It's India's turn to shape global order: Jayant Sinha
GUWAHATI, May 1: India is now uniquely poised to lead the next chapter of global growth because of the inherently frugal and sustaible ture of its economic development, the country’s rich reserve of innovators and entrepreneurs and the new pro-poor and pro-market role of the Indian state chartered by Prime Minister rendra Modi, said Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha.
Sinha said this while delivering the fourth Professor Sarat Mahanta Memorial Lecture at the Royal Global Institution campus at Gorchuk here on Monday evening. He emphasized that it is India’s turn to be the flag-bearer of the new global order and emerge as the Vishwa Guru.
Sinha, a B.Tech from IIT, Delhi, MBA from Harvard Business School and a postgraduate from the University of Pennsylvania, said that India’s frugal development model can drive sustaible global economic growth. Other countries like Chi and the USA use much more resources than India to achieve the same rate of growth, he said, pointing out that Chi utilizes 52% more energy per unit of PPP (purchasing power parity) GDP (gross domestic product) than India and four times more cement and steel than India for each unit of PPP GDP. Chi’s carbon emissions per unit of PPP GDP are 78% higher than India’s emissions, a press release said.
The Union Minister said that in the next decade, India will contribute almost as much as Chi and more than twice as much as the USA in terms of absolute economic growth. India’s capital productivity is also much higher than that of other major economies and Indian companies are generally conservative in their borrowings while the government and fincial sector debt is also lower than most major emerging market economies, said Sinha. Thus, India is able to generate relatively rapid GDP growth with fewer tural resources, use less carbon and less space and requires less leverage, said the Minister.
Sinha explained that India’s economic development model is frugal and sustaible since it is driven by the quest to deliver affordable products and services for a vast, young population. The country’s open, market-driven economy has resulted in a competitive and specialized manufacturing sector, a vast non-tradable services sector and an employment-intensive but relatively small agricultural sector. India produces a wide range of inexpensive items and services ranging from mobile telephones, ice-creams, shampoos and motorcycles to generic medicines, small cars, fincial services and doorstep delivery of food.
Sinha said that a well-developed innovation ecosystem with research labs, incubators for entrepreneurs and supportive regulators is producing a steady stream of new industries. He cited the examples of e-commerce firms like Amazon and Flipkart that have brought hundreds of thousands of small producers and merchants online even as banks are transforming the fincial landscape by providing low-cost and convenient bank accounts accessible for all. Thus, just as United States is the entrepreneurial engine for the most affluent one billion people in this planet, India can now become the entrepreneurial engine for the next six billion people, which is the next world. India can be the leader in serving this next world, the Union Minister said.
Sinha explained that the Union Government under Prime Minister Modi has been making systemic changes to make India the leader of the new and emerging global order. The Modi government, which is pro-poor and this pro-market, is moving the Indian state away from being a ‘Nehruvian sarkar’ to becoming a ‘Kautilyan sarkar’. The ‘Nehruvian sarkar’, or the mai-baap sarkar of entitlements and associated with feudal, dystic rule, has not served the citizens or the state well.
Sinha defined the Kautilyan sarkar as one which gets off the playing field and allows citizens to become players. “The role of the state has to be defined as establishing and enforcing the rules and letting citizens be the players on the field,” said Sinha. A policy-driven, non-discretiory and rule-based India is a must, he added. The present government, he elaborated, is ensuring the rule of law, property and tency rights, fincial inclusion, strengthening the police and the judiciary, strengthening the regulatory bodies like RBI, SEBI, TRAI and NHAI and making them independent and providing world-class physical and digital infrastructure.
Sinha said that India, which is already one of the world’s leading producers of IT services, generic pharmaceuticals, small cars and motorcycles, will soon become a premier manufacturing hub for electronics and defence equipment. India also offers a template for redifining the role of the state in the next world by running a rules-based, technology-driven state that ebles markets to flourish through well-regulated competition.
The Union Minister called upon the youth of Assam and North-East India to “become the pioneers in driving the exciting transformation of India”. “You are working on innovative projects and government programmes, inventing brilliant new solutions to our challenging problems of poverty, disease and climate change,” he said, adding that perhaps some young entrepreneur of this region will ‘create the next IndiGo, the next Google and the next Apple’.
Sinha concluded the lecture with the hope that by transforming Assam and thus India, the youth of this state would, with their innovation and energy, also transform the world.
While Chief Minister Sarbanda Sonowal was the chief guest on the occasion, State Health and Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was the guest of honour.
President of Professor Sarat Mahanta Foundation Ajit Kumar Bhuyan delivered the welcome address.