Super Century: Veterans Debate What India Must Do To Rise By 2050

Video Producer: Sonal Gupta
Video Editor: Vivek Gupta
Cameraperson: Tridip Mandal, Abhishek Ranjan, Sumit Badola

“The businessman behaves according to the incentives you create. If you ask him to be corrupt, he will be corrupt.”

Gurcharan Das, Distinguished Author

“We have high investments, we have good technology, land, labour, and yet (we are) one of the poorest countries in the world.”

Bimal Jalan, Former RBI Governor and Member of Parliament 

“Nobody seems to know how do we actually go out there and let go, how do we allocate resources?”

Rajeev Gowda, Member of Parliament 

“Start investing money in knowledge; do it seriously.”

Praveen Swami, Journalist & National Security Expert 

A stimulating panel discussion was inevitable when a group of veterans came together to exchange ideas at the launch of Raghav Bahl’s new book Super Century: What India Must Do To Rise by 2050 at India International Centre, New Delhi on 19 July.

‘Indian State Is Far Too Interventionist’

Menaka Doshi, Moderator

I have a veteran panel and we have a very young audience, not just sitting here today, but since this is beaming across all social media platforms live. I am going to try and marry some of the most complex issues in the book, some of the very deep insights that the panellists have, in a way (so) that audiences across the board can understand what the book is about and what the book hopes that India will achieve.

Somewhere in the book, I thought there was a bit of hopelessness, if I may put that to you, and I am going to read the two lines that suggested this to me.

“For all of India’s rapid development in spite of all your forays into economic liberalisation and international engagement, Delhi has never truly abandoned the cautious, protective, inward-looking mindset that shaped the birth of modern India.”

Why do you believe that Delhi has not been able to move out of this approach, this attitude? Do you really have any hope on what will it take for us to be able to turn that around?

Raghav Bahl, Author, Super Century

The second one, as I said – time. We will now need much more time for the kind of change one thought one would achieve much more quickly. When I say that we have not fully achieved our potential... if you read the book, if you go beyond some of these lines, my big disappointment is with the Indian state. I think what keeps India back is the Indian state. Because it is far too interventionist, it is far too micromanaging, it is far too suspicious of market forces, it is far too suspicious of entrepreneurship... That is a huge problem.

‘Key Problem Is State Capacity In India’

Menaka Doshi, Moderator

There is a line from your book that has been quoted in Raghav’s Book where you say “to rise despite the state is courageous but it cannot be a long term virtue.” It is from your book “India Grows in The Night”. It seems like not a lot has changed since then. We continue to be rising in the night.

Gurcharan Das, Distinguished Author

Well, I think the key problem is state capacity in India. Not just Centre vs State, but the capacity of the state. A liberal democratic state is based on three pillars, is held up by three pillars.

1. Strong executive that can get things done.

2. That strong executive’s actions are governed by the rule of law.

3. Those actions are accountable to the people.

Now all our energies go into accountability. We are in bloody election mode every month in this country and so the executive almost has no time to run the country.

So, (what) the issue really comes down to is that, we did economic reforms, but unlike Britain which faced a similar crisis in the late 70s early 80s, Margaret Thatcher – we think of her as an economic reformer, a right-wing economic reformer, she actually reformed the state and she did in the second term. So this is the second term of Mr Modi. At least let’s see what he does.

‘We Are Not Accountable’

Menaka Doshi, Moderator

Why do we keep retracing our steps? Despite creating independent institutions why do we rob them of that independence?

Bimal Jalan, Former RBI Governor and Member of Parliament

If you think about CAG, it is also independent, it is also autonomous.

Menaka Doshi, Moderator

And the RBI?

Bimal Jalan, Former RBI Governor and Member of Parliament

This is the problem. If you wanted RBI to be autonomous, it is an autonomous institution, but it is linked to the fiscal policy. It is not that it decides fiscal policy, it decides economy, it decides monetary policy and so on and so forth, or that it manages foreign exchange, but it does not decide what would be done by the foreign exchange policy – that is done by the central government. These are all very long and intricate issues. The most important point I wish to make is that our fundamentals are very, very strong. We have high investments, good technology, we have land, labour, and yet we are one of the poorest countries in the world. Yet we are not able to deliver what we say we will. WHY? Because we are not accountable. We announce policies but we are not accountable. We introduce policies but we are not accountable. Why?

‘Have To Let The Entrepreneurial Genius Of Our People Free’

Menaka Doshi, Moderator

So we should not be talking about whether Mr Modi can deliver high levels of education? Or better, higher levels of healthcare? We should be talking about how individual state governments do that?

If you put more focus on the state ministers/chief ministers then, maybe, we will have better outcomes.

Raghav Bahl, Author, Super Century

What Mr Modi can do is what I have called in the book ‘unmix the economy’. We have lived with a jumbled economy for 70 years. It may have worked in the 60s and 70s. You’ve got to unmix the economy. You have to let the entrepreneurial genius of our people free. The state should do education, health, agriculture, infrastructure and governance. That is it.

Menaka Doshi, Moderator

We did leave the entrepreneurial freedom of our people free and we have ended up how many lakh crores in NPAs.

Raghav Bahl, Author, Super Century

Where did we leave them free? Half the infrastructure projects are stuck because of government approvals. Wherever we have left them free, we have created enormous consumer values.

‘Start Investing In Knowledge And Do It Seriously’

Menaka Doshi, Moderator

As we talk about what governments can do, should do, but don’t do very well, one of things was bringing the private sector involvement in the defence area which you have tracked very, very closely, and I get mixed feelers from businesses where many business leaders say that nothing has moved for ten years and then yet others are hopeful that perhaps this is a 20-30 year project. Can you give us the accurate view?

Praveen Swami, Journalist & National Security Expert

I think Raghav’s book is wonderfully valuable as a roadmap for that strategy. Education, you have talked about it at great length. We are wonderful at building buildings. You go to the back of beyond of Chhattisgarh District Malkangiri... go anywhere, you will find wonderful school buildings in every Adivasi village today. Where there is nothing else. 50 kms from the road there will be a school building but there will be no teacher in it. Seema Bansal at the Boston Consulting Group has done some fantastic work on this in Haryana not very far from Delhi where she found that most high school teachers in government schools could not pass a fourth standard maths examination. Judges you spoke about. Thousands of judges – everyone would agree you need to hire them. I urge you, sir, to take a look at third year law students in DU, you will find that they won’t be able to answer a question paper in any language, be it Hindi or English.

Try and read lower court judgments which I have to do every day, sadly, for work. I struggle to comprehend what the judges are saying three quarters of the time. There is a real crisis.

What is China doing after their problems with Trump and their trade dispute? China has created 400 new PhD positions to study the United States in China. We have not had a single scholarly work by any Indian author on any state in our neighbourhood published by an international press in the last decade.

Menaka Doshi, Moderator

Praveen, we are supposed to figure out how to get there by 2050...

Praveen Swami, Journalist & National Security Expert

Start investing money in knowledge. Do it seriously. Two more just quick points. You speak of law and order, sir. We don’t have any. Our police forces are understaffed across the country and undertrained. Most of these police forces could not investigate a crime except with a trustee instrument of beating someone until they confess to whatever it is they can. There are no forensics, there are no advanced training institutes. There is nothing.

If you go to Chennai today, you will find Chinese students doing doctoral work in Bharatnatyam because they wish to understand how our culture and quality function. Our finest university JNU gives students three months at the end of their PhD to go and study in China.

You want to know why we are going to fail in being a great power? That sums it up for me.

It is all here in Raghav Bahl's latest book Super Century- What India Can Do To Rise By 2050. You can order your copy on Amazon and Flipkart.