How Will Social Mobility Help India be Asia's Most Preferred Destination for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)?
Author: Dr. Anindya Pal
ABSTRACT
Social mobility is a tool that helps policymakers identify areas for improvement and reform policies to promote equally shared opportunities for all citizens. India's score on the global social mobility index 2020 (WEF) is 42.7, while most European countries are above 75, including Japan from Asia. China scores 61.5 with a comparable population to India. Low-populated Asian countries like Singapore (74.6), Korea Rep. (71.4), Malaysia (62.0), Sri Lanka (52.3), and Indonesia (49.3) are far ahead of India. South Africa (41.4) and Bangladesh (40.2) are just behind India and are trying to bridge the gaps to join the global growth path.
Asia will be the epicentre of a global manufacturing hub and supply centre for finished and semi-finished goods. By 2040, the region could account for more than half of GDP and about 40% of global consumption. Social mobility will augment the growth of developing Asian countries like India, which is diversified in culture, socio-economy, and geography.
The social mobility index has ten pillars: health, education access, education quality and equity, lifelong learning, social protection, technology access, work opportunities, fair wages, working conditions, and inclusive institutions.
Here we have identified the research gap on study of impact of social mobility on FDI in Indian context. Literature review could find out the impact of government policies related to (healthcare, education and skill development, working opportunities, infrastructure development, and technology access) that directly impact the improvement of social mobility. Literature review has identified that, social mobility has impact on factors related to FDI, but we could not find out any study conducted to find out relations between social mobility and FDI. This motivated to carry out the study to search the relationship between social mobility and FDI with the help of related theory of social mobility like Great Gatsby Curve and relation with Gini Coefficient and related theory of FDI like Dunning’s Eclectic theory (International investment theory). Qualitative analysis results also supported to propose relationships between social mobility and FDI.
The research objective is to study five government schemes (related to healthcare, education and skill development, working opportunities, infrastructure development, and technology access) that directly impact the improvement of social mobility in India. Then, the objective is to establish a relation between social mobility and foreign direct investment.