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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said real growth was not possible without inclusiveness while recalling the steps his government had taken in the past eight years.
On the occasion of the first Arun Jaitley Memorial lecture, the prime minister said the government was treating the private sector as a partner in growth. India is not carrying out reforms out of compulsion but out of conviction to prepare a road map for growth over the next 25 years, he said.
“We don’t see growth as a necessary evil but as a win-win situation for all,” Modi said.
On the steps to promote inclusive growth, he said 90 million free cooking-gas connections had been given, 100 million toilets were constructed, and 450 million bank accounts had been opened in the past eight years.
He said before 2014, on average 50 medical colleges used to be set up in 10 years. However, in the past seven-eight years, 209 medical colleges had been created. He told the gathering that in the past seven-eight years, the number of undergraduate medical seats had increased by 75 per cent and that of annual medical seats had almost doubled.
Further, Modi said India’s recovery from the pandemic reflected choosing a people-centric policy adopted by the government and not taking measures based on a populist impulse. Modi paid tribute to former finance minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley, who died in August 2019. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman attended the event.
The topic of the lecture was “Growth through Inclusivity, Inclusivity through Growth”, delivered by senior minister of Singapore and head of its Monetary Authority Tharman Shanmugaratnam.
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Shanmugaratnam said India needed to grow at 8-10 per cent over the next 25 years if it wanted to create millions of jobs for its young workforce as well as raise per capita income substantially.
Shanmugaratnam, who is former deputy prime minister of Singapore, said unlike China, India did not have the luxury to choose between productivity growth and job growth, as with around 580 million of its population below the age of 25, a major challenge was job creation.
Shanmugaratnam said it was imperative that a bigger push was given to labour-intensive sectors and low-skilled jobs. “Manufacturing takes an unskilled worker and makes him semi-skilled. It takes a semi-skilled worker and makes him fully skilled. There needs to a major push in manufacturing jobs and a strong focus on low and semi-skilled jobs.”
He said that production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes had worked for India and would continue to do so as long as the focus was on labour intensive sectors. While India’s expertise in the digital economy offered significant benefits, it was a small fraction of the services workforce, he said.
“We have to think of other services, especially tourism and craft economy. India is not tapping the full potential of tourism,” he said.
Speaking on social issues, he said child stunting remained a major concern and India needed to address this on priority.
Speaking on the global geopolitical situation brought about by the war in Europe, Shanmugaratnam said the world was going through profound insecurities, with geopolitical dangers at their highest levels since the Cold War.
“There is a real prospect of stagflation and in advanced countries a real prospect of recession,” he said.
“The common goals of nations should be to maintain the climate, maintain peace, and avoid financial crises. To address these challenges, our multilateral institutions like the World Bank and others need to be refashioned and a new leadership is needed,” he said, speaking in the same context about India’s upcoming presidency of G-20.
Sitharaman spoke about fiscal reforms during Jaitley’s time like advancing the Budget date from February 28 to February 1 and the merging of the Union and Railways Budgets. The finance ministry is planning to make this lecture and the conclave an annual event.
With inputs from agencies
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