5-trillion dollar economy

Narendra Modi has literally opened his second innings as Prime Minister with a very ambitious and encouraging declaration. Addressing the fifth Governing Council meeting of NITI Ayog in the national capital on Saturday, he said that India must thrive to become a five-trillion dollar economy by 2024. An optimist as he has always been, Prime Minister Modi has also said in very clear terms that the goal is challenging but definitely achievable. To make this target fulfillable, the Prime Minister has also called for a collective fight against poverty, unemployment, drought, flood, pollution, corruption and violence. India is currently a 2.8-trillion dollar economy, and is fast moving to become a 3-trillion dollar economy. While India is targeting to become a 5-trillion dollar economy by 2024, the Prime Minister has asked the states to improve their respective economies by two to two-and-a-half times in the next four or five years. He also asked the states to urgently recognise their area(s) of core competence, and work towards raising GDP targets right from the district level.Yet another step that he suggested was that the states to focus on is their export potential. Reports have already indicated that India would overtake the UK to become the world’s fifth largest economy within this year. If the economy of the country continues to maintain the present pace, it is also projected to surpass Japan to feature at the second position in the Asia-Pacific region by 2025. Despite the fact that the Modi government had faced sharp criticism especially over the fallout of demonetisation, the economic outlook is said to be ‘looking positive’ for the second term of the Modi government. The basis of this optimism is that the GDP growth has been forecast to average around 7 per cent per year over the 2019-2023 period. Similarly, as India continues to ascend in the rankings of the world’s largest economies, its contribution to global GDP growth momentum is also expected to go up further. Economists have also forecast that India will play an increasingly important role as one of the Asia-Pacific region’s major economic growth engines, in the process helping to drive Asian regional trade and investment flows in the right direction. Interestingly, while the manufacturing sector’s share in the GDP is still hovering at around 18 per cent against the target of 25 per cent, around 7.5 million persons are projected to join the Indian workforce per year on average over the next two decades. It is worthwhile to recall that India was ranked 77 out of 190 countries that are included in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index for 2019. But then, though India continues to lag behind other large emerging markets such as Turkey (43rd), China (46th) and Mexico (54th) on this ranking, the country has made remarkable progress in improving its ranking compared with its ranking at 142ndout of 189 countries in the Ease of Doing Business ranking for 2015, which reflected a survey undertaken during the last year of the UPA Congress-led coalition government. Prime Minister Modi has meanwhile initiated a broad consensus on reducing water wastage, and promoting efficient water conservation practices with rain-water harvesting to be undertaken at the household and community-level with proactive policy and investment support. Economists keeping a close watch on Modi’s economic agenda have meanwhile said that to reach the 5-trillion dollar club, India will have to shift her perspective from policy to projects. While select sectoral initiatives can be converted into 100 projects, each has to be led by a competent leader with proven skills. They must all directly report to the Prime Minister, with the regular bureaucracy facilitating the job of the project leader, who will be free to choose his or her team.