Modi hardsells India, says reform push to continue

Gandhinagar: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday used the stage of Vibarant Gujarat Global Summit to take potshots the previous UPA government, saying that it’s only in the last couple of years that India has realised that quick results are possible in a democratic set up.

Addressing a gathering of global leaders, top industrialists from India and abroad, as well as Nobel laureates, he said, “We have seen in the last two and a half years that it is possible to deliver quick results in a democratic set-up as well.”

India, he said, has become the sixth largest manufacturing country in the world, up from 9th largest previously. “All this is helping us expand the job market and raise the purchasing power of our people. But the real potential is even higher,” he said.

Pointing out that “over the last two and a half years, we’ve also evolved a culture of healthy competitions among states which are being rated on the parameters of good governance,” Mr Modi said that in 2014-15, India contributed 12.4 per cent of the global economic growth. The four-day summit, sometimes called “Davos of the East”, is held every two years.

It was launched in 2003 by PM Modi while he was chief minister of Gujarat.

Addressing the gathering, Mr Modi said that Gujarat, the “land of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, also represents the business spirit of India.” The summit is being held at the Mahatma Mandir convention hall in Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. 

The PM met several visiting foreign dignitaries, including President of Rwanda and PM of Serbia, to promote bilateral relations and investment opportunities.

He also held parleys with delegates from different nations as well as Fortune 500 CEOs, including John Chambers of Cisco, on the sidelines of the summit.

A number of India’s leading corporate leaders, including Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata and Mukesh Adani, also addressed the event. The PM, while inviting the global inves-tors to invest in India, said, “Make in India has become the biggest brand India has ever had.”

India’s strength, he said, lies in its “3 Ds — democracy, demography and demand,” and added, “I am proud to say that the digitising of India’s economy is happening before you. We have worked tirelessly for the last many months, especially the last few, to ensure India is one of the most digitised economies in the world.

Claiming that his government believes in clean-governance, Mr Modi said, “We are bringing a shift — from relation-based governance to system-based governance, from discretionary administration to policy-based administration, from random interference to technological intervention, from favouritism to level playing field and from Informal economy to formal economy.” The PM asserted that his “government is strongly committed to continue the refo-rms of Indian economy.”

“We have worked to put in place many reforms — be it GST, IPR, bankruptcy law... These are just a glimpse of the direction in which India is headed.”