Letters: Looking beyond the average

This refers to Madan Sabnavis' article "Global Competitiveness Report 2014-15: We can improve if we want to" (September 15). Some other conclusions also arise from the data he has used. One, the difference between India's performance parameters and the world average scores is quite close in many of them, showing that we are only marginally better and will, therefore, need persistent efforts to reach to the top position.

Two, in areas where we have done better than the average scores of 144 nations, the average of many parameters is close to 3.5, the mid-point of the 7-point scale indicating that the differences among participating nations are more or less evenly distributed. As such, even with incremental but steady improvement in these areas, India can better its current ranking.

Three, the averages in respect of lagging parameters are positively skewed (between 4 and 5) needing greater effort on our part to change for the better, particularly in areas such as bribes, quality of infrastructure, power supply and bank soundness since here our average is markedly lower than that of the corresponding world average. Lastly, while we have done well on innovation and sophistication, we should also note that among the BRIC countries we are at the bottom (rank 71) while China tops with 28 and Brazil next lowest at 57, fourteen ranks ahead of us.

Y G Chouksey Pune

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