Economic development

It is rather difficult to define a concept which is very common and familiar with the people. Everyone knows that it indicates a process of development in the economy, whereby there will be development in agriculture, industry, trade and transport etc. All these improvements form the economic development of the country. These programmes should be a comprehensive one as a process in all the sectors of the economy. Every project should become the integral part of the process of development of the economy as a whole with a determined effort to change the phase of the economy from backwardness to a developed one. This process will result in increased output of the economy or real increase in the income per head of the population.

Low Per Capita Income

The most commonly accepted criterion of underdevelopment is the low per capita income of under developed countries as compared with the advanced countried. Strictly speaking this is also not satisfactory. The data on per capita income of the country are inaccurate, unreliable and often misleading due to many conceptual and computational difficulties. Further international comparisons of national income and per capita income are meaningless. Finally the concept of standard of living varies from nation to nation, from race to race.However the per capita income is the most widely used indicator of underdevelopment. From this we can find that it is very difficult to define and explain the concept of underdevelopment. In order to understand the purpose if the term better, we have to spell various characteristics of the underdeveloped economy

Rewiring for growth

Although many challenges have been faced by the IT industry, they have to find out some solution to tackle the problem. They cannot leave the grip to go off. Some of the extreme measures taken by the IT industry are to reduce the dependence on the US economy. They have to familiarize their products in other European regions and increase the exposure to other countries. The focus has to be shifted on the domestic market. Mainly countries like Australia and Canada have to be targeted because their economies are improving gradually. They are concentrating on newer verticals like pharma, healthcare and other utilities. They are trying to expand service lines and also to move away from linear growth path. They need to set up offshore centres that will give a global presence of that company.

Market Imperfections

An important obstacle to economic development is market imperfections. They relate to immobility of factors, price rigidity, ignorance of market conditions, rigid social structure and lack of specialisation. These factors can act as frictions and impediments in the achievement of an optimum allocation of resources. Due to these market imperfections, the efficiency of production in the economy becomes very low and the country's natural resources may remain utilized or underutilized, the employment will get misdirected. The labour cant move freely in search of higher rewards but remain where they are, though their marginal productivity is even. Capital will not be utilized for remunerative purposes.

Challenges in IT industry

IT industry is experiencing a great downfall in the recent time. Companies have reduced their placements and they have started packing up employees in different places. Some of the challenges faced by the industry are the unstable currency. The US market is very volatile and there is no stability in the economy as there is a slowdown in all the economic aspects of the country. There is a fallout of subprime and credit crisis on banking and retail services. Oil prices have continued to soar and it has caused a huge impact on the IT industry. The inflation rate has increased to a great extent and inflationary pressures are piling up day by day. A fall in the operating margins proved to be very tough for IT industry. Talents are in short as they require highly experienced people to tackle the current crisis. Adding fuel to the fire are the protectionism threats that exists ahead of the presidential elections in US.

India's story

The India story is very strong in the medium to long term, especially for players who have long term, patience and tenacity to focus, concentrate, hold and pursue the course. Raising concern and challenges should not be seen as pessimism towards consumption or consumers or the future of retail industry. In fact facing such challenges and overcoming them at an early stage will make many retailers reach and achieve a high share of Indian retailer pie. Some of the recommendations are service tax should be made VATable against sales tax till we have the GST regime introduced in 2010. Retail is a service industry like hospitality and BPO. Women employees should be allowed to work in any shift with the retailers taking up similar responsibilities as by any other such industry. Single window must be there for shops and establishments irrespective of number of stores.

New concepts

Even new retailing concepts are emerging especially in the food retail sector where both urban and rural areas stand to benefit. Future developments in organized retailing will result in increased efficiency in the agricultural sector by removing intermediaries in the food supply chain. While urban customers benefit from reduced prices of farm sector goods, rural farmers benefit by way of higher returns for their produce. The sector will also offer enormous direct and indirect employment opportunities while attracting the huge investments in building supply chain infrastructure adding to the economic growth of India especially in rural areas. The Indian economy is integrating with the world and yet it simultaneously has its own dynamics.