Transcending agenda and moving to action could well mean progressing in a direction that has been well thought of, discussed and decided upon. However, for a country that sees lots of discussion on the agenda for growth and development, implementation often remains unmonitored. With policies and the general direction already well laid out, the India Economic Summit (IES) this year opens on November 14 with the theme, ‘Implementing India’.
Though the focus will be on how domestic and international decision-makers from business, government and civil society can implement national policies across states in both rural and urban areas to accelerate development, remove barriers to growth and increase social inclusion, the theme can be broadly interpreted to mean working out strategies to tap the India potential.
Starting a week after the high-profile visit of US President Barack Obama and within days of the G20 summit in Seoul, the timing of the summit appears just right in drawing the attention of the global community to India and highlighting the growth prospects it offers to the outside world. Last week saw India emerge as an employer destination rather than just an outsourcing hub, by promising some 50,000 jobs to the US after deals worth $10 billion were signed.
“This year’s India Economic Summit showcases the remarkable resilience of the Indian economy, the immense opportunity it offers to the rest of the world, and the implementation priorities ahead as it transitions to the next phase of the inclusive growth process,” says Chandrajit Banerjee, Director-General of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), which is the co-organiser of the summit along with the World Economic Forum (WEF).
India’s competitiveness in providing services has so far largely been boosted by information and communication technologies (ICT). The findings of WEF’s Network Readiness Index (NRI) ranks India 43rd out of 133 economies in 2009-10, with an 11-place improvement since 2008. NRI, a product of a decade-long joint research project between WEF and INDEAS, provides a perspective on the impact of innovation and ICT on competitiveness. It is viewed as a lens through which to analyse India’s progress as well as its challenges.
Despite the improvement, the sub-indices provide a not-so-heartening picture. The country’s high level of readiness does not seem to have translated into a similarly high level of usage (64th rank), while the national environment (53rd) appears not be sufficiently conducive for the development of new technologies. “The extremely low degree of ICT penetration at the individual level and poor infrastructure are weaknesses related to the sheer size of the Indian market and the country’s very unequal income distribution,” says a study done by Irene Mia, senior economist and director at WEF.
Since India’s technology industry is yet to fully recover from the slowdown, manufacturing has started occupying the discussion space. “India has moved from the perception of being a provider of technology to being an important manufacturing centre. So a lot of the focus will be on manufacturing,” says Sushant Palakurthi Rao, Director and Head of Asia at WEF. Monday, the summit’s second day, will see a session on India’s role in global manufacturing, which will focus on the need to implement a national manufacturing strategy in the context of a 12 per cent growth in manufacturing during the first half of the current financial year.
Participating in the session will be Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jyotiraditya Sinha and Pawan Munjal, managing director and CEO of the Hero Group.
The summit’s programme is organised under four thematic pillars — India’s Implementation Imperative; Security and Sustainability Imperative; Inclusive Growth Imperative; and Innovation and Competitiveness Imperative. Participation this time has gone up to 784 delegates from 50 countries, from last year’s 650 delegates from 30 nations. The summit starts with a luncheon session on India’s Economic Outlook, attended by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee; Hari S Bhartia, co-chairman of the summit and managing director of the Jubilant Bhartia group; Gita Gopinath, professor of economics at Harvard University, and Rajat M Nag, managing director-general, Asian Development Bank.
Besides Mukherjee and Scindia, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia will provide the government perspective.
Explaining the difference between the context of this year’s and last year’s summits, Rao says the summit in 2009 happened after the general elections and provided an opportunity to “get a sense on the agenda”; this time it will draw up a concrete action plan. “This is the reason we are engaging with state-level leaders as well.” There will be participation by Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, and Member of Parliament and Deputy Chairman of the Bihar Planning Board, N K Singh.
Business leaders who will serve as co-chairs for the summit are Jon Fredrik Baksaas, President and CEO, Telenor Group, Norway; Ajit Gulabchand, Chairman and Managing Director, Hindustan Construction Company, India; Ellen Kullman, Chair of the Board and CEO, DuPont, USA; Pawan Munjal, Managing Director and CEO, Hero Group, India; and Dennis Nally, Chairman, PwC International, USA.
Themes ranging from inclusive growth, the water crisis, rural entrepreneurship, transparency, and an action plan for energy infrastructure, to modernising agriculture will be discussed over the three-day event. The closing plenary will outline the challenges for India’s implementation agenda and suggest the actions required by industry and government leaders.
The challenges identified include building critical infrastructure, expanding skill development, addressing security threats and achieving income and gender equality. “While India has tremendous potential to sustain a high-growth and inclusive economy, India needs to get from words to action by keeping up with crucial reforms and addressing its poor infrastructure,” says Rao. “In this regard, the theme , ‘Implementing India’, reflects our objective of highlighting the concrete actions which must be executed across India ‘s rural and urban areas to sustain progress over the long term,” he sums up.
