Marketed within the country and overseas as “India’s Economic Expressway”, next week’s Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2017 has the word “investor” missing yet again.

And given that investors have actually exited India with nearly $4 billion since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation on November 8, perhaps the omission is intentional.

In fact, the ‘investor’ tag was first absent in 2013. Investment proposed in the lakhs of MoUs signed — the number stood at ₹65,000 crore in 2003, when the meet began, and ballooned to a mammoth ₹20 lakh crore in 2011 — translated into actual investment of less than 10 per cent. So while Modi would announce the investment numbers in earlier summits with long pauses — so as to ensure that a audience listen in rapt attention and disbelief at the number of zeroes — the embarrassing conversion rate ensured the State government would refuse to share data in later editions of the summit.

So when Modi inaugurates the summit here on January 10, despite hype and hoopla, the focus of the four-day mega-event is still not clear. In the 2016-17 Budget, the State Government had officially allocated ₹70 crore for this jamboree; but, unofficial estimates peg the figure much higher.

Vitiated poll climate

This year’s event is being held amid threats of disruption by agitating Patels, OBCs, Dalits and others, and at a time when the ruling BJP’s Modi-led leadership is gearing up not only for the February-March Assembly polls in five States, but also in Gujarat later in the year.

In this backdrop, the summit seems to be have turned into a biennial ritual of the State Government for the PM and his Central government: many Central ministers are scheduled to address various seminars but the State Government’s own ministers are virtually absent from the scene of action. This is perhaps due to the inability of many of them to converse in English. But the presence of half-a-dozen Nobel Laureates could yet provide some grace to the event-without-substance.

What, then, is the focus of this ‘business-without-investment’ event, whose initial success catapulted its promoter — Modi — to the national firmament, and then to Prime Ministership? In earlier summits, the country’s tallest corporate leaders would announce their investment plans and go public about seeing in Modi India’s “future leader”. This time around, too, they would share the platform with Modi, who will also inaugurate a Global CEOs’ Conference on January 10. Global corporate leaders from sectors like energy, infrastructure, aviation and electricity will be present on the occasion.

A global CEO Roundtable with the theme ‘Transforming India’ would aim at encouraging networking of global and Indian corporate magnates with Modi and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, among others. “The discussions with the PM would unearth and crystallise the industry’s expectations regarding ‘the ideal investment destination’,” said PK Taneja, Additional Chief Secretary for Mines and Industries, adding the event is expected to enhance “exchange of ideas.”

The outcome of the CEO Roundtable would enable the government to identify specific action points to make India the ‘undisputed’ for global investment friendliness, he told reporters.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW