Letters: Opportunity and threat

Rahul Jacob's Lunch with BS with Epic Group CEO Ranjan Mahtani (The modest entrepreneur, June 21), shows why India is unable to cash in on the opportunity offered by China's increasing labour costs to allure labour-intensive manufacturing companies to open factories in India. The Epic Group has plants in Bangladesh and Vietnam, but is hesitant about doing so here because of our discouraging labour profile - high attrition rate, high absenteeism, low productivity and legal hurdles in employment of women. These are all Achilles' heels in India's industrial progress.

Of these, the first three have as much to do with worker attitude as with managerial inadequacy (job content, skill mismatch, work conditions, shopfloor leadership and so on) and trade unions' excessive concern for more wages for less work. Low productivity has the most deleterious impact on our road to competitive advantage not only as a global player but in Asia as well.

The low component of women in manufacturing jobs arises from restrictions on employing them during night hours and misguided social perceptions.

Y G Chouksey Pune

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