Role of ‘Circular Economy’ in Transformation of Indian Economy from Developing to the Developed Status: An Overview

Abstract

Today, the economies are passing through hyper-competitive business environments and the modern enterprises including small and medium enterprises (SMEs), therefore, have to adapt themselves to meet the needs of the changed scenario of the manufacturing world. In this context, one recently emerging concept in the field of global as well national economic development has come to be named as ‘circular economy’. As the word ‘circular’ indicates, it is a ‘closed loop system of economics’. Usually, any entity, economic or non-economic, starts it’s travel from ‘cradles with the ending station called ‘grave’, implying thereby that the lifespan may be termed as a journey ‘from-cradle-to-grave’. The emerging concept of ‘circular economy’ demands just stated paraphrase, ‘from-cradle-to-grave’ to become ‘from-cradle-to-cradle’ so that the entity travels through the stages of ’reuse’, ‘re-manufacturing’ and ‘recycling’ kinds of strategies. This offers an effective emerging tool which has already made positive impacts when these were employed by large scale concerns. However, on Indian industrial front, such tools remain yet to enter the corridors of SMEs, particularly, in the form of modern tools of logistics strategy. Such an effort of applying such already tested tools to SMEs would prove to be extremely beneficial, particularly when it is observed that the SMEs form a very vital link in the overall supply chain network of even large scale enterprises. Present paper made an attempt to put forth an overview of how ‘circular economy’ and so-called ‘reversed supply chain management (RSCM)’ can help India in achieving the status of becoming one of the world’s leading nations in the form of a ‘developed’ power.