The government will no longer provide leadership to the private sector, instead it will only provide necessary resources and support to enable them to take the economy forward, said Sanjeev Sanyal, Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. 

He was delivering a keynote address at the annual event ‘Markets and Economy 2023’ organised by the NGO, United Way of Chennai, here on Friday.  

Speaking on the topic, ‘India-A reform agenda for 2047’, Sanyal said, in the old days of planning commission, the government was telling what the private sector should do. “That’s not how we think about policy making anymore.” 

He added that the role of the government is to provide leadership where necessary, infrastructure where essential so that the private sector can take the country to its rightful place, which is to become the third largest economy by the end of this decade and the world’s largest economy by 2037. 

Liberated

He said while the private sector has been liberated adequately in the last 30 years, the administration and the judicial system are the two areas that require major reforms for India to become a developed nation by 2047.   

He said the current policymakers are unapologetically supply siders, who believe India is driven by risk-taking, innovation and creative destruction.  

“Ensuring macroeconomic stability, maintaining creative, innovation and risk-taking part of the economy, and ensuring adequate safety net to poor are the three parts of the triangle that determines the way we think about policy,” Sanyal said    

Megatrends

In his keynote address, Ridham Desai, MD, Morgan Stanley India, cited the bank’s recent report ‘Why this is India’s decade‘, and said demography, deglobalisation, climate change and rapid digitisation are the four megatrends that will grip the world in the future.  “Most countries will lose in one or all the four and India is likely to benefit from all the four trends,” Desai added.  

He added that offshoring, idiosyncratic digitalidation and transition to cleaner energy are the three pillars on which the India story is resting on.  “We estimate almost a million Indians were employed (post Covid), by multinational firms to sell/transfer services abroad. We think this will accelerate for the next several years,” Desai said.  

Highlighting India’s rapid digitalisation, Desai said India is less than 4 per cent of the global economy but contributes 40 per cent of all digital payments in the world. 

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