Despite having weathered the global economic crisis well, India is facing a challenge due to "weak" systems, structures and institutions at different levels of governance, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said today.
"In the coming years, if there is one factor that can hold us back in realising our potential as a modern nation, it is the bottlenecks in our public delivery mechanism," Mukherjee told the first convocation of the IIM-Shillong.
Maintaining that there have been many initiatives to resolve this problem in different sectors and at different points of time, he said some of the steps have been effective in reforming the way the government worked in those areas.
He, however, said "we have a long way to go before we can rest on this count.
"The system of governance must work towards economic empowerment and make growth human-specific. The economic growth has to be an instrument for development and not an end in itself," he said.
Economic growth, he said, has to be not only inclusive, but also equitable to sustain it over a long period of time.
Mukherjee said the country needed to quickly revert to the high GDP growth path of 9 per cent and then find the resolve and means to cross the double digit growth barrier.
He said the third challenge was to harness economic growth to consolidate the recent gains in making development more inclusive.
"The thrust imparted to the development of infrastructure in rural areas has to be pursued to achieve the desired objectives within a fixed time frame," he said.
Issues like strengthening of food security, improved education and health facilities both in rural and urban areas required significant resources, he said.
Asserting that India has emerged from an unprecedented global slowdown faster than any other nation, Mukherjee claimed that with the improvement of the job situation, opportunities were wide open for graduating students.
Laying thrust on skill development as a key factor for economic and social growth, he said the Prime Minister's Council on National Skill Development has a mission of creating 50 crore skilled people by 2022.
"A beginning has been made with the approval of three projects by National Skill Development Corporation to create 10 lakh skilled manpower at the rate of 1 lakh per annum.
"Such skill development initiatives have to be multiplied to rapidly transform India from a degree-seeking system to a skill acquiring system," he said.
