The salient points to remember: -

• The dominant competitive weapon of the 21st century will be the education and skills of the workforce.

• The world has entered new phase of worldwide economic competition and this has come because of two reasons. One that after the second world war the goal of the capitalist foundation to allow rest of the world to catch up with US has been met as the production function of US has reduced from 75 % in pre war era to 24% in today's scenario. Second, the power of 1.9 billion people that was forcibly blocked in cold war era has been unleashed to compete globally. Now, oil power will not be Arabs but the countries around Caspian.

• The old-fashioned idea of comparative advantage, which suspended on two things- natural resource and factory proportions, is no more valid. Today, brain power industries making their way to future. The people and countries, which have right people, who have technology and know how to convert base minerals into high value products, will survive in future. Thus when we compare this to the economic battles of the past, the essential difference is the fact that comparative advantage is now manmade.

• New frontiers are microelectronics, biotechnology, the new materials-science industries, telecommunications, civil aviations, robotics and machine and tools, and of course computer hardware.

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* Contributed by -
Abhijit Misra,
PGP 2003-2005,
XIM Bhubaneswar.