We want to be able to build India's productive capacity, the hard assets and the soft assets that will really power our growth going forward. And we want to ensure that our economy grows at 7-9% over the long-term for decades.
China has grown at 9% for 30 years.
What is the GDP per capita for India in dollars?
$1,500-1,600.
What is the GDP per capita for China in dollars?
$5,500-5,600.
China is almost 4X our GDP per capita. Because we have roughly the same number of population, their GDP is four times our GDP. We are at $2 trillion, China at $8 trillion.
This happened because they have grown at over 9% for 30 years. If we want to increase our GDP per capita, so that we bring prosperity to all our people, we have to grow at 7-9% for decades, not for 3-4 years, hit supply side bottlenecks, have high inflation..
We have to keep growing at that rate on a long-term sustainable basis and that is why we need to invest on the supply side. We need to focus on putting in place the infrastructure, the hard and soft assets that will propel the economy forward for the long-term. That's what we need to be able to do. That's why we have unleashed all of these different reform initiatives so that we can sustain this growth over a long period of time, bring our GDP per capita over $5,000 and bring prosperity and a better quality of life to all our fellow citizens. That is our goal.
What challenges do we anticipate as we push forward these reform initiatives?
It boils down to execution. That is our central preoccupation.
Execution is not easy. Government is not easy. It's hard and it's hard because it's meant to be hard.
I have spent 30 years in the private sector, where things are aligned, you know what you are measured against, everybody is on the same team, off you go.
Government is hard. It's hard because you have to work with many sets of stakeholders. On every issue, you have to think about all the different people involved, you have to work with many government departments - whether they are in the Centre where you work across many ministries or across all the different states. Ultimately, even though you are taking along all of these stakeholders, execution complexity is high, you have to deliver benefits as I said to that lady, that last person in the line.
So, working across all these different stakeholders, managing all of this and getting execution to happen is not easy.
Secondly, along with working across all the stakeholders in government in India right now, we don't have enough of an execution mindset, an execution approach.
In the private sector all of us say, okay, these are our targets and milestones, quarter-by-quarter. We know what do we have to hit, who is responsible for what, we check and monitor, have an ops meeting every week and see what's happening. That's an execution mindset. There isn't enough of that in government.
We can't really say these are the four, five big initiatives. Let's sit down, let's think through our targets, let's think through our milestones and let us really approach this in mission-mode.
When we do that in government, when we can get into that mission mode, when we are focused on targets, we can do wonders and miracles, and we've done that with Jan-Dhan Yojana, we've done that with Make In India, we've done that for what we are doing for example with Indradhanush.
So we have to get more into mission mode, more into action mode in government and get some of these important things done. We really have to be able to build that actionable mindset. That's a second big execution challenge that we have.
The third is accountability. Because we are working across so many stakeholders, so many departments, who at the end of the day is accountable? Finding that and pinning that accountability down and making sure that you are looking at those targets, enforcing that accountability can be quite challenging.
So, those are the big execution issues that we have to deal with working with multiple stakeholders, developing an execution mindset, a mission approach towards getting things done; and three; making sure that there is shared accountability around those targets. That can be quite difficult to achieve in the government.
