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India is becoming economic powerhouse: American economist, Peter Drucker

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[Karl Note:  When I was a student at the Harvard Business School, so many years ago, in 1958, I started reading Peter Drucker's books.  I was so impressed with him, and his ideas, that I tried to find ALL of his books, even very early ones, out of print, etc., and would read and study his data even to the exclusion of doing my study assignments.

I recall, even, one final examination for one course where the question was, as always, very general, to read some "case" (a description of a situation in some real company) and comment about some aspect of that case.  My response was almost all just quoting or referring to Drucker's ideas on various management issues -- not giving my own, personal response.

Well, somehow, I did graduate from that School, and those courses, but I cannot now but think that I was so greatly influenced by Drucker that I was mesmerized and regurgitated what HE seemed to think about management instead of what I had learned!

I've gone on to find other heroes as role models for management technology, but still look back and wonder, my goodness, that Peter is still alive.  From my own advanced age I can appreciate just how old HE is today -- and from my own appreciation of my own "wisdom" I can still look at Peter's today-comments with affection and expectation.

After reading this article I was reminded of his emphasis on the role of computers in our future business life.  I "got into" computers at an extremely early point in their availability -- and still spend almost 100% of my working hours at my computer.  So, I certainly got HIS lesson back then, or had it from some other source.

While I was at Harvard I took an unusual "course" at MIT -- and learned how the world's fastest computer worked, and even learned "binary numbers." Some years later when I worked in the US Department of Commerce, I sought and got approval to visit the Census Bureau on my own time, and learned how to "program" the IBM 1401.  If you know that machine then you are as old as I!  I got my job in the White House (the Kennedy years) because I was one of the very rare individuals to be found in the whole government who understood "computer" and at that time the height of US government usage (outside any confidential usages) was something called the "McBee Ice Pick Hole Cards."  If you know what those are?  You are probably older than I!

 He is a good man to accept data from.

So, I commend this re-look into the marvels of Peter Drucker.

HindustanTimes.com Home

India is becoming economic powerhouse: American economist
Press Trust of India
New Delhi, January 21
An eminent American economist, who had predicted in the early fifties how computer technology would one day thoroughly transform business, has said India is becoming a powerhouse very fast.

"The medical school in New Delhi is now perhaps the best in the world. And the technical graduates of the Indian Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore are as good as any in the world. Also India has 150 million people for whom English is their main language. So India is indeed becoming a knowledge centre," said the 94-year-old guru Peter Drucker in an interview to the latest issue of Fortune magazine.

Drucker, who coined the concepts of "privatisation", "knowledge workers" and "management by objective", said the dominance of the US is already over. "What is emerging is a world economy of blocs represented by NAFTA, the European Union, Asean. There is no one centre in this world economy. India is becoming a powerhouse very fast."

In contrast, he said, the greatest weakness of China is its incredibly small proportion of educated people. China has only 1.5 million college students, out of a total population of over 1.3 billion.

If they had the American proportion, they would have had 12 million or more in college. Those who are educated are well trained, but there are so few of them, he said.

Drucker said in China there was the enormous undeveloped hinterland with excess rural population which meant enormous manufacturing potential. However, the likelihood of the absorption of rural workers into the cities without upheaval seemed very dubious.

"You don't have that problem in India because they have already done an amazing job of absorbing excess rural population into the cities — its rural population has gone from 90 per cent to 54 per cent without any upheaval," he said.

The eminent economist, who continues to lecture at the management school that bears his name at Claremont Graduate University, said "everybody says China has eight per cent growth and India only three per cent, but that is a total misconception. We don't really know. I think India's progress is far more impressive than China's."

On the most important impact of informational technology on business, he said "information technology forces the processes more logically. The computer can handle only things to which the answer is yes or no. It cannot handle may be. It is not the computerisation that is important; it is the discipline you have to bring to your processes. You have to do your thinking before you computerise it or else the computer simply goes on strike."

 

         
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