“SOCIAL POLICY IS NEEDED TO ENABLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT”

Christian Ketels, Professor, Harvard Business School, in an interaction with BW Businessworld’s Urvi Shrivastav, talks about the India@100 Action Report, the process of framing it, and how India can be led to the pathway of socio-economic success, among other things. Excerpts

How did the idea of India@100 come about? What went into framing this report?

It started a couple of years ago. I head Prof Michael Porter’s team for strategic competitiveness at Harvard Business School. He used to make several trips to India, during which he had an interaction with Prime Minister Modi who invited him to deliver a speech in the NITI Aayog about a competitiveness framework and how it can impact India. He then invited us to do an analysis of where India stands today, and the specific actions needed in the next 25 years. Hopefully, the exercise will help India in the coming years.

What were the key findings in your report?

There is a section on diagnostics in the report, which is very important for India today. There is no single blueprint that looks the same for every country, which is why we need individual parameters. As we think about this roadmap, there are two key pieces that we hope will shape the thinking in the years to come. The first is: what are the aspirations the country has for its economic development? There are different ideas about the size of the economy, the growth rate, etc. We need to aggregate that in a holistic way. We also talk about the ‘4S’ principles. First is ‘share’, where GDP growth can reach a wide swathe of Indian society. Second is ‘sustainable’ -- India has vast energy needs, and is subjected to climate change at the same time. The need of the hour is to create a strong renewable energy base. Third, we talk about ‘social’ progress, including education, healthcare, freedom of speech and the like. The fourth piece is ‘stable’ which we often equate with resilience. We have just gotten out of a pandemic but the risk remains along with unpredictability.