India’s Century – Achieving sustainable, inclusive growth’ initiative

GS Paper 3

Syllabus: Indian Economy/ Governance

Source: Live Mint

 Direction: It is a beautiful report with recommendations across various sectors. One can go through the summary of the report. The major point of the summary has been highlighted. However, be selective and take only a few recommendations that you may write in the Mains exam.

 Context: FICCI, along with McKinsey, launched ‘India’s Century – Achieving sustainable, inclusive growth’ initiative that outlines a roadmap to achieve ₹10 lakh per capita income by 2047

Aim: India’s Century initiative sets out an actionable roadmap for all stakeholders to unleash India’s potential in becoming an economic superpower much before India turns 100

• India is at an inflexion point in its journey of becoming the third largest and upper-middle income

Key Highlights of the report:

The Roadmap identifies 11 priority sectors for growth over the next 25 years, with a set of over 50 actions for companies and industry bodies (See Infographics)

Recommendations:

• Long-term:
  • Increasing India’s innovation quotient: India has made progress on innovation and has jumped from 81 to 41 in World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Global Innovation Index rankings
    • Sector-focused innovation clusters could enhance the environment for innovation. E.g. Smart mobility and water-adequacy clusters.
  • Scaling up India’s SMEs to grow 1,000 mid-sized and 10,000 small firms into global challengers: Currently, India has a “missing middle”: a dearth of mid-sized firms that typically grow into formidable competitors for large companies.
    • Easier access to low-cost capital
    • Simpler one-stop processes to start and run their businesses
    • Support for resources they cannot always afford to hire, such as in-house lawyers and company secretaries
  • Empowering India’s next generation of talent for a meaningful livelihood:
    • By bolstering foundational skills to match the requirements of high-potential sectors, such as banking, healthcare, IT services
    • Large-scale skilling and reskilling of the existing workforce:
    • Creating the future workforce would require modernised teaching methods, with a greater focus on practical apprenticeship
  • Shaping India into the preferred destination for global capital: Companies could attract international investors with a broader set of products and services, such as high-rated ESG securities

• Short-term measures:
  • Strengthen the digital landscape across high-potential sectors with pilot initiatives
    • Healthcare: establishing the “hospital of the future” with digital patient flow management systems and centralised medical resource management platforms
    • Agriculture: piloting Agri Stack projects
  • Catalyse innovation across India and accelerate entrepreneurship and breakthrough ideas by rolling out three innovation clusters across clean energy, smart mobility and water adequacy
  • Accelerate the adoption of existing digital capabilities by encouraging a 90 per cent adoption rate of the GeM portal
  • Roll out structured training programmes and ventures in collaboration with industry bodies and education technology (ed-tech) companies to provide an additional three to four million people with skills
  • Drive water sustainability with industry campaigns for net-zero consumption commitments and adoption of water-efficient practices such as ZLD technology, industrial water efficiency, water sustainability audits and certification programmes

Insta Links

Inclusive growth: Basics

Insta Mains:

Q. What do you understand by inclusive growth? What are the major impediments to inclusive growth and how can they be overcome in the current scenario? Explain. (15M)