Does India want to grow at 10 per cent? A workshop organised by Indian School of Public Policy

The need for change remains constant and italicizes the role of policy makers and implementers. The induction of nine experts by the Government as Joint Secretaries from outside the bureaucratic ranks is a significant administrative reform. The need, however, remains for bold decision making in order to accelerate India’s economic growth trajectory. Beginning of July, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the first Union Budget of the recently formed Government. The budget will be indicative of the current state of the economy, and its anticipated projection. Keeping in mind the relevance of the subject, the Indian School of Public Policy or the ISPP organized a workshop on Does India want to grow at 10 per cent? on the 22 June 2019.

The workshop was conducted by Dhiraj Nayyar, Chief Economist, Vedanta Resources; Nayyar’s former assignments include: Officer on Special Duty and Head of Economics, Finance & Commerce at Niti Aayog; Columnist, Bloomberg View and Managing Editor, The Quint; he has completed his Doctoral Research in Economics at Trinity College, Cambridge. At the workshop, Nayyar spoke at length about the pre-requisites for a double-digit economic growth.

He emphasized on the need for public policy making to be based on evidence. He began his presentation with the comparative aspects of growth rate stories of India, China and East Asia, and delved deeper into the reasons for India's relatively slower progress. He discussed a number of issues, including the changing shares of growth coming from agriculture, service and manufacturing sector, and reminded us about how the Indian policymaking mindset needs to change to become more open to structural reforms, particularly in land, labour and capital markets. He distinguished between pro-business and pro-market reforms, and reminded the audience about the importance of building strong institutions that arrest the expansion of crony capitalism, and reward competition.  Ideas related to trade-offs between the size of the pie and share of the pie were also discussed. The workshop ended with a lengthy question and answers round, very well participated in by the audience.

Public Policy has been seen as an emerging career, especially for those, who are intellectually curious and socially conscious. The domain involves training that includes theoretical vigour and experiential learning.