Panel Discussion on Building a Resilient India featuring: Congress Leader Milind Deora, BJP Spokesperson Shaina NC, Edelweiss CEO Rashesh Shah, Economist Haseeb Drabu, Former Finance Secretary Arvind Mayaram and Bharat Krishak Samaj Chairman Ajay Vir Jakhar.
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00:00:00 May I request all of you to please be seated.
00:00:04 It's time for us to begin with our lead panel this afternoon.
00:00:08 So, you know, there was a time when India was hugely divided in terms of the development
00:00:14 model that the nation must adopt.
00:00:16 While there's been a fair bit of consensus to further economic reforms, oftentimes we'd
00:00:23 see that political gains appear to take priority over a set national agenda.
00:00:29 As the election year brings in a lot of anxiety in terms of leadership, our lead panel this
00:00:36 afternoon discuss about what it takes to build a resilient India.
00:00:43 To moderate this session, ladies and gentlemen, which is brought to you by Jindal Panther
00:00:48 TMT Rebars, the future of construction, I'd like to invite on stage Outlook Business Executive
00:00:55 Editor, Mr. V. Keshavdev.
00:01:01 Thank you very much for joining us.
00:01:03 And of course, it's time to invite our lead panel on stage and let's do that with a warm
00:01:08 round of applause, Member of Congress, Mr. Milan Deora.
00:01:19 Also joining us is BJP spokesperson, Ms. Shaina Ensi.
00:01:35 Next up on our lead panel is Chairman Bharat Krishak Samaj, Mr. Ajay Jhakar.
00:01:47 Also joining us on this panel is Advisor to Rajasthan CM, Mr. Arvind Mayaram.
00:01:59 Next up, we have Chairman and CEO, Edelweiss Group, Mr. Rashesh Shah.
00:02:13 And joining us is Economist and former Finance Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Mr. Haseeb
00:02:19 Drabbu.
00:02:20 Mr. Keshavdev, over to you.
00:02:23 Mr. Keshavdev – Thank you and a very warm welcome to all my panelists for taking time
00:02:37 out to be at our event.
00:02:39 I know we are kind of running behind schedule.
00:02:40 We'll keep it short and sweet.
00:02:44 But we need to have our pound of flesh.
00:02:47 So holding a session after lunch is usually a most challenging one.
00:02:55 But I think with an eclectic panel that we have today and an equally interesting topic,
00:02:59 my job is a lot getting… it will be much more easier, I think.
00:03:06 So while I said this is a big debate, making a resilient India, so we are not going to
00:03:10 engage in a slanging match as we have seen on TV, but this is our prime time.
00:03:15 So I am not looking for a healthy consensus, we are looking for healthy disagreements.
00:03:20 So at least that could kind of… as wise.
00:03:23 To just put in the context, in some sense, the first forty years post-independence, the
00:03:29 country just meandered trying to get a sense of where its future lay.
00:03:33 But it was only after 1991 did we really see India break through the so-called Hindu rate
00:03:38 of growth and emerge as one of the fastest growing economies of the world.
00:03:43 Even so while per capita has gone up nearly sevenfold from 1991 to nearly two thousand
00:03:49 dollars, we haven't somewhere really realized our true potential.
00:03:56 The same old issues remain, social development indicators are not up there, unemployment,
00:04:01 poverty, healthcare, education still remains a challenge.
00:04:04 We have achieved independence but we have become slaves of foreign capital.
00:04:08 Neither are we self-sufficient in energy nor we have emerged as an agriculture powerhouse.
00:04:14 So in putting that into context and also I had attended one event where I got to hear
00:04:21 Lord Meghnadesan and he said that is in some sense there is no difference between the economic
00:04:25 ideologies of all parties.
00:04:27 They have some kind of a khichdi ideology of which way things have to go.
00:04:32 In a lighter way he had said that BJP is Congress plus cow, so hence its mathematical equivalent
00:04:38 will be Congress is BJP minus cow.
00:04:41 So…
00:04:42 Shailesh Kumar Congress is BJP maybe minus cow minus demonetization.
00:04:47 Sadhguru Okay.
00:04:48 So here we go.
00:04:49 So let's get off with cracker of a start.
00:04:51 Let me start off with Shaina first.
00:04:54 Do you believe that the BJP, what the BJP has to offer as a nation, as an economic agenda
00:04:59 is very different from what the Congress has offered over the years?
00:05:03 Shaina Subramanian Well, absolutely.
00:05:05 I mean look at the kind of policies which have been implemented and when I say implemented
00:05:09 on ground.
00:05:10 You take Jan Dhan Yojana for example.
00:05:13 Did rural India ever think they would be part of the main banking sector and in these numbers
00:05:20 you take Mudra Banking which has helped over seventy percent of its loans given to women
00:05:25 as entrepreneurs across the length and breadth of this country.
00:05:29 You ask the women sitting in the audience and you ask them through Ujwala, how many
00:05:33 of them have got six and a half crore gas cylinders and the kind of schemes whether
00:05:40 it is even women-centric, our views on pregnancy, our views on Beti Pachao, Beti Padao, Swachh
00:05:47 Bharat Abhiyan, the kind of sanitation available today in rural India, all of that makes the
00:05:53 economy.
00:05:54 So I'm not going to limit economy just to figures of GDP, inflation.
00:05:58 You have experts here who will also have their own say.
00:06:01 But you talked about demonetization, a courageous decision which single-handedly did away with
00:06:08 terror funding, all kinds of mafia, all kinds of cross-border terrorism and we've been able
00:06:16 to achieve through our policy not just in India but even overseas a name and brand value
00:06:24 for brand India which is probably the first time in the history.
00:06:28 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: But on demon, since the topic is already hot, so hasn't the narrative
00:06:33 kind of kept changing within BJP itself?
00:06:35 First it was black money, then it said that it was about… because the whole money came
00:06:39 back into the system, it said that now we have got lot more taxpayers, the base has
00:06:44 gone up.
00:06:45 So it's been that what was…
00:06:47 Dr. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: But those figures are in the public domain.
00:06:49 Look at the amount of taxpayers you have now vis-a-vis before demonetization.
00:06:54 It is all for people to know and people to gauge and we can sit here and continue to
00:06:58 deliberate on statistics.
00:07:00 But I think the fundamental is you have infrastructure projects which are growing at a vast speed.
00:07:06 If you look at the amount of roads constructed in the previous government to what is happening
00:07:10 now, you will realize that the delivery is there to be seen.
00:07:14 Likewise, when we talk about corruption, what was the reason the previous government was
00:07:19 ousted out?
00:07:21 Obviously scam after scam after scam.
00:07:23 Here you have only baseless allegations floating as political repartee but this is the first
00:07:29 Prime Minister who has genuinely walked the talk.
00:07:33 So I think on multiple accounts we have delivered.
00:07:35 Of course there are lot many that we would want to deliver.
00:07:38 We talk about farmers even but if you look at the electoral kind of results in Mansoor,
00:07:43 it shows you that people do believe that there is scope for improvement but we trust a government
00:07:50 that has delivered on the ground.
00:07:51 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: So where do you think the three assembly election results, what
00:07:57 went wrong?
00:07:58 If everything was fine for BJP, what was…
00:07:59 Dr. Kiran Bedi: No, no, but if you actually look at the assembly results, after fifteen
00:08:04 years to win in itself is a victory in any state.
00:08:08 In Madhya Pradesh, we lost about twenty seats with less than hundred votes.
00:08:12 In Rajasthan, yes every five years you have a change of guard but that does not mean that
00:08:18 we did badly, we did fairly well.
00:08:20 Again there was a few seats which we lost by a couple thousand votes and yes, Chhattisgarh
00:08:26 I do believe that was a referendum that people wanted a change and rightfully so in a democracy,
00:08:32 you win some, you lose some but you don't seem to be talking in 2014 when BJP took over
00:08:37 with six states, today at sixteen.
00:08:40 Is that not something to talk about too?
00:08:44 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: Okay.
00:08:46 You have been Minister of State for Information Technology and Congress has been a good part
00:08:51 of India's history, they have run the government.
00:08:56 But do you believe somewhere BJP has managed to articulate its economic agenda or vision
00:09:00 much better than the Congress?
00:09:02 Dr. Kiran Bedi: See, you know, firstly when we spoke before as well, I didn't want to
00:09:07 make it a BJP versus Congress issue but…
00:09:10 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: It's an election year, obviously.
00:09:12 Dr. Kiran Bedi: I mean I'm happy to, I'm happy to but I feel going beyond Congress,
00:09:18 BJP and I'm not a spokesperson of my party, I voluntarily chose not to be a spokesperson
00:09:22 of my party because I think it's very difficult job to be a spokesperson of your party.
00:09:26 I like to be much more candid and say where we're wrong.
00:09:31 I would… the way I look at it is, look, it took us in our two years, two terms of
00:09:36 UPA 1 and 2, it took us about eight years, the last quarter really of UPA 1 and 2 for
00:09:45 things to unravel, for things to go wrong.
00:09:49 There were a lot of economic headwinds coming in internationally, oil prices were extremely
00:09:53 high, lot of other problems.
00:09:55 But I do accept that in the last quarter of our ten-year term, we started to make a lot
00:10:01 of mistakes and as a result of that, we failed to communicate a lot of our achievements.
00:10:08 When BJP came to power in 2014 and again, I'm not speaking as a congressman, I'm speaking
00:10:13 as let's say a lay investor in the markets today, I had a lot of expectations from this
00:10:19 government.
00:10:20 I thought that this is the first government in thirty years of India's history that has
00:10:25 a majority.
00:10:27 I thought they could do a lot with regards to disinvesting, loss-making PSUs.
00:10:31 Maybe I misunderstood the statement minimum government, maximum governance.
00:10:35 I thought it would mean you liberalize and move in the way that Vajpayee and Manmohan
00:10:40 Singh did.
00:10:42 Today, almost five years into the term of this government and I'm saying this across
00:10:47 the board, everyone I speak to, from large industrial houses to MSMEs to traders, if
00:10:56 you look at the business mood in the country, there are certain sectors that are doing well,
00:11:02 there are certain sectors that have a lot of distress because of legacy issues and many
00:11:05 other problems.
00:11:07 But it's in my fifteen year… sort of in fifteen years that I've been in politics,
00:11:13 I've never seen the business climate or the business sentiment this dampened.
00:11:18 And when I say that, regardless of what my friend Rasesh may say about the capital markets
00:11:22 and public equities, today every promoter I meet, every entrepreneur I meet is a) either
00:11:29 very afraid to speak out in public.
00:11:32 Today, for instance, I'll tell you when I saw Mr. Piyush Goyal walking out, he's a close
00:11:37 friend of mine, I screamed his name, I said, "Piyush," and I joked with him, I said, "I'm
00:11:40 the only one allowed to scream your name, your first name in public, everyone else is
00:11:43 too scared to do so."
00:11:45 And he says, "Why should they be scared?"
00:11:46 But the reality is people are afraid to say… speak about what's happening.
00:11:50 Now demonetization, China is a dear friend of mine, an old friend of mine.
00:11:55 Every friend of mine in BJP, including ministers in the government, are laughing at the decision
00:12:00 of demonetization.
00:12:01 I think they're all saying privately that we can't understand why this happened.
00:12:04 Yes, they have to defend it, she's a spokesperson, her duty is to defend it.
00:12:08 But that mood of being afraid of the government, of not being able to tell the government what's
00:12:16 wrong in its policies, I think has created the biggest problem for this government.
00:12:22 Today if you look at tax terrorism, we were accused of tax terrorism and I do agree that
00:12:28 the income tax department, CBDT is a machine on its own.
00:12:32 There was a saying by Max Weber who's a well-known political theorist and he says, "No matter
00:12:37 who you vote for, the government always gets in."
00:12:40 The same applies to the tax department.
00:12:43 But today tax terrorism is at an all-time high.
00:12:47 Now let's be realistic here.
00:12:49 Today businessmen who are operating on the ground, they are coming to me and saying that
00:12:53 when UPA was in power, at a local level, corruption existed.
00:12:58 But they're saying today corruption, let's say the tax department level has gone up by
00:13:01 5x, 6x, 7x, 10x.
00:13:02 Now they're afraid to say it.
00:13:05 It's my duty to say this.
00:13:07 Because I think it's important for some kind of cost correction.
00:13:10 It's too late in the day now.
00:13:12 Now in May, June, we'll have a new government in place.
00:13:15 But I really believe that this government, and again I repeat my point, as a lay investor,
00:13:21 they blew a godsend opportunity where they could have done a hell of a lot in this country
00:13:27 to liberalize the economy, to follow the trajectory that Vajpayee had begun, that Manmohan Singh
00:13:32 took forward.
00:13:33 Keep in mind, Vajpayee government had hundred and eighty MPs in parliament.
00:13:38 They only had about ninety MPs to make their coalition come to power.
00:13:43 In 2004, Congress got hundred and forty-five seats.
00:13:46 We had sixty MPs from the left supporting us.
00:13:50 In spite of that, massive liberalization in a sector like aviation, a strong push towards
00:13:58 reforms like GST, liberalization, selling of lost making PSUs.
00:14:02 Rashesh and I were chatting about it earlier.
00:14:05 We always talk about, you know, a coalition government versus a majority government, which
00:14:09 one is better for markets, which one is better for business.
00:14:12 In 2004 to 2009, the nifty companies, their average earnings grew by about ten percent,
00:14:19 eighteen percent.
00:14:20 2009, Rashesh, to 2014, the average earnings growth of nifty companies was about ten percent.
00:14:26 Today in the last four and a half, five years, the average earnings of nifty companies is
00:14:30 about one percent.
00:14:32 Now keep in mind, we had massive headwinds.
00:14:35 We had high oil prices.
00:14:36 We had the 2008 financial crisis.
00:14:39 Again I'm repeating, we had sixty MPs from the left supporting our government, creating
00:14:42 all kinds of havoc.
00:14:43 This was a majority government.
00:14:45 This government had low oil prices, massive tailwinds, and I really believe they blew
00:14:50 it.
00:14:51 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayanan: So like you said, that 2009 to 2014 was a challenge.
00:14:55 But what we saw, like you said, despite major headwinds, you kind of managed to pull on.
00:15:00 But what we saw post was the entire NPA crisis in the banking system.
00:15:05 So would it be fair in some sense to say that the government really blew it up, you know,
00:15:10 though you had that, but you couldn't really do.
00:15:12 The economic cycle itself was not private capex.
00:15:16 The confidence levels of the private sector in their own business was not heavy.
00:15:19 So how much could the government spur on its own?
00:15:21 Dr. Virendra Tewari (Moderator): Now I'll give you an example.
00:15:22 Now you're talking about NPA crisis for instance.
00:15:26 One of the biggest contributors to NPAs in India is the telecommunications sector.
00:15:31 Now you said, Milan, you are a Minister of State in the Ministry of Telecommunications
00:15:34 and IT.
00:15:35 I can tell you from 2011 to 2014, I would work out of Sanchar Bhavan, which is the Department
00:15:40 of Telecommunications headquarters.
00:15:43 On a daily basis, there were 30, 40 journalists wanting to take a bite about something that
00:15:48 had happened.
00:15:51 The political rhetoric in our country was so polarized, 2G, there may have been issues
00:15:58 with 2G, the special court absorbed everyone of any crime, any criminal action, it's pending
00:16:04 an appeal, let's see what happens with that appeal.
00:16:07 The decision to implement to not auction spectrum and to say that spectrum should be bundled
00:16:12 with a license to keep tele-density high and keep prices low was not a decision taken by
00:16:17 us.
00:16:18 It was taken by Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he was Prime Minister and by Arun Shourie
00:16:21 in 2003.
00:16:22 We continued the decision.
00:16:23 We failed to communicate that decision, that's a separate issue, I admitted that point.
00:16:28 But the rhetoric became so shrill in our country that as a result of that, can you imagine
00:16:33 a decision on whether to auction spectrum or not was not taken by the cabinet, it was
00:16:40 not taken by Department of Telecommunications, it was not taken by the Telecom Commission
00:16:44 of India, it was not taken by TRAI, which is the regulator, it was not taken by Parliament,
00:16:50 by cabinet as I said, it was taken by the Supreme Court of India.
00:16:54 And that will obviously throw any businesses, any telcos business model, it will throw a
00:16:59 spanner into the works.
00:17:01 So I mean I'm just making a larger point, it's not about Congress versus BJP and I think
00:17:05 that it's very important that regardless of which party comes to power in 2019, and I
00:17:11 can assure you the jury is out on what will happen, that on certain issues of economic
00:17:16 importance, we have to work together as a country.
00:17:20 Because I really believe that an issue like joblessness is not an issue of Congress or
00:17:26 BJP, it's an issue of national importance.
00:17:29 Just like when someone we met in the United States who's a former member of the White
00:17:34 House, the cabinet, he said to us, you know when you talk of pluralism and you talk of
00:17:38 keeping communities together, you all talk about it as a humanitarian issue, but it's
00:17:42 actually India's national security issue.
00:17:45 And I think that our track record even as an opposition in that sense, there's always
00:17:51 politics and things happen, but you know when we came to… when BJP came to power and the
00:17:58 insurance bill was pending before Parliament, which we were trying to push incidentally
00:18:02 and they were opposing, we worked with the government to see it through very quickly.
00:18:06 GST also unlike the government which… the BJP which was opposing it for over a decade,
00:18:11 we worked with the government to see it through, we may have had differences on GST, that's
00:18:14 a different issue.
00:18:15 No, no, we've not opposed it, we may have differences in terms of… so I think that
00:18:19 in some areas, people have to come together.
00:18:23 And I would say that the best thing that this government has done and Prime Minister Narendra
00:18:28 Modi has done, in spite of his election rhetoric, which was anti-Aadhaar, anti-GST, he's gone
00:18:36 ahead and implemented those schemes (Applause).
00:18:39 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: Rashish, what's your take on how the government… you said
00:18:45 that keep me out of politics but I have to drag you in.
00:18:48 Dr. Raghuram G. Rajan: No, I think…
00:18:49 See, I think India is a very complex country and over the last twenty-five years, we have
00:18:57 seen, you know, since the economic liberalization, there is always a large agenda in front of
00:19:02 every government.
00:19:03 They get a few things done.
00:19:05 So if you ask me, every government for the last twenty-five years, there are lot of achievements
00:19:10 which are there.
00:19:11 And there are lot of opportunities also which they could not capitalize on.
00:19:15 So it's ultimately a mix of good and bad.
00:19:18 And as I was earlier saying, the interesting thing about India is we sit and we analyze
00:19:24 and we pontificate and all that.
00:19:26 But if you look at the GDP growth rate, last twenty-five years, the average GDP growth
00:19:32 rate of India has been about seven percent for twenty-five years.
00:19:37 The CAGR of twenty-year growth is also seven percent.
00:19:41 The CAGR of ten-year growth is also seven percent.
00:19:44 And the CAGR for five years is also seven percent.
00:19:47 So over the last twenty-five years, various governments, various coalition, majority
00:19:53 governments have been there.
00:19:54 A lot of good things have happened.
00:19:56 Also at least what I've seen, a lot of the policies that governments undertake, the results
00:20:03 of that actually outlive them.
00:20:06 So maybe an earlier government did a few things which got benefited out here.
00:20:10 Some the actions of this government will actually result in that.
00:20:13 So to link economic outcomes directly with government is not always the smart thing to
00:20:20 do.
00:20:21 Also something as simple as oil price can change the dynamic.
00:20:25 We saw last quarter until October, everything looked gloom-doom when oil price became eighty
00:20:29 dollars and when oil price fell by thirty percent in a month, suddenly India was again,
00:20:34 you know, starting to look good again.
00:20:37 So there are so many dynamics out there that to just link economy and politics is not always
00:20:42 easy.
00:20:43 I've always believed that economy and markets have a cadence of their own which goes on.
00:20:49 And if you go back and see last twenty-five years, you know, things happen, economy happen.
00:20:55 Like the period from 1989 to '94 was a very turbulent period for India.
00:21:01 You know, we had the Babri Masjid, we had the Mandal Commission, we had the oil price
00:21:06 and the BOP crisis, we had, you know, the Harsha Mehta scam, all of that.
00:21:11 The stock market went up from eight hundred to four thousand four hundred in those six
00:21:16 years where we had all those things were happening, India was having balance sheet crisis and
00:21:21 all, sorry, balance of payment crisis.
00:21:23 So economies work at their own cadence.
00:21:26 Governments can add or subtract a little bit.
00:21:29 So I believe that India, we are at seven percent.
00:21:34 Bad government policies can take it down to say five and a half, six.
00:21:38 And good government policies can take us up to eight, eight and a half.
00:21:42 And that is why we need good government policies.
00:21:44 But it can only impact within the range.
00:21:47 Outside of that, the economy, because of the local consumption, the local savings, we save
00:21:52 about twenty-eight percent of our GDP, seven hundred billion dollars.
00:21:56 So earlier you spoke something about slaves of foreign capital.
00:21:59 It is not any longer true.
00:22:02 India is actually now capital surplus.
00:22:04 We have household savings which are so high, but we have to convert those savings into
00:22:09 investments.
00:22:10 How do we convert our savings into long-term investment?
00:22:12 We have a lot of structural flaws in that, but foreigners have given us about twenty,
00:22:17 thirty, forty billion dollars a year, while India now saves about seven hundred billion
00:22:22 dollars a year.
00:22:23 So we have a lot of savings.
00:22:24 Our savings, our consumption, our investment needs, all of them have made us a very robust
00:22:29 economy.
00:22:30 Things like oil price and all impact us, but outside of that, we are very, very strong.
00:22:35 We just need good policies to take what is currently a seven percent to eight, eight
00:22:39 and a half percent.
00:22:40 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan (Moderator): So since you have focused a lot on the GDP part of
00:22:44 the data, so are you referring to the old series or the new series?
00:22:47 It doesn't really matter.
00:22:48 Dr. Virendra Tewari (Moderator): Actually, I would say we all use, you know, GDP and
00:22:53 stock market, but these are just very crude indicators or easy to refer indicators and
00:22:59 all.
00:23:00 I think the more underlying important thing is jobs.
00:23:04 India, a seven percent GDP will create X amount of jobs, a eight percent may create some more
00:23:10 jobs.
00:23:11 So ultimately, but unfortunately, we don't have data on jobs.
00:23:13 I wish I could sit here and say that under X government, so many jobs got created, under
00:23:18 Y government, so many jobs got created.
00:23:20 That would be the true indicator of how good the policies are.
00:23:24 GDP is, as I said, impacted by so many things, but in the absence of anything, anything else,
00:23:29 we have to, we have to use that.
00:23:31 And old series and new series, I think that is also part of the media amplification.
00:23:36 As I always say is…
00:23:37 Sadhguru: It's the CSO amplification, it's not the media amplification.
00:23:40 Dr. Virendra Tewari (Moderator): It's like, yeah, no, it's like I would always say, I
00:23:44 would always say that India is a very chaotic country.
00:23:48 In a lot of, you know, there was an RBI governor who once made a statement that in every country,
00:23:53 the future is uncertain.
00:23:55 In India, the past is also uncertain (Laughter) because we don't know, you know, what was
00:24:02 the real growth.
00:24:03 But having said that, there are issues, there are… but I think we can amplify them and
00:24:09 lose the sight of the main issue.
00:24:11 So the main issue is we've been growing as seven, maybe six and a half, maybe seven and
00:24:15 a half.
00:24:16 But the point is, we are, I would say, stuck in this zone.
00:24:20 We were earlier at say, Hindu rate of growth of about two percent, it became three percent,
00:24:26 then we became four percent in the eighties.
00:24:28 After economic liberalization, we are at about seven.
00:24:31 But we are stuck in seven over twenty-five years now.
00:24:34 If we do few things right, we can go to eight, nine, maybe ten percent.
00:24:38 Those things are achievable and I think the idea is to start talking how to get there
00:24:43 and not focus too much on whether the seven is seven or is 6.88.
00:24:48 Questioner (Sanjay): Hasib, you are part of the planning commission and you are also a
00:24:55 banker, then you joined politics and you were also the finance minister of J&K.
00:25:00 So if you encompass your entire kind of learnings or your understanding of why do you think
00:25:11 we as an economy has got it right and why do you think we are going wrong?
00:25:16 And does politics have a real influence on the way the growth trajectory of India goes?
00:25:25 Sadhguru: Look, I think it's very important to have a political direction for economic
00:25:29 policy.
00:25:30 Economics is not economics, it's political economy and you cannot dissociate politics
00:25:36 from economics.
00:25:37 I was very surprised to hear the BJP spokesperson talk about, you know, BJP's policy, economic
00:25:44 policy.
00:25:45 It's an undifferentiated policy.
00:25:47 BJP has moved from Swadeshi to liberalization as much as Congress moved from socialism to
00:25:52 globalization.
00:25:53 Post 1991, there is only one kind of economic policy.
00:25:59 It's a good thing in some ways because the consensus on policy.
00:26:02 It's a bad thing in many ways because you're now stuck with that.
00:26:06 There is no differential policy coming in.
00:26:08 We have seen things like, you know, the first Mahalanobis plan which was about socialism,
00:26:12 then we moved to redistribution with growth, then growth with redistribution.
00:26:16 Now none of these things are coming out in the economic policy making.
00:26:21 So even as the consensus just about seems to be breaking, which is dangerous, broadly
00:26:24 directionally speaking, we are in the right direction, but we do need politically enlightened
00:26:33 economic policy making.
00:26:35 Otherwise, politics is degenerating into issues that are detrimental.
00:26:40 Today there is no differentiation in economic policy between BJP and Congress.
00:26:44 Take two large parties.
00:26:46 It is lux and little.
00:26:48 My soap has this much, your soap has that much.
00:26:50 There's no major change in terms of how do you want to address the issue.
00:26:54 Distribution issues have been put on the back burner.
00:26:57 Look at the way NPA crisis is handled.
00:26:58 It's the same thing that has been done.
00:27:01 You can forever blame each other.
00:27:03 Fact of the matter is that 1991 was path breaking.
00:27:08 Post that, economic thinking has stagnated.
00:27:12 Political input into policy making has not been done, as a consequence of which, to do
00:27:17 product differentiation, you start inventing things, whether it gets into vigilantism of
00:27:22 cows or whatever and bulls and buffaloes.
00:27:25 Much more serious attention needs to be given to differentiate economic policy.
00:27:29 That's one.
00:27:30 Second, there cannot be one economic policy for India.
00:27:36 India is 30 economies at different levels of development, different requirements, different
00:27:42 resource bases.
00:27:43 Now you did this in the 60s, 70s and 80s through an instrument called public investment.
00:27:49 You were handling Odisha at some level of discipline, Maharashtra at another level.
00:27:53 All that is over now.
00:27:54 Centre, we are just discussing with Mr. Koparkrishnan.
00:27:55 Centre has done its bit in 1991, macroeconomics is all in order.
00:28:02 Start focusing on what's happening in the States.
00:28:05 You have immense potential.
00:28:06 You need diversity of that.
00:28:08 We struggled as finance minister to look at saying that, you know, why do I want to do
00:28:11 all these schemes they were talking about, you know.
00:28:14 All these schemes are old schemes, rebranded.
00:28:16 Every single one of them.
00:28:17 Nothing is new.
00:28:18 Whether AP, DRP is now being able to jala.
00:28:20 Does that make a difference?
00:28:21 No, it doesn't make a difference.
00:28:23 So we want specific things.
00:28:24 We struggled and said, why can't we do, I do a UBI in J&K.
00:28:28 Small population, total 18 lakh under the power line.
00:28:31 Why am I spending 4000 crores, you know, doing all kinds of social measures?
00:28:35 Why don't I do one lakh per family per year and resolve the issue?
00:28:39 That flexibility is not available today.
00:28:42 So if you want to build a resilient India, if you want politically enlightened economic
00:28:46 policy, you must look at States.
00:28:49 Allow States to do things that they feel are right and not over-stimulate it.
00:28:55 Now you look at the union budget.
00:28:56 I was just looking at some numbers.
00:28:57 70% of union budget expenditure is online lending to States and others.
00:29:02 They spend only 30%.
00:29:04 Post-GST, what is the role of union budget?
00:29:07 Virtually nothing in direct taxes.
00:29:08 Only direct taxes.
00:29:09 Indirect taxes, nothing.
00:29:10 The finance minister today is the 11th, 12th man in the cricket team.
00:29:15 GST council decides what happens in indirect taxes.
00:29:19 Only direct taxes left.
00:29:20 Expenditure 70% is done by States.
00:29:22 Now with the finance commission coming in, it will go to panchayats also.
00:29:25 So none of this is being reflected in the economic policy making mindset of the country.
00:29:31 And that is where focus needs to be done, which is where you will start grounds up economic
00:29:35 policy.
00:29:36 Forget the notion of India as one economy in terms of economic market, yes.
00:29:40 But for policy purposes, look at the second tier of governance.
00:29:44 That is where the action will lie.
00:29:45 Arvind, you are part of the finance ministry.
00:29:48 You have seen pre and post liberalization.
00:29:51 So is there more onus on the civil service or the bureaucracy to frame policies and to
00:29:57 achieve in some sense the economic agenda for the country?
00:30:01 Because governments come and go, but it is you who are going to that and running, driving
00:30:06 the policies.
00:30:07 So how much of it is on your shoulders and how much of that is on the politicians' shoulders?
00:30:14 I think we need to be very clear that in a democracy, the policy direction has to be
00:30:21 political.
00:30:24 In whichever country the policy direction has come from bureaucracy, democracies have
00:30:30 floundered.
00:30:31 Pakistan is a classic example.
00:30:34 When I say bureaucracy, it includes the army because they are all professionals who are
00:30:38 doing this.
00:30:39 So I don't think it's a very good, you know, belief that bureaucracies do better policies
00:30:46 than politicians do.
00:30:47 I don't think it's correct.
00:30:50 I also believe that in a country like India, we move incrementally in a direction.
00:31:00 We seldom see one kind of a revolutionary change in the manner in which economic thinking
00:31:08 is done.
00:31:10 In some ways it is good because stable economic policies are a good ground for investment.
00:31:18 Investors look for long-term stability in policy space.
00:31:24 But we need to also be clear that when political rhetoric becomes very loud, then the one of
00:31:33 the major victims is economic policy because then economy begins to be driven by politics
00:31:43 and that I don't think is good for the country.
00:31:47 My sense is that since '91, politics was driven by economy but we are more and more seeing
00:31:56 increasingly reverse happening, which I think that is a trend we need to arrest.
00:32:02 If we really want to go from seven percent to nine percent or ten percent, economic policy
00:32:09 making should get into the heart of politics and I think that is when we will see the real
00:32:15 growth happening in the country.
00:32:17 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: So is BJP doing it better than the Congress?
00:32:20 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: Look, as a bureaucrat, I can tell you that there isn't much of a
00:32:29 difference as far as economic policies are concerned.
00:32:33 Very few people see this but by 2010, eight crore bank accounts had been opened of the
00:32:41 people who were NREG registered, you know, rural people and they were all poor people
00:32:49 and all their wages were going into bank accounts, so there was a direct transfer already happening.
00:32:54 So I'm saying this has been built upon, it has become much bigger in the new government,
00:32:59 there cannot be any denying of it but it isn't as if it never happened before.
00:33:04 You see that between 2005 and 2012, hundred-fifty million people came out of poverty, this is
00:33:11 World Bank report, and they came out of poverty which was the fastest ever migration from
00:33:18 poor to the middle class anywhere in the world in any time in history.
00:33:25 So that's an achievement of economic policy that happened.
00:33:30 So I'm just saying that there is… this is… there is a continuous movement in a particular
00:33:34 direction which happens.
00:33:37 When whether it's Congress, whether it is BJP or any other government, the direction
00:33:41 of change is the same.
00:33:43 We haven't deviated much from there but of course there are certain things that happen
00:33:49 like demonetization which makes the economy stumble but of course I think India has enough
00:33:55 resilience to get up and move again going forward.
00:33:59 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan (Moderator): Ajay, you said that you wanted to hear out all the
00:34:03 panelists and then make your comments.
00:34:05 You represent the farmers' lobby and every time there is a loan waiver, there is a hue
00:34:11 and cry and they still… they remain a disgruntled lot.
00:34:17 So why do you think we have lost our way in agriculture?
00:34:20 Why is it that we still today face…
00:34:23 I mean 1990 incidentally happened to be the first time that farm loan waiver was done
00:34:26 by UPC and then it has been kind of an irregular feature just for every state and government.
00:34:31 So why do you think we have really gone wrong?
00:34:34 Dr. Ajay Chowdhury (Moderator): So I…
00:34:36 Hello, can you hear me?
00:34:38 So I think I agree with what this side of the panel is saying is that there is no difference
00:34:44 in economic policy and I completely agree with them because the economic policy of this
00:34:49 country is inflation targeting and the primary scapegoat is the farmer, that we will not
00:34:56 let farmgate prices rise so that urban consumers are happy about it and that is the crux of
00:35:02 the problem and it leads to around ten to fifteen thousand farmers committing suicide
00:35:08 every year for the last twenty years.
00:35:10 There is no difference between political parties.
00:35:14 Even political parties discount farmers, panelists on this side, Congress and BJP, in their courtry
00:35:21 they have not a single farmer.
00:35:22 Fifty percent of India is not represented in the courtry of the leaders representing
00:35:28 their parties and that's the hard fact of life and we can't run away from this that
00:35:33 political parties don't need farmer votes and they discount it for whatever reasons
00:35:39 and the only targeting is inflation targeting, keeping prices low.
00:35:43 Onion prices go up, exports are banned, X, Y, Z, it just goes on and on.
00:35:48 Then there is a lot of hue and cry on this farm loan waiver which is what you're asking,
00:35:53 this is what everyone's discussing.
00:35:54 I completely agree with you like Confucius said, it's not the best of the best options
00:35:59 but these are exceptional times requiring exceptional steps to be taken.
00:36:04 Now when you decide if something is good or bad you have to take it in relation to something
00:36:08 else.
00:36:11 So I'll just take it in relation to two things.
00:36:15 Before I come to that let me just say that and I think both of you will agree is that
00:36:19 70% of members of parliament and MLAs in the legislative assemblies do not get re-elected.
00:36:27 The only permanent feature of the Indian democracy is the bureaucracy and we are in this mess
00:36:33 because of governance failure and if you want resilience because you would ask me what is
00:36:37 required for India's resilience, I think we need to improve the quality of governance
00:36:41 where delivery is and that's the biggest hurdle this country faces.
00:36:47 Now the seventh pay commission was two years, I'm just giving you an example with farm loan
00:36:53 waiver amount which everyone is saying is going to be disastrous for this country.
00:36:58 Is a farm loan waiver of the kind my home state Punjab has done is of two lakh rupees
00:37:04 per small and medium, small and marginal farmers amounts to something like less than two lakh
00:37:10 crore rupees, it's a one time cost.
00:37:12 A seventh pay commission recommendation allows the bureaucracy, the plutocracy I would say
00:37:19 is that's what they are, 1.3 lakh crore rupees of annual pay increase.
00:37:26 The average farmer's income in the country today is 75,000 rupees a year and the seventh
00:37:32 pay commission gives on an average of one lakh rupees per government servant as pay
00:37:36 increase.
00:37:37 Now you tell me did any economist criticise the seventh pay commission, did any bureaucracy,
00:37:42 did any minister, any political party criticise?
00:37:44 One lakh thirty thousand crore rupees as pay increase which is 50% more than the annual
00:37:49 salary income of a farmer.
00:37:51 So I think so the narrative is wrong, we need to get it right again and this is the problem.
00:37:59 You have a debt recovery tribunal for the industry, what happens in an industrialist
00:38:03 for good reasons or bad reasons, his industry is not working, he goes to the debt recovery
00:38:08 tribunal and what does the DRT do, after 10, 15 years your interest gets wiped out, you
00:38:12 pay the original amount and you walk home.
00:38:15 But there is no tribunal like that for the farming community.
00:38:17 If there was one I think so no debt recovery, no farm loan waiver would be required.
00:38:21 So we are playing by double rules and there are different rules for different people and
00:38:27 that's why this crisis is coming up and up and it's not going to go away with what's
00:38:32 being proposed because the implementation is not happening on the ground and I completely
00:38:38 agree that states must have more leeway to do what they want to do.
00:38:41 I think so the central government has to give up control of policy and they do it through
00:38:45 financial measures and it's a huge, huge burden I think.
00:38:49 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan (Moderator): I just want Haseeb and Rakesh to both share their
00:38:53 views on how critical is it to be addressed this agri-issue, this farm loan waivers, why
00:38:58 have we not been able to get our head around and why do you perennially end up having this
00:39:04 easy way out of just doing the farm loan waivers?
00:39:07 Dr. Haseeb Jain (Moderator): No, see this is where the original question of should economic
00:39:20 policy get divorced from politics, which is what you started off with.
00:39:23 I think this is truly the crux of it, that you want this kind of populism to happen.
00:39:29 It's more about electoral politics rather than political strategy of economic policy.
00:39:34 Now these are compulsions that are bound to happen.
00:39:37 I have been on the other seat as well.
00:39:39 I have done waivers, we did flood waivers because the entire state was…
00:39:44 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan (Moderator): Political compulsions?
00:39:46 Dr. Haseeb Jain (Moderator): Not just political compulsions because you are living in a real
00:39:50 world, right?
00:39:51 You are not, you know, it's very easy to be…
00:39:52 I have been economic advisor.
00:39:53 I advised against waivers.
00:39:54 When I was finance minister, I was faced with a situation where it was complete distress.
00:40:00 Floods had devastated J&K as much as Kerala happened today.
00:40:04 You have distorted the architecture of GST by introducing a CESS today, but for very
00:40:10 good reason.
00:40:12 So there are these areas where you have to understand that it's not about political
00:40:16 compulsions.
00:40:17 You are seeing it from the other side, from a corporate viewpoint or from pure play.
00:40:21 These are real life situations you have to deal with and that is what democracy is all
00:40:25 about because you are dealing with people.
00:40:27 You are not dealing with statistics.
00:40:30 So I do understand maybe it should be done better.
00:40:33 There are moral hazard issues, yes I understand that, but you could perhaps evolve it better.
00:40:37 There can be better design of the debt.
00:40:39 So it has become a moral hazard.
00:40:41 There are situations that can be done, but what I would advise here is don't escape
00:40:45 from it.
00:40:46 It's not something that, unless it's done in a hugely populist manner where it becomes
00:40:51 competitive populism, now Punjab does it, Haryana does, but if there are situations
00:40:56 of distress, rural distress, that's one.
00:40:59 Second, address the source of the problem.
00:41:01 The source of the problem is lethargic banking by the banking sector.
00:41:06 Despite having priority lending targets for the last 40 years, what have people done?
00:41:12 Lending money to the institutions here, NABARD and others, for shortfalls in lending.
00:41:18 Corporate lending, no issues.
00:41:20 These kinds of lendings have never been done.
00:41:22 So try and get out the banking sector into a mold for lending into agriculture at desirable
00:41:27 rates and in a certain manner which facilitates that, which is where we tried the whole experiment
00:41:32 of microfinancing and others, but perhaps you could redesign your entire cooperative
00:41:36 banking sector is languishing.
00:41:38 Your regional rural banks are lending.
00:41:40 What you don't have today, at least we created, is a sub-national financial architecture.
00:41:46 That is dead.
00:41:47 You are looking at these 10 banks and expecting them to solve India's problem.
00:41:50 That's not going to happen.
00:41:52 You need a much granular, much more granular fiscal architecture.
00:41:55 For instance, why does this country look at a panchayat bank?
00:41:59 If panchayats are the whole source of activity now, look at creating panchayat banks.
00:42:03 Drop off all the cooperatives, merge the RRBs, get them financially empowered.
00:42:07 Then we'll start the issue where you will not need farm loan waivers.
00:42:12 Today there are situations where you will need them and as a political class you will
00:42:17 have to address them no matter what the finance minister says or the RBI governor says or
00:42:23 the chairman of the bank says.
00:42:25 These are realities you need to live with.
00:42:27 Need to change the banking norms to be able to address it.
00:42:29 I am working with Punjab government and on this farm loan waiver we had announced one.
00:42:37 I'll just give you the background of it.
00:42:40 In 10 years, public sector banks and private banks gave eight times the amount of crop
00:42:45 loans that had versus 3.3% increase in productivity.
00:42:52 So that's the kind of loaning that is not required.
00:42:54 So when this private sector lending norms came into place, I think the banks had to
00:43:00 give this money and they went to irrigated farmers because nobody would go to rain fed
00:43:03 farmers and give money.
00:43:04 They dumped all their money into irrigated tracts like Punjab.
00:43:07 They forced everyone to take it.
00:43:08 Now an interesting part, because you're talking about banks, is now around 5 to 6,000 crores
00:43:14 has I think already been paid in Punjab.
00:43:16 So at the Farmers Commission we got the data of who's got how much loan.
00:43:21 So we find that the loan waiver for private banks is three times that of corporate banks
00:43:27 and public sector banks.
00:43:28 And that's why Punjab has told Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh not to include
00:43:32 private sector banks into the picture because these people have cooked up books.
00:43:37 They've cooked up books by showing term loans as crop loans, gone to the bank and taken
00:43:41 the loan.
00:43:42 So we're doing a forensic audit and trust me within six months you should have some
00:43:45 banks being taken to court in Punjab on this.
00:43:48 Dr. Urjit R. Patel I'll just add to this.
00:43:51 I think if you look at investors and if you look at, you know, the, you know, all the
00:43:56 global economists and everybody, everybody will say farm loan waiver has so and so problems,
00:44:02 all of that.
00:44:03 But as I think Hasib and others said, these are extraordinary times we have gone through
00:44:07 extreme stress.
00:44:08 But I think at a structural, you know, if you look at theoretically, any democracy for
00:44:14 it to work, you have to get your wealth creation engine right and you have to get the wealth
00:44:19 transfer engine right.
00:44:21 So whether it's farm loan waiver, whether it's, you know, your taxation system, whether
00:44:24 it's your universal basic income or even philanthropy and all, all these are wealth transfer mechanism.
00:44:31 Unfortunately, last twenty-five years, India has grown and all, we have really not got
00:44:36 the wealth creation engine right and the wealth transfer engine right and we keep on, you
00:44:40 know, flip-flopping between the two and obviously we need to create wealth.
00:44:45 With that we will do if we can start, you know, stepping up the GDP growth, creating
00:44:48 more capital surpluses.
00:44:51 But we also have to get some structural answers to how do we do this wealth transfer, not
00:44:56 on a ad hoc basis because an agri-loan waiver is an ad hoc wealth transfer.
00:45:00 But your taxation system has addressed it up to a point, maybe UBI is the answer, maybe
00:45:05 there are other answers like Hasib and other experts are here.
00:45:08 But I think as a country we need to start talking about how do we balance between the
00:45:12 wealth, wealth creation policies and the wealth transfer policies.
00:45:15 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: So for shortage of time, let me have this two last question from
00:45:19 each of the panelists.
00:45:21 What are the three non-negotiables that you think we need to ensure that India continues
00:45:26 to be on the growth trajectory?
00:45:28 So Hasib sir, if you could start.
00:45:30 Dr. Hasib Jain: Non-negotiables?
00:45:31 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: Yeah, three non-negotiables, critical, so that it ensures that whatever
00:45:35 government comes, whichever government comes that these three key things have to be persisted.
00:45:40 Dr. Hasib Jain: I don't know what three but one for sure and I'm speaking in a certain
00:45:44 context, institutional autonomy, I mean non-negotiable, allow people to function in a certain manner.
00:45:51 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: Is it hinted at BJP?
00:45:52 Dr. Hasib Jain: Sorry, no, no, it's a general sense.
00:45:54 I mean subversion has happened earlier, subversion is happening now, styles may be different.
00:46:00 Some may do it, you know, highway robbery, some may do it with so-and-so, that's different.
00:46:05 Institutional autonomy is something that is sacrosanct, should not be tampered with.
00:46:09 I mean that's the key thing I would say in today's context.
00:46:12 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: And one more question I forgot to ask is what's your view on 2019,
00:46:16 who's going to come?
00:46:17 Dr. Hasib Jain: View on?
00:46:18 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: 2019.
00:46:19 Dr. Hasib Jain: 2019?
00:46:21 I have no view.
00:46:22 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: How can that be?
00:46:23 You need to have…
00:46:24 You are a true politician that way.
00:46:25 Dr. Hasib Jain: I was just saying the case in fact, I mean I just suddenly see that,
00:46:29 you know, things have changed last six months so dramatically that it's surprising.
00:46:35 So I've…
00:46:36 And I think that it's public mood, I mean still far away, changes will happen.
00:46:42 So I'm not willing to take a call right now but I think there is certainly a change,
00:46:46 one rather dramatic change.
00:46:48 I'm not so thinking about the thing of change but the speed at which it's happened, that
00:46:53 surprises me.
00:46:54 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: Rishi?
00:46:55 Dr. Rishi V. V. Mishra: I think the first one I would say, I'll go back to, you know,
00:46:59 how do we get the wealth creation done?
00:47:02 I think we need to fix our financial system.
00:47:04 I come from there but our current financial system is fairly broken.
00:47:08 We have a lot of capital surplus, we can't convert savings into investments.
00:47:11 It's, you know, partly banks, partly the way capital markets, all of that.
00:47:16 So one important thing is fix the financial system.
00:47:20 The second one I would say is address this issue of equality.
00:47:23 We can't really be galloping away at seven, eight, nine percent growth and have tall buildings
00:47:27 in Mumbai and not have some level of equality.
00:47:30 The level of inequality that has crept up, not only in our country but all over the world,
00:47:35 it is unsustainable and if you don't address it, it will create breaks in the system in
00:47:40 some very undesirable manner.
00:47:42 And the third is, I would go back and say, long-term thinking.
00:47:45 I think India today, now we are in a golden age, our economy is large, we are growing
00:47:50 well, we have young population, savings and everything is working for us.
00:47:54 We can't think election to election.
00:47:55 We can't be thinking, you know, a year at a time.
00:47:58 We need a twenty-year, and I would like all the political parties to come together and
00:48:03 agree on some key things for the next twenty years.
00:48:06 Though as a lot of people said, a lot of political policy, a lot of the economic policies have
00:48:11 continued in various governments, we need a formal statement that for the next twenty-five
00:48:16 years, these are the things India will do.
00:48:19 Whether it's in farmer, agri, ruler area, whether it's industry, whether it's financial
00:48:23 sector, we need some things where we have a twenty-five year horizon, so that we can
00:48:28 start putting the foundation for what we can achieve.
00:48:31 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan (Moderator): So your view on the elections?
00:48:33 Dr. V.M.
00:48:34 K. V.P.
00:48:35 Jyotishkar (Moderator): As I said, I'm the last guy to…
00:48:38 I have no idea.
00:48:40 I think also the way these things are, it's very close and because it's, you know, it's
00:48:46 seat to seat also.
00:48:47 I think all the pundits are out there, people will be coming out with estimates.
00:48:51 But the only thing I would say is somebody very high up in the government recently told
00:48:55 me (Speaks in Hindi – not transcribed)
00:49:02 So I think there is uncertainty but that is part of the political system.
00:49:06 Everybody is prepared, everybody is hard and veteran but any guesswork is just a guess.
00:49:11 I don't think it really achieves anything.
00:49:13 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan (Moderator): So from a stock market, who is long and who is short
00:49:16 on the government?
00:49:18 Dr. V.M.
00:49:19 K. V.P.
00:49:20 Jyotishkar (Moderator): I have no idea.
00:49:22 I think a lot of Indian investors in the last couple of years have actually come to the
00:49:29 markets.
00:49:30 As you saw last year, FIIs withdrew money and Indian investors have come in.
00:49:33 But FIIs are not withdrawing money because of India.
00:49:35 It was emerging markets, US dollar getting stronger and all.
00:49:39 So I think the problem with India is that most people recognize that on a long term
00:49:45 basis India is one of the best stories in the world and we have been last twenty-five
00:49:49 years.
00:49:50 Our GDP has doubled in rupee terms every five and a half years.
00:49:55 We are doubling every five and a half years.
00:49:58 So it's a great story.
00:49:59 We have had, you know, five governments from Atal Bihari Bajpai government to both the
00:50:02 UP government to this government, five years stable governments out there.
00:50:08 We have had seven percent growth, all of that.
00:50:11 We are a very stable country but we don't seem to look stable.
00:50:15 We look very chaotic.
00:50:17 We look highly volatile and partly I think it is actual volatility in India, partly though
00:50:22 I think, you know, I'll get protest on this, partly I call it the media amplification of
00:50:27 the volatility.
00:50:28 We have…
00:50:29 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayanan: I mean that's a convenient ruse, blame it on the media.
00:50:31 Moderator (Dr. Jayaprakash Narayanan): We look highly volatile and foreign investors
00:50:34 and Indian investors get actually put off by the perceived turbulence and the volatility
00:50:42 that we have in India.
00:50:43 We have to start believing we are a very stable country at heart.
00:50:46 At heart India is very stable.
00:50:48 So all this drama that goes on, it just takes away from the long term story.
00:50:52 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayanan (Limelight Networks): Arvind, you are next.
00:50:55 So Arvind, while agreeing with whatever has been said, I would say the topmost requirement
00:51:02 is to reintroduce a very strong law and order in the country.
00:51:10 I think without order, there can be no economic activity and there can be no investment.
00:51:19 So first and foremost, I think the might of law has to be felt once again in terms of
00:51:26 order in the society.
00:51:29 And all the different kind of people who take law into their own hands and think they can
00:51:33 get away with it must begin to recede.
00:51:37 That's a very, very critical area which I think any government whichever is coming or
00:51:43 is going to be there must take into account.
00:51:47 Second is institution building, not just maintaining autonomy of the institutions.
00:51:51 But I think we need to build a lot more institutions that we have today in a country of our size.
00:51:58 Both at the state level and at the central level, which develop their own, you know,
00:52:05 kind of autonomy and their own way of doing things.
00:52:09 When government doesn't have to intervene in everything from the time you wake up to
00:52:13 the time you sleep, I think that is something that we need to move away from.
00:52:19 And of course the third one, and which is going to be very critical for anybody is to
00:52:24 put jobs at the heart of any policy, whether it's political policy, whether it's economic
00:52:30 policy, geographical policy or any… anything that you need to do.
00:52:35 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayanan: Ajay, you are…
00:52:36 Dr. Ajay V. Patil: I think so, we need to…
00:52:37 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayanan: No, you didn't tell me your prediction for 2019.
00:52:39 Dr. Ajay V. Patil: Sorry?
00:52:40 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayanan: Your take on 2000, verdict 2019.
00:52:43 Dr. Ajay V. Patil: Oh, prediction for 2019.
00:52:45 Let me tell you this anecdote because I am also a student of political science.
00:52:51 You know, when people go quiet, when people don't say anything, you go… you're going
00:52:58 to be surprised.
00:53:00 When people make a lot of noise and I'm talking about common man.
00:53:04 So there is a lot of quiet happening.
00:53:07 Now the surprise can be either way, I don't know which way it will be but there is going
00:53:12 to be a big surprise, there is no doubt.
00:53:14 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayanan: Ajay?
00:53:15 Dr. Ajay V. Patil: I'll just say that we need to improve the quality of governance
00:53:20 for this nation to move forward.
00:53:21 You might have the best policies but those governing us, if they are not good enough,
00:53:24 they are not going to deliver.
00:53:26 Everybody has to face officers, small and small offices, big offices and including governance
00:53:33 and including quality of ministers that we have, they need to be subject matter specialists.
00:53:37 I think so we cannot have people elected making policy.
00:53:41 They should be giving a vision statement and they need better policy.
00:53:45 And we need to create jobs because the only way to save this nation from a civil war is
00:53:50 that you got to get people off the farms by creating jobs for them because the amount
00:53:54 of people, young people that are coming in with substandard education, it's going to
00:53:59 be very, very difficult to keep the feelings oppressed.
00:54:02 And things like farm loan waiver act like a safety valve for situations like that.
00:54:07 And just on this farm loan waiver, I think so the banks, the government wants to do a
00:54:11 recapitalization of banks.
00:54:12 If you give money for recapitalization as farm…
00:54:15 See, when you give a farm loan waiver, farmer gets nothing.
00:54:17 It's just the bank account gets paid for that money.
00:54:20 So the farmer is not getting anything in his pocket.
00:54:22 So it's a very good, it's the best way of recapitalizing banks.
00:54:26 And so I said that cooperative banks, cooperative banks don't even get a recapitalization.
00:54:31 That's the heart of India, the cooperative banks, the panchayats is the heart of India.
00:54:34 We need to get the gram sabhas working.
00:54:36 If you want the panchayat system to work, the gram sabhas don't take place.
00:54:39 It's an entry, you know, if you make it compulsory like a videography of a gram sabha, I think
00:54:44 so democracy will start working in a much better way.
00:54:47 So it's small incremental changes that will change the nation.
00:54:50 It's not big announcements, big things like GST or big things like demonetization.
00:54:55 We don't want to be kicked around like that.
00:54:57 We just want small incremental changes which don't get noticed, which are not romantic,
00:55:00 which don't make news and that's what India will change with.
00:55:03 Moderator (Vedav Kaur): Verdict 2019?
00:55:04 Dr. V.P.
00:55:05 Jayaprakash Narayan (Vedav Kaur): I think wherever BJP and Congress is in direct contest,
00:55:11 Congress could vote for Congress but where regional parties are in play, we do not know
00:55:18 where they will vote for other than the BJP.
00:55:20 Dr. V.P.
00:55:21 Jayaprakash Narayan (Vedav Kaur): Shaina, you'll have to first defend on the autonomy
00:55:25 part, the social…
00:55:26 This how many…
00:55:27 Dr. Shaina Chattopadhyay (Sanjay Kaur): So I'm going to answer all of it if you don't…
00:55:29 if you allow me and very briefly.
00:55:33 So the non-negotiable is clearly corruption and I think for the first time in the history
00:55:38 of India, we have had a non-corrupt government.
00:55:41 Second, most voters want stability and the voter is extremely intelligent, so I'm confident
00:55:48 that they will choose a stable government and of course political will because if you're
00:55:54 going to dilly-dally and not take decisions, then I think that we will continue to see
00:55:59 fraud after fraud and one of those policies in that direction, whether it's the bankruptcy
00:56:05 code or insolvency act or the fugitive bill, have been endeavors in that direction.
00:56:12 The fact that we have got defunct companies to pay back, probably for the first time,
00:56:17 no kind of political insulation has spared anybody.
00:56:21 You asked about two questions as they were talking and I was silently listening.
00:56:27 One about employment, I do concede, yes, we have a problem in hands.
00:56:30 We have to focus on youth employment but we only go by registered data.
00:56:36 We really haven't gone and bothered to think about the unorganized sector or through skill
00:56:41 development, the amount of youngsters who have been able to on their laptop and using
00:56:46 digital media, work out of home, be self-employed as entrepreneurs as well.
00:56:52 But do we need to focus on it?
00:56:53 Absolutely yes.
00:56:54 And as far as the farmers are concerned, previous governments used to only give freebies, subsidies,
00:56:59 crops.
00:57:00 Our government believes in empowerment, whether it is cash-rich crops, soil fertilizers, pension
00:57:06 schemes, insurance schemes, loans for farmers' children who do not want to be part of the
00:57:12 farming community or using technologies which come from Israel, better irrigation, all of
00:57:18 which at the grassroot level.
00:57:20 And you take a state like Maharashtra, yes, I believe that loan waivers are sensitive
00:57:24 only as a short-term measure but if you take policies like Jalyug-Shivar which have transformed
00:57:30 the irrigation in a state such as ours, we have worked.
00:57:34 There may be baby steps but doing away with the middleman, MSP, all of these are steps
00:57:40 in the correct direction.
00:57:42 And most important question, 2019.
00:57:45 So in 2014, BJP came to power with fourteen-and-a-half crore votes.
00:57:52 Today we have eleven crore members across the length and breadth of this country and
00:57:59 we are the largest political party in the world.
00:58:02 So I am extremely confident that the Indian voter may be silent but is not stupid, is
00:58:08 extremely intelligent and realizes that they don't want a kichdi where they don't understand
00:58:14 what they're eating.
00:58:15 They want strong leadership, governance coupled with stability and that political will can
00:58:21 be delivered by our party.
00:58:23 Sadhguru: So the three points that you said, will that be part of the BJP's manifesto
00:58:27 for 2019?
00:58:28 Barkha Dutt: Absolutely.
00:58:29 Sadhguru: And no more jhumlas.
00:58:30 Barkha Dutt: And no more jhumlas.
00:58:31 Sadhguru: More jhumlas.
00:58:32 Barkha Dutt: That may be your way of interpreting it but I am sure the policies that have percolated
00:58:38 down to the poorest of poor, whether it's the pension schemes, insurance schemes, mudra,
00:58:43 jandan yojana, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and you may feel that they are rephrased but the
00:58:48 difference is you had policies which were never implemented, here you have policies
00:58:52 which have percolated down to the poorest of poor.
00:58:54 Sadhguru: Milan, final word.
00:58:56 Milan Pichai, CEO, India's largest telecommunications company (Indian Telecom)
00:58:57 I mean before I… firstly I agree with what everyone has to say except for Shaina obviously
00:59:01 (Sadhguru laughs) but you know it's interesting, I have to make a small political point but
00:59:06 I think when BJP is telling this section of society, they're using the bogey of stability
00:59:13 to scare you and they're using the bogey of mandir politics to another section of society,
00:59:21 what is very clear to me is that they failed miserably in five years.
00:59:26 I personally believe all the stuff that everyone before Shaina has spoken about, all of it
00:59:30 is true but as a person who has been a minister as well, so has Haseeb, you know what hurts
00:59:37 me the most is that in 2019, I really wish that the issues that all four of these gentlemen
00:59:45 raised were the political issues we were debating today.
00:59:49 But unfortunately India is not outlook business and the issues that are being debated on the
00:59:56 streets of Mumbai, Maharashtra and India are whether we should have a temple or a mosque
01:00:01 in this country.
01:00:03 And I personally believe the one single issue that I would… my answer to you would be
01:00:07 is if Indians instead of temple versus mosque debate education and healthcare, debate women's
01:00:16 safety and jobs, then you'll really make India a developed country.
01:00:21 (Applause)
01:00:22 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: Thank you, thank you, panelists for that…
01:00:24 Participant (Shreya): What's the answer in 2019?
01:00:25 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: Ah, verdict 2019, yes.
01:00:26 (Laughter)
01:00:27 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: I'll give you the honest, candid answer and Rasesh is a very,
01:00:31 very dear friend of mine, he knows this.
01:00:33 I've been proven wrong so many times that I hate predicting and giving a number.
01:00:38 Rasesh Tendulkar: So you can always say BJP is coming.
01:00:39 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: No, no, I'll tell you.
01:00:40 Okay, fair enough, BJP is coming.
01:00:42 In 2004, just to share with you, in my first election when I was twenty-seven years old,
01:00:47 I was all but convinced and Piyush is a very old friend of mine also, he can vouch for
01:00:52 that.
01:00:53 I was all but convinced BJP would come to power in 2004, I was proven wrong.
01:00:57 2009, I was reasonably certain BJP would come to power and we'd lose the election, I was
01:01:02 proven wrong.
01:01:03 2014, I wasn't sure that BJP would get such a big majority but I knew that things were
01:01:07 going bad for us, I was proven wrong.
01:01:10 So what I do agree is, I certainly believe that the sheen has worn off the government
01:01:16 and I feel that when they're debating issues which I know from BJP friends of mine that
01:01:21 their strategy to appeal to the sort of educated sections are stability is important and to
01:01:28 those who are more emotional that choose a temple over a mosque, what is certain to me
01:01:34 is that there's a lot of economic distress on the ground because when you're… you're
01:01:39 depending on distractions, then you know something is going wrong.
01:01:42 So I think what's important for us as a party is to bring the narrative back to economy,
01:01:47 back to jobs, back to foreign policy, back to issues that really impact the common…
01:01:51 Moderator (Vedavyasa): Thank you panelists for taking your time out and on that note
01:01:56 we bring the panel discussion to a close.
01:01:57 (Applause)
01:01:57 [APPLAUSE]