Key Points
India's growth path lies in leveraging its intrinsic strengths and becoming crucial to global supply chains by building on its historic culture of tolerance and respect for all, former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan said at the 'Ideas for India' conference on Friday...
He stressed that India has the potential to take a leadership role in the services industry and strengthening the country's liberal democratic values was an economic necessity to earn the world's trust in this endeavour...
"Our independent judiciary, our liberal democracy, these are critical advantages if we are to go down this manufacturing service-led growth path because this will enable us to earn the world's trust; it's intrinsically necessary," said Rajan in his keynote address at the conference...
"We want democracy as Indians but we also want democracy to be able to convince the world that we can be trusted, that we can be effective providers of these kinds of services... we need to do our homework in strengthening our institutions, in strengthening our democracy," he said.. With reference to competing with a cheap manufacturing neighbour like China, the leading economist said India would benefit from focussing on the service component of manufacturing or services more directly as a trusted global supplier...
So why not do that, rather than pour money into a bucket which is very deep... as a resource-strapped country, we need to spend much more cleverly," he said.. Asked if he sees sufficient positives on this growth path from the ongoing free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations between India and the UK, Rajan again highlighted the importance of capitalising on services sector exchanges beyond just agriculture and manufacturing...
