In its pursuit to become a completely developed nation by 2047, India faces the uphill task of sustaining a high growth rate for a long period, the country’s G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said on Thursday.
"The challenge for India in the coming years up to 2047 is that it must grow at high rates,” the former Niti Aayog CEO said at a conference titled ‘The Deccan Conversations: Accelerating Our Growth Story’ organised by the Southern Region of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Bengaluru.
He added that India needs to emulate what other countries, including Japan, Korea, China, and Singapore, did. “We need to make India grow at 9–10 per cent for a three-decade period. There is a huge difference between growing at 7-8 per cent and 10 per cent. The compounding power of growth is enormous, and it lifts the per capita income of India,” Kant said.
Viksit Bharat 2047' is an initiative by the Union government to put forward a roadmap envisioning India becoming a developed nation by 2047.
He also called for more growth across multiple sectors, emphasising the role of manufacturing and “smart urbanisation” in the journey towards becoming a $35 trillion economy by 2047.
Along with the support from the Union government, the states will have to come forward and carry out “radical transformational reforms,” including scrapping all the rules and regulation procedures built up over the years, Kant said.
Cut Reliance on Agriculture, Bet Big on Manufacturing
Kant also called for cutting the dependence on agriculture and increasing its productivity. “The challenge with India is that 42 per cent of our population is in agriculture. That's too high a number.” About 18 per cent of the GDP is from agriculture. The global average is about 5–6 per cent. Instead, he called for people to be moved from agriculture to manufacturing for better-quality jobs.
“My view is that we need to create—as the Prime Minister had envisaged—more and more smart cities so we can create good-quality jobs, and these new smart cities have to be manufacturing-led. Because manufacturing will give you the size and scale to penetrate global markets. No country post-World War II has grown without becoming a major exporting nation,” Kant added.
He also hailed the Indian growth story as “an oasis of growth in the midst of a very barren economic landscape across the world.”.
