Selling public assets to private entities, mechanisms that allow employers to fire workers easily, and making land acquisition easier. These were among the priorities for India's economy laid out in a lecture in February by economist Arvind Panagariya, who is likely to be appointed vice chairman of the NITI Aayog, as the Planning Commission was rechristened on New Year's Day.
The Columbia University professor sketched out his thoughts to an audience at the National Council of Applied Economic Research a few months before the national election that brought the Bharatiya Janata Party to power. Economic development "could be achieved relatively quickly by hiring the best companies in the world to open hundreds of thousands of schools to provide education for all, build the best hospitals in the world, construct highways and roads all around, wire the country for the universal provision of electricity, and arrange water and sanitation for all", he said.
But in the absence of unlimited resources to pay for this, he said that the country should aim for accelerated, employment-intensive growth, in addition to expanding social spending on health and education.
He concluded that if "India returns to reforms", it could "cross Japan and become the third-largest economy in the world in less than 20 years, well within my own lifetime".
Read the text of the speech here [PDF].
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The Columbia University professor sketched out his thoughts to an audience at the National Council of Applied Economic Research a few months before the national election that brought the Bharatiya Janata Party to power. Economic development "could be achieved relatively quickly by hiring the best companies in the world to open hundreds of thousands of schools to provide education for all, build the best hospitals in the world, construct highways and roads all around, wire the country for the universal provision of electricity, and arrange water and sanitation for all", he said.
But in the absence of unlimited resources to pay for this, he said that the country should aim for accelerated, employment-intensive growth, in addition to expanding social spending on health and education.
He concluded that if "India returns to reforms", it could "cross Japan and become the third-largest economy in the world in less than 20 years, well within my own lifetime".
Read the text of the speech here [PDF].
