent attention given to this issue.

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