A rapid riffle through seven second-string industries helps identify their individual strengths and weaknesses, as well as positive and negative impacts on the larger national economy. Before turning to them, it is equally helpful to conceptualise the broader changes at stake. The first-string industries played some sort of a "leading" developmental role, taking society out of its traditional lifestyles, in which agriculture or the primary sector remains behind the economic steering-wheel; the rural sector dominates the metropolitan; and an international connection impacts the developmental profile, either through export surpluses (of agricultural products or mineral resources), or, devoid of meaningful reforms or adequate resources, through complete submission to global forces.
The more the leading sector increases the society's economic multiplier effect, the faster and more enduringly will be the growth of second-string sectors/industries. This economic expansiveness typically means rapid urban development, exposing the urgency of building a number of infrastructures, from industries to banking, commerce, energy availabilities, foreign trade and investment, as well as rules and regulations to manage what might have been that society's largest human migration spurt (not just from farms to cities, but from sidewalks to assembly-lines, and domestic to foreign abodes).
Located at this very juncture is the hump between development and under-development: the rate of the multiplier effects in the first phase and the consolidation of social overhead capital in the second represent gateways to inevitable development, but sluggish or inadequate performance in both extends the hump, when regression into under-development remains as high as the chances of graduating into development.
Our first-string industries fetched enough eggs to seriously integrate the national economy (that is, assembling the "whole" from the "parts"), creating both incentives and disincentives for the second-string sector. On the positive side, whether the multiplier effect was relatively higher than in other transformational countries remains for other scholars to probe, but they have lasted long enough for us to move on to the next developmental phase: (a) we have far too many people thinking of forward linkages for us to regress or go astray; (b) our second-string industries have all that they need to come out of the shadow; and (c) infrastructure-construction has been amply prioritised to establish the much-needed social overhead capital to propel our developmental advances. Yet, how we go from here depends on (a) how these projects will keep to their time-schedule; (b) cost considerations, especially keeping misappropriations and inefficiencies in mind; (c) the continued effects of the multiplier amid attractive and hardening global circumstances; and (d) any excessively lengthy first-string industrial domination.
Against that backdrop, what are some of the advantages noted in this series? At least five attract attention: (a) We have pressed the right second-string and social overhead capital (SOC) buttons, even though it looks like some of our leading industries (RMG sector) is likely to continue to be behind the steering wheel far longer than leading industries typically do. (b) Every aspect of the entire economical development spectrum has been invoked, beginning with production that is physical, relying on low wages as its motor; production that is intellectual, artistry, engineering, and scientific, creating the background for innovation and diversification; and production in the post-industrial as well as post-intellectual brackets, demanding a recreational indulgence, such as by cultivating hotels, beaches, tourist-spots, hunting grounds, and so forth. (c) As the population growth-rate reaches replacement levels and the population carrying capacity approaches its peak (of about 200 million), the country is in a position to factor out production efficiencies, beginning with real-estate cultivation, and building upon factory-based trials and errors: all of these imply a more predictable future shadow for economic/demographic forces at play, but they need increasing rules and regulations, for instance, in the quality of food, ultimately in labour and human rights. (d) Though several pregnant second-string industries/sectors show possibilities based upon external demand, we have gotten so used to co-existing with the foreign sector that nationalistic roadblocks have diminished and joint ventures are not uncommon, thus leaving pathways the second-string industries could easily exploit. (e) As a nation of assembly-line production with shopkeepers in every nook and corner, there is an economic vibrancy that even Adam Smith would have relished noticing, but what would startle him is to see how they coexist with post-industrial demands and supplies.
Just as many drawbacks prevail: (a) Handicaps from the failure to coordinate growth, especially between industrial sectors: since any major handicap usually ripples through the economy faster than the beneficial ripple-effects, we need to promote linkages, both backward and forward, more explicitly, for example, supplying energy for both factories and residences, and thereby build the crucial social overhead capital demanded by transitions like ours. (b) Absence of contingency plans where it matters the most: the need to look beyond Plan A is central to distributing the benefits from the leading industry's accumulation, whether in importing inputs, energy shortages, and training the right kind of employees in the second-string industries, since the ICT and fashion industries exemplify why an intellectual cadre of specialists is increasingly needed. (c) Aligning economic growth upon diplomatic anchors more forcefully, for example, to chart global trading maps: unlike the East India Company, for instance, our commercial entrepreneurs need the government's complementary help all the time, not just in advertising economic opportunities here, but also opening windows abroad through agreements, and especially trading-off areas of lesser interest to the country's future than areas of greater interest, such as proper labour reform as a step to opening markets abroad rather than piecemeal or artificial reform. (d) Preparing not just for the positive consequences of our "leading" industries (and industrial growth), but also the negative: healthcare, environmental balance, infrastructural security, not just physical properties and utilities, but also qualitative safeguards, as in water purification, regulating genetic modification of fruits and food, and legislating proper pharmaceutical manufacturing, distribution, and prescription. (e) Insulating economic activities from political infighting: particularly disruptive actions like strikes, "oborrodhs," and the like, if not from common sense, then by legislation; but also alerting ourselves to the growing need to protect the newly-built infrastructures from danger, human health from deterioration and, thereby, sapping the very growth that needs human vitality, consumers to feel more secure in their transactions as, for instance, using credit cards more widely and freely, and eventually enabling legislations to support the inevitable expansion of pensioners.
In short, a "second-string" sector is not at all subordinate to any "first-string" sector, in fact, over the long developmental time-span, it is pivotal to both graduating upwardly from one level to another and transferring from one production mode (physical) to another (intellectual, then recreational). It is not the catalyst that the "first-string" has to be to break from tradition, but the more dependable bridge into a more predictable future.
Dr Imtiaz A Hussain is Professor, International Relations, formerly Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City.
inv198@hotmail.com
A second-string industrial appraisal: A bridge into a more predictable future
Imtiaz A. Hussain concluding his nine-part "Second-string sector survey" series | Published: July 01, 2016 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
Share if you like