MSMEs' Growth & Development Holds Key for Reforms

By Faiz Askari, Founder Editor, SMEStreet

Where are we heading towards? Today, as a sad incident, three little girls died in country’s capital due to starvation. Such incident happened due to the family’s economic condition which met with turmoil after their father’s rickshaw was stolen. So, financial protection became an ultimate trigger to this painful loss.

India as a nation has evolved into a developing nation from an underdeveloped nation. What differentiates between a developed nation, a developing nation, and an underdeveloped nation. Economists might give any specialized classification but ultimately it’s the common masses that reflects any country’s statuary position with this respect.

A few decades ago, India has managed to successfully compete with several basic level challenges. The slogan of ‘Roti, Kapda and Makaan’ was given by some political leaders when there was an urge for such basic amenities. Then we witnessed a new era of global economic collaboration. We experienced global brands, companies enter India and contributing significantly in the Indian society.

Indian are gradually getting recognized as a world’s leading consumer population. This further enabled the multinational companies to explore this market in an aggressive manner.

Having said this, Indians have started experiencing and participating in newer opportunities. Job creation has started showing its impacts in the form of spending power.

This whole gradual shift has contributed to a development of Micro and small enterprises as well. Along with this major economic shift, the MSMEs of India has become a hyped entity to look upon. There were many success stories.

But today’s sad incident has forced me to think on the viability of entire policymaking framework. Are we taking a U-turn from the so-called growth path? If not, then why such incidents are still haunting our societies.

While many of us are debating on issues such as GST, policy amendments etc. the ground realities remains scary. While many things are getting prepared or designed for example there is a lot of emphasis on self-employment. But the situation can be tackled even more effectively if our policy framework is designed in favor of exiting MSMEs.

As per the GST data, there are over one crore MSMEs operating in India. However, nearly half of them are registered under the MSME Aadhaar scheme. So this sector deserves to be ‘handled with care’. They are the potential employers. And one more thing must be considered here, these MSMEs are employing simple undergraduates, graduates, and people with only basic education.

Most of the qualified graduates from reputed colleges/universities either go to foreign countries or they join any multinational organization as managers. On the contrary, it becomes the responsibility of typical MSMEs to absorb the rest of the potential workforce.

Now, if incidents like these three poor girls are happening, we must find the way to resolve such situation. Not just this, but also the crime ratio can be controlled by enabling an MSME.