The services sector is a big part of the Indian economy, both in aspects of jobs opportunities and its connection to national income. The sector includes a broad variety of operations from the most advanced in the field of information and communication technology to easy facilities undertaken by informal sector employees, such as vegetable vendors, hawkers, rickshaw pullers, etc. The business industry is ascribed to be of more than half of Rs.45 lakh crore GDP. The service sector, also recognized as the tertiary sector, is increasing at 10 percent per year, involving more than a third of the workforce. It accounts for a sizeable percentage of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and more than one-third of full production.
Trade and Communication
Services included in the trade, tourism, communication, shipping, information technology (IT) and information technology industries allowed companies (ITeS), society and private facilities, financial services, entertainment industry, etc. The very essence of these facilities promotes the development of other industries, including and agriculture. Trade is a significant part of India’s GDP among utilities. Trade GDP (including wholesale and retail in structured and unorganized industries) risen by 9.1 third in 2009-10. The retail business also received a rise with development in revenue and increasing consuming population. However, due to greater development experienced by other industries, the proportion of trade in general GDP stayed steady at around 15% over the past four years.
Travel and Tourism
Tourism is one of the control surfaces of economic growth in most areas of the globe, including India. According to the UN World Tourism Organization, travel effectively offers 6% to 7% of the world’s complete employment and millions more indirectly in this industry. Tourism also performs a significant part in the country’s foreign exchange earnings, as its stake in India’s service export accounted for 13 percent of complete service exports in 2009-10. Medical tourism and rural tourism are some fresh sources that boost tourism development.
The hotel and restaurant industry are a significant sub-component of the tourism industry. The availability of excellent quality and accessible hotel accommodation performs a significant part in boosting the country’s tourism development. There are currently 1593 classified hotels in the country with a capacity of 95,087 rooms. The hotel industry includes multiple types of housing, namely restaurants in the star classification, restaurants in the legacy group, timeshare resorts, apartment buildings, guest houses, bed, and breakfast establishments. Hotels and resorts recorded an 8.5 percent fold increase in 2004-09.
Telecom Sector
The telecom sector has grown from 22.8 million telephone users in 1999 to 54.6 million in 2003 and to 764.77 million by the middle of November 2010. Wireless telephone connections contributed to this growth as the number of wireless connections increased from 3.57 million in March 2001 to 729.58 million by the middle of November 2010. In November 2010, teledensity, which was 2.32 percent, increased to 64.34 percent. However, there is a broad difference between rural teledensity (30.18% in November 2010) and metropolitan teledensity (143.95% in November 2010). This demonstrates that the industry still has the great untapped capacity. Broadband is often referred to as the’ high-speed’ Internet because it has a heavy data transmission rate. Broadband users rose from 0.18 million in 2005 to 10.71 million at the beginning of November 2010.
IT Sector
India has acquired a brand identity as a knowledge economy at IT and ITeS facilities. The IT-ITeS sector has four main parts: IT departments, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Engineering and R&D facilities, and software applications. Growth in the service sector in India has been resulted by the IT-ITeS industry, which has become a development engine for the economy, adding significantly to GDP development, jobs, and imports. This industry strengthened its input to India’s GDP from 4.1 percent in 2004-05 to 6.1 percent in 2009-10 and an approximately 6.4 percent in 2010-11. The sector has also considerably helped to grow tertiary education. It saw solid development of an approximately 19.5 percent in 2010-11 relative to mild development of 6.2 percent in 2009-10. IT and ITeS sales rose by a whopping 22.2 percent fold between 2004-09.
Additionally, there are also other organizations with enormous development opportunities, such as legal facilities, consultancies, real estate facilities, society, and private facilities, social facilities, research and development, inspection, and credit facilities, etc. Because of the varied operations, sustaining its development needs cautious and distinguished approaches.
The Hurdles
Although the utility industry is deemed to be an extensive industry of jobs, it is still looking in India for the shift of the workers from the main industry, which harbors more than 55% of the workers, to the academic industry. The main cause given for this phenomenon is the country’s absence of qualified labor. The only recourse accessible to rectify this anomaly is to implement ability improvement through coaching in the workplace. If the service sector fails in offering jobs as it offers development in GDP, inequalities in the nation can be decreased to a significant level.
India has undoubtedly witnessed a solid utility driven development in the post-liberalization period, but maintaining such development is similarly essential and in order to attain sustainable growth, India needs to significantly enhance its infrastructure and human capital. Where infrastructure development is vital to the growth of facilities such as travel, communication, tourism, etc., the provision of skilled labor is crucial for facilities such as IT and ITeS, communication, BPO, accounting facilities, legal facilities, financial services, etc. India has already developed a niche in the term for its facilities, and now it must strive to use the service sector as an instrument for achieving objectives such as poverty eradication, job creation, earning, and national equality, etc.