Sunday 6 July, 2008

Next Scarce Resource

I was contemplating to write on this for long. Recently when the UPA govt. increased the petrol/diesel prices, our PM addressed the whole nation trying to educate people that the government had no option left but to increase the prices. Trying to educate the people that there is little that govt. can do as these are global factors affecting all the countries and India in one of them. He also shared with the citizens what were the possible alternatives that the govt. could have tried and their limitation and finally they increased the prices. Some people may disagree with this saying that government has levied so many duties and taxes on petrol/diesel at the first place and they should first give concessions on that front. Well I am not writing this to detail out the proportion of taxes, their objective, their requirement and etc. So pardon me for this.

What I want to discuss is the vision that Mr. PM has, one should listen to that message he delivered to the citizens on that day. He is truly an economist because economics is all about efficient and effective use of scarce resources. He is also a true leader because he made a point to make people aware about another daily resource which is not scarce at this point of time, but the early indication are visible on the horizon. Please forgive me if you feel/perceive that I am praising Mr. PM too much. Believe me, I do not have any vested interest in politics and I am not planning to join the concerned political party (because in that case I should be praising someone else!).

What I want to highlight is that he is planning for the future, crude is the present, he is taking necessary steps, but at the same time he is warning people to be aware that such situation might arise again in future and we should start planning for that right from today. I am not that skilled yet to sense if this ‘future problem’ provide any opportunity for business idea, but I am sure key people in the industry must be having some plans to address the situation in the future for the benefit of the people, of course if they take in the philanthropist context. You can relate few M&A in this space by one of the big Indian houses, though the scale of operation as of now is very small. It may take may be 10-15 years before people do realize and accept this as a major challenge but it is always good to start planning now, especially in India where the execution take so long, may be this is the reason Mr. PM mentioned this right away without waiting.

I do not think I mentioned earlier in this post that he said ‘Water’. Thanks Mr. PM for hoping against all odds.

2 comments:

Anshu Anand said...

How can water be the next scarce resource with all The Monsoons in India. I think it's more of a water management/infrastructure issue.I mean,If you can use and store (Dams and reservoirs) the water that is available well. I don't think it's a scarce resource. It may be a poorly managed resource.

Deepak said...

exactly, you are very correct, if we are able to store rain water using measures called rain water harvesting etc..... we can try and avoid a situation that may arise in future when there is lack of drinking water, in fact people in noida are actually facing a shortage of drinking water as of today......

no need to tell you about rajasthan :)