GREEN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT: ANALYSIS OF BARRIERS OF GSCM IN INDIAN AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

Abstract

Going green is getting light throughout the world. With rising level of consumer education, people are now more aware about the impacts on the environment caused because of their activities. People are now interested in buying eco-friendly products as a means to contribute to the environment in some manner. However what they don’t know is that the tag of eco-friendly is not enough. The organizations have to realize the need to bring about a change in their supply chain. Incorporating the green aspect at each level of supply chain can be termed as “Green Supply Chain Management”. The concept is relatively new and has had been implemented in a few nations across the globe. However talking about Indian industries, we still lack behind. The primary problem here is the education level of consumers and their demand for eco-friendliness. Because of low level consumer intervention, the organizations fail to incorporate the concept of sustainability and blindly follow the path of generating profits at the expense of environment. Talking about GSCM in automobile sector, we are on ground zero. Even though India is one of the largest automobile manufacturer and market yet there is hardly any policy in the organizations that aim at sustainability. China, which is a rapidly growing economy as ours, has already started implementing GSCM in the automobile sector at a vast scale. However we are lagging behind. So what are the reasons contributing to this? The paper tells about the barriers that might be present that hamper the implementation of GSCM in Indian Automotive sector. The major factor realized is lack of consumer knowledge. It is none other than the consumers who have the potential to make or break an organization. If they are not interested then neither are the top level executives. Thus consumers need to realize the need to go green and companies also need to realize that sustainability might prove to be costly initially but it will reap bigger benefits in the long run. Thus for staying in the market it is important that organizations take up the concept of GSCM.