NEW VISTAS : FUTURE LOOK FOR nisiet

It is a matter of great prestige and privilege for this Institute that a person of acknowledged high professional and personal stature, His Excellency and Hon’ble Governor of Andhra Pradesh, has kindly agreed to be the chief guest at this function to celebrate the silver jubilee of this Institute’s professional periodical SEDME, and to release the commemorative special volume. His Excellency the Hon’ble Governor is known for his sagacity and practical wisdom. The most recent manifestation of this is his commendation of the document ‘AP Vision 2020’ for people’s consideration with focus on poverty eradication in this country, with accent on income enhancement through public programmes for generation of employment in conjunction with direct participation of people as partners in all development initiatives. It is also manifest in his coming to brass tacks right away while commending the document by expressing his valuable views on possibilities of raising resources for realisation of the vision and the fiscal discipline imperative for it.

As many of us know, nisiet was initially set up in 1960 as a staff training body to train officers in the departments of industry at the centre and in the states to become effective change agents-cum-trainers to assist the then fledgling small scale industry in India. In 1962 for reasons of operational flexibility, it was converted into an autonomous society called Small Industry Extension Training Institute, SIET as it was frequently referred to, sponsored by the Ministry of Industry at New Delhi, with the then Development Commissioner-Small Scale Industry and the present Governor of Maharashtra Dr. P.C. Alexander at the helm of the society’s affairs.

The initial years of SIET’s work were remarkable for the path-breaking concepts and practical application of concepts of the times, which were instrument in starting off development initiatives everywhere in India and the world over.

During the brief period from March 1997 till now, the profile of the Institute has undergone considerable change. A perspective of what the Institute could be in 2002 is drawn up and approved by the Ministry of Industry. Consequently, on the physical side, the training infrastructure on the campus is being given a facelift with renovation of seminar rooms and other large work areas, and addition of fixtures for a reasonably modern look. The landscape is not as barren as it was. Large parts of the Institute’s operations have switched over the IT mode Process is underway to put the operations of SENDOC, a premier documentation centre set up in 1970, too on a net compatible IT platform for delivery of ‘information on tap’ to its client system. A voluntary retirement scheme is being implemented to make the Institute slim and less unwidely. All this has been possible, thanks to timely and adequate funding support from the Government. Faculty resources at the Institute have been regrouped and departmentation restructured to reflect current professional realms of focus in development and management of  MSMEs. Accordingly seven centres for professional endeavours, some of them with cells for work on identified priority areas, have been carved out of existing faculty resources.

A significant spin off of the various initiatives, and also the timely 1997 recommendations of the expert committee headed by Abid Hussain on Small Enterprises with a beneficial effect on nisiet, is the recent addition to the centres in the shape of the Centre for Policy Research for Small Enterprises. It as yet in the process of taking a definite shape on the campus.

It is envisaged that once these centres get on to top gear, the potential activity level will propel nisiet towards the stature of a truly world class institution of its kind. The beginnings of some possibilities of this nature are already visible at this stage.

Speaking of international work, a UNESCO chair for Policy Research was in operation at nisiet since 1997 and is expected to fetch for the Institute significant professional yield. Entrepreneurship Development and Government Effectiveness, with EDGE as a meaningful acronym, is moving fast towards the status of a flagship training product of nisiet, with a programme having already been put across for senior government and industry representatives of the province of Sabaragamuwa in Sri Lanka Memoranda of Understanding have been signed with four international organisations for collaborative work. A new stream of medium term techno-managerial training programmes are being visualised to offer to the executives and technologists from enterprises of developing countries, including hands on transfer of skills in close association with identified units in India. The objective is to facilitate during the training programmes, enterprise level dialogue for possible arrangements to transfer such technologies in which India is strongly placed. Consequences of such arrangements are likely to take the shape of bilateral trade in capital goods, process intermediates and consulting services.

To appreciate the performance of the Institute’s endeavours in terms of financial criteria the Institute’s revenues, from an annual Rs. 75 lakh during 1996-97, are approaching Rs. 4 crore during this fiscal year, thanks to the excellent teamwork of all on the campus.

Much more needs to be done to approach the 2002 vision of the Institute, however: that of qualifying to be the hub of an information network consisting of MSMEs and their representative bodies, developmental and promotional agencies in governments as well as NGOs active in the shapes of industrial production systems in India and other developing countries and counterpart organisations in the advanced nations, for a successful negotiation of the transition into the next millennium.

For one thing, the Institute needs to draft, on an urgent basis, the services of high quality resource persons perhaps even from other countries – which was the case to start with even in 1962 with all the Ford Foundation experts on assignment with SIET to convert the state professional potential of the organisation into reality. For another, with the heightened levels of activities on the campus and with the high profile nature of visitors to nisiet now on a regular basis, infrastructure needs to be upgraded further to meet the needs of creature comforts in a benefiting manner. All this demands a certain degree of functional autonomy to respond to opportunities for expeditious professional and infrastructure growth. Although the Institute’s operations are international in scope at present, the first step is to raise it to a truly international stature through a conscious policy decision as in the case of other professional organisations such as the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, IIMs, IITs and the like. Hopefully, such a move will be viewed favourably by the state of Andhra Pradesh to start with and its goods offices used for decisions at appropriate time, for the growth of an organisation situated in Hyderabad.