In the face of intense competition, Indian enterprises need to adopt a culture of excellence to survive and flourish in the global market, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said.

While several multi-national enterprises have set up R&D facilities in India, the country has a "far way to go in institutionalising the culture of excellence embedded into the working processes of Indian enterprises," he said.

Singh was addressing an international conference on productivity and quality in New Delhi.

(With additional inputs from ANI.)

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"We live in times of intense competition and rapid technological change...Technology is eliminating or at least significantly reducing entry barriers in many industries and increasing the number of providers of goods and services," he said.

Singh said the techniques for improving quality and productivity were not only useful for private enterprises but also for delivery of public services.

"In fact they can be used to design government services optimally so that service delivery becomes much-more cost effective and reliable," he said.

Giving example, the Prime Minister said that the productivity technique could be used to enhance agricultural production and improve overall supply chain management.

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"Today the use of technology in planning and supply chain management has enormous potential to improve productivity, reduce cycle times as well as inventory levels drastically", he said.

India's agriculture which feeds about 70 per cent of its people suffers from supply chain management, leading to bouts of food inflation now and then.

This area is receiving attention of the government after the weaknesses in the food supply management have come to the fore.

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Singh said, "Considering the reality and scale of conflict, deprivation and exploitation that affect the lives of millions and millions of people in the developing countries, they need to take bold and imaginative measures to pursue the path of development with social economic growth and to pursue the path of development with a human face."

He said bold initiatives must be taken to pursue the path of development with human face while keeping in view the lives of millions of people in developing countries.

Stating that democracy and legal empowerment are kindred spirits, Singh emphasised the need to adopt legal empowerment measures to provide the poor the access to affordable legal services.

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"This is also a thought which justice Kapadia outlined in his address. At the same time, it is imperative to adopt legal empowerment measures which foster and institutionalise the access of the poor to legal services so that they know about available legal safeguards and are able to take advantage of them at affordable cost," he added.

The Prime Minister also said the role of courts and judges in making law an instrument of social stability should not be over emphasised.

"We are today witness to the evolution of India''s own constitutional jurisprudence through a series of landmark decisions of our Supreme Court, sometimes invited through public interest and sometimes through social action litigation," he said.

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"We find that in interpreting laws, our judges have also widened and deepened their scope and reach as law givers. This has also been the case in the evolution of law in other constitutional and parliamentary democracies," he added.

He said judicial process has a dynamic role to play in providing justice to litigants and uphold the constitutional system.