I am a great believer in Make in India, says Suresh Krishna

Veteran industrialist Suresh Krishna feels that India has a lot going in its favour for the “Make in India” campaign that Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched with great fanfare recently, to succeed.

The Chairman and Managing Director of engineering company Sundram Fasteners, of the TVS Group, says “Make in India” is a very good slogan to start with and if policies are consistent with that objective, then a lot can be achieved. “I feel that it is a sustainable, growth-oriented thing that can happen provided the right people put in the right kind of effort and do it,” he says.

Krishna, who will turn 78 in December, says he is still excited about the opportunities. There is so much to be done, he adds, after over a half a century in industry. Sundram Fasteners has been around for 50 years.

Make in India

He says he is a great believer in Make in India. “I am not saying that you must make everything in India.” Instead, the country must focus on making those things that it is capable of making, competitively and profitably, and import those things that it cannot make competitively and profitably because it either does not have the raw material or the know-how. It can always aspire to make even these later after it acquires the know-how. “If we follow the path of whatever we do, we do excellently and economically, there is no limit. The entire world is looking at India, saying we can import from India,” he adds.

He admits there are issues that the manufacturing sector faces, but asserts that there is no point in only highlighting the negatives. “There are, of course, problems. I am not saying there are no problems. If you concentrate on the problems, then you don’t see the full half-glass. You only see the empty half-glass all the time,” Krishna adds.

Labour issues?

On the three major issues – labour, land and availability of skilled manpower – that confronts the manufacturing sector, Krishna has a different take.

“I personally don’t have any problem with labour,” he says and supports his argument with the fact that there has not been a single strike or go-slow by workers in Sundram Fasteners in the last 50 years. “If the labour is not managed, then it is a problem of the management, not the labour,” he says. Managing labour is as much a part of management as managing finance and quality are. Even during the worst days of militant labour in Chennai in the 1970s and 1980s, he says, Sundram Fasteners never had a problem. “Labour is not divorced, it is part of management, a very big part of management. If your labour misbehaves, it is your problem,” Krishna says and recalls something he used to tell fellow industrialists when he was CEI (the forerunner to CII) President in the late 1980s, that there is no such thing as good children and bad children. There are only good parents and bad parents, is his analogy.

If you divorce yourself from labour and say I am here to manage and you are here to work, then it is a different perspective altogether. He says he has been consistently communicating with workers, telling them the truth. “If you do it over a long period of time, people appreciate it. They see the results, they see the truth. One advantage of telling the truth is, you don’t have to remember what you said the last time. I think communication has been one of the great strengths of a company like ours. People who do not communicate alienate themselves,” he adds.

Go to remote areas

On land, Krishna says land cost as a percentage of revenues is not going to be high. Industry should follow the developed countries in this – have factories scattered in the countryside. Being within urban limits is going to be expensive. Instead, setting up plants in remote areas will help build communities around them, as has happened in the West. He points out that Sundram Fasteners set up a plant in Madurai in Tamil Nadu, when there was probably only one other unit, a textile mill. It has 22 plants across the country. “We have no problems. We have come to a size where we put roots anywhere and then it will grow. The only thing I have to make sure is that my management staff do not feel they are being penalised. Education for children, medical facility all that I have to take into account,” says Krishna.

Spend time on training

According to him, companies have to develop skills in their workforce. “I wish we had more, well-versed polytechnics.” He believes that rather than look for workers with readymade skills, they can be trained. All large corporations train their workers. Look at Toyota, he says. It trains its workers to do things the “Toyota way”. It is not as if the Japanese education system is bad, but if you want workers to do things the way you want them do it, then companies have to spend time on training them.

Infrastructure focus

Krishna admits that most often there is a comparison with China and how clearances come much faster there. It is an issue, but companies must learn to manage the situation. Foreign companies too have set up roots in India and are successful. It is possible to Make in India, he asserts, pointing to the consistent 15-20 per cent annual growth in Sundram Fasteners’ exports.

What would he like the Government to do? “The government should look at all the impediments of industry, wherever possible ameliorate it, reduce it, be helpful. That is all I want,” he says. Infrastructure is one area that he would like the government to pay attention to.

COMMENT NOW