Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the Economic Times Global Business Summit. He said from the days of 2013-14, when India was beset with problems such as runaway inflation, high fiscal deficit and policy paralysis, change is clearly visible today.
Hesitations have been replaced by hope, and obstacles have been replaced by optimism, he said.
The Prime Minister said that since 2014, India has made significant improvements in almost all international rankings and indices.
He said rankings are mostly lagging indicators, which change only after things have changed on the ground. In this context, he gave the example of Ease of Doing Business, where several parameters have visibly improved.
He said that as India’s rank in the Global Innovation Index has gone up from seventy six in 2014 to fifty seven in 2018, the surge in innovation is clearly visible.
The Prime Minister drew a contrast between different forms of competition between now and prior to 2014.
He said that the competition now is on development, and achieving aspirational targets such as total sanitation, or total electrification, or higher investment. By contrast, he said that earlier, the apparent competition seemed to be on delays and corruption.
The Prime Minister strongly criticized what he described as a “narrative” that certain things are just impossible in India.
The impossible is now possible, he declared, as he spoke of the progress made in making India clean and corruption-free; in the poor leveraging the power of technology, and in removing discretion and arbitrariness in policymaking.
The Prime Minister said that the Government looks forward to making India a ten trillion dollar economy, lead the global drive towards renewable sources of energy, and make India a world leader in electric vehicles and energy storage devices.
