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Interview highlights: Economic agenda for reviving and restoring economic growth. Dr. Vinod Surana (Surana & Surana International Attorneys)

1. Problems caused by global warming, economic slowdown and disruptive technologies are greatly magnified by the Corona pandemic.
   
   
2. India can and must use this once-in-a–life-time opportunity in crisis to its own long term strategic and economic advantage to make this century its own. This provides the opportunity to implement systemic reforms to address vital issues such as massive job creation; pollution and global warming laying the foundations for a “century long growth”; universal increase in quality of education and skills; promote large-scale manufacturing in India; institutionalizing transparency and governance etc.
3. A shift in global influence and affluence is happening swiftly. The world today faces all (and more) symptoms present during the great depression of 1929 as well as the other financial crises in the past 200 years such as (a) high bank failures; (b) over production / supply; (c) food shortages (now climate change); (d) high unemployment; (e) falling international trade; (f) international geopolitical tensions; (g) great hesitation to spend and so on.
   
   
4. India needs, on a war footing, its own equivalent of a Beveridge plan (UK) or New Deal (USA) or Marshall Plan (for Europe).
   
   
5. Innovative Public-Private Partnership models with adequate low-tax, low-interest, long term funding; involvement of friendly foreign governments (sovereign funds – in western democracies actively seeking productive long-term investment opportunities) etc. can help us achieve our objects.
   
   
6. India’s unique culture and society generates far greater percentage of service minded and responsible citizens than those found in “consumerist and individualistic” western societies. The drive and competence of the private sector must be harnesses for nation building and governance.
   
   
7. Some points for consideration of decision makers:
    
   
   1. Launch mega infrastructure projects such as inter-linking of rivers for inland transportation, irrigation of more land, flood control etc; desilting of rivers, lakes and ponds for greater storage and drought resistance; creation of strategic petroleum reserves economic & national security; large renewable energy centres for distributed environment friendly and low cost power for competitiveness; building a dozen major/ minor and ports multi-modal transport hubs for seamless, low-cost, high-volume transportation;
      
      Foreign help for design of these projects can be taken while all implementation / construction / material sourcing must be “sourced / made in India” from Indian entities. Alternatively by foreign entities for select projects with a significant “Offsets policy” – a major portion of the project cost must be sourced from India or invested in India.
      
      
   2. Make imports expensive – devalue currency and introduce import barriers on non-essential imports to quick-start domestic manufacturing.
      
      
   3. Upgrade ageing thermal power plants and corporatize state power distribution agencies
      
      
   4. States must reduce the land guideline values by at least 35% to incentivise real estate sector development
      
      
   5. Establish large scale cold storage facilities with integrated food processing plants
      
      
   6. Use technology and automation to increase speed / efficiency / transparency / accountability in governance (e-governance) as well as to reduce costs / corruption.
      
      
   7. Introduce technology to push police and judicial reforms to reduce cost of access to justice delivery and increase faith of common man in democracy and rule of law.
      
      
   8. Create an e-government platform for crowd sourcing of ideas to solve problems at the national, regional, state and district levels – will generate acceptable solutions and empower the population.
      
      
   9. With the Supreme Court and various High Courts now experimenting with representation through video conferencing, a big step has been
      achieved towards the e-court concept where prosecutors, defenders, investigating agencies etc. are seamlessly and simultaneously connected on a common virtual platform with the judge.
      
      
   10. Introduce significant incentives to attract at-least 20 of the top 200 universities of the world to set up their campuses in India so that the quality and skilled levels of the rapidly growing young population can be quickly increased. Increase transparency and accountability in appointments to all public education institutions to ensure these institutions become effective centres of excellence, reminiscence and innovation.
       
       
   11. Decentralize power by moving various national bodies / institutions outside Delhi or at least creating regional offices. This will lead to a “distributed” growth and make life easier for the common man. E.g. A bench of the Supreme Court in South India.
       
       
   12. Create a frame work of economic empowerment to replace the current “freebie framework”. E.g., free universal (minimum) broadband facility to allow access to information and education, greater awareness and successful e-governance.
       
       
   13. Access to health - high tech “distributed medical & diagnostic centres” in different parts of the country. E.g. an AIIMS type institution in each state capital to start with. Quadruple the number of sanctioned medial seats. India can become a health care centre of the world.
       
       
   14. Increase the number of representatives in the parliament and state assemblies to ensure greater (adequate) representation of the population.
       Each “representative of the people” must have a standardized online dashboard open to the public for greater accountability, transparency, efficiency and most importantly addressing local issues.
       
       
   15. Significant legislation and incentives must be introduced to (a) make the polluter pay heavily, (b) discourage chemical farming and encourage organic farming in the interest of greatly reducing pollution and disease.
       
       
   16. I make a case for a very significant government led development of infrastructural foundation upon which the private sector is incentivized and supervised to build an efficient, well governed and transparent edifice of productive “public-private” assets.

Conclusion:

The time now is perfect to take big steps. International media report this week about top US, Japanese, German, Korean and Taiwanese companies looking to shift operations out of China. The central government is considering reviving mega infrastructure projects.

Improving governance and expanding the agricultural / manufacturing sectors will lead to development of a sophisticated service sector.

These are views of Dr. Vinod Surana lawyer, economist, family business and strategic adviser. He is CEO of Surana & Surana International Attorneys, Co-Chairman of ASSOCHAM Southern India, and Chairman of the National Advisory Board, National Institution for Quality and Reliability (NIQR) and Vice-Chairman of the All India Manufacturing Organization (TNSB).

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