City Professor represents India at Brazil to talk about BRICS

PUNE, India - May 18, 2013 - PRLog -- City based Professor Dr.P.K. De, Executive Director of the International School of Business & Media was invited to Brazil to talk on a panel discussion on BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) at the 22nd International Conference on Management of Technology (IAMOT 2013) held at Porto Alegre, Brazil recently.

He made an impressive presentation and interaction where there were over 300 presenters of research papers on Management of Technology from over 50 countries. Starting his presentation with a brief background of the BRIC concept, he presented a comparative scenario of progress of these five countries from the perspective of technological growth, and finally portrayed the progress of India. In 2001, Jim O’Neill, Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management Company first introduced the BRIC concept, and in 2003 the same company estimated how world might look in 2050 with particular reference to the BRIC countries.

While the BRIC countries exhibit considerable variability with respect to population and land area, they have many features common like large population and low income levels. These countries made fast economic growth with the emergence of large middle class. In ten years from 2001 to 2011, these four BRIC countries, which are home for 42% of world’s population and cover 25% land area on earth, together (a) increased its share of global GDP from 8.3% to 19.3%, (b) have around 43% of foreign exchange reserve, and (c) increased share of global FDI from 10.7% to 27.7%. South Africa was included in the group of BRIC countries in December 2010, and since then it is called BRICS.

While analyzing the growth of BRICS countries, Dr. De has highlighted that during the period from 1950 to 1970, these countries were generally inward oriented and followed more or less centrally planned development strategies. Thereafter, there was gradual integration into the global economy in 1980s and 1990s. In 2009, Goldman Sachs observed that, though like the rest of the world, the BRICS countries have faced severe economic crisis, but these countries handled the crisis well. Three factors mainly enable these countries to withstand the slowdown and these can be summarized as – firstly the strong growth of purchasing power and domestic demand, secondly the growing trade among BRICS countries and other emerging markets, and thirdly the faster growth in technological change like creation of special economic zones and attracting export-oriented FDIs.

In the second part of his presentation he mentioned how India performed? He mentioned that since India became a free and independent nation in 1947, India’s growth broadly happened in three stages. During the first 3 decades, India saw economic growth at only 3.6%. During 1980-2000, the economy began to liberalize and the growth was 5.6%. In the first decade of the new century, the average growth was around 7.8% with better macroeconomic stability. While highlighting the progress of India, Dr. De has specifically mentioned the long-term challenges that have not yet been fully addressed. The analysis of growth of India by presenting various economic and technology growth indicators and statistical figures was applauded by the audience.

Besides his participation in the panel discussion, he has also presented a research paper on national innovation system of Denmark with a critical review of various linkages in the conference. Dr. De did postdoctoral research on innovation systems of Denmak at Aalborg University, Denmark at two occasions. He is closely associated with International Association for Management of Technology (IAMOT) for long years, and has also delivered keynote address in its annual conference held in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2001. Dr. De is the IAMOT correspondent from India since last twelve years.