The drumbeats of infrastructure are getting louder and the rumble is felt and heard
I am not a remarkable storyteller, but I have a remarkable story to tell. As long as the Indian economy was growing at a miserable rate of 3.5 per cent or a sedate pace of 5.5 per cent, the infrastructure in India was not regarded as a major problem. We could live with low speed trains and two lane roads; we could rely, grudgingly, on land telephone lines; we could do with a single airline, a single telephone service provider and a single automobile company making a single model of a car. The infrastructure was inefficient but not inadequate; it was creaking but not cracking.
A high growth rate has changed all that. Since India embarked upon economic reforms and liberalization in 1991, we have witnessed a secular rise in the annual rate of growth. The growth rate of GDP that we have recorded is not an accident. It is the result of well-designed and well-articulated policies. We remain firmly committed to fiscal prudence. Our tax rates are moderate and stable. We actively promote investment in the private and public sectors. We encourage both domestic and foreign investment. And above all, we value our engagement with the countries of the world and we are determined to reap the benefits of an open and competitive economy. We take pride in the fact that we are the fastest growing free market democracy.
I marvel at what China has accomplished in the last two decades in the infrastructure sector and wonder if there are any lessons that India can learn from China!
A country that aspires to have an economy that will be the third or the second largest in the world must have world class infrastructure. The drumbeats of infrastructure are getting louder in India and the rumble is felt and heard all over the country. The desire for world class infrastructure is not driven by government alone; increasingly it is demand-driven and community-driven. I am confident that within the next ten years we will succeed in putting in place infrastructure in India that is equal to the best in the world.
From the FM’s speech at the London Business School yesterday