 I'm Carl Endefurth, I'm the Wadwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies here at CSIS. And I am very privileged to have with us an introduced this morning, our guest speaker, Mr. Balasubramanian Bhucharaman, who is Vice Chairman, Tata Steele, and Chairman of Tata International. I should mention that he will be speaking today as part of our Emerging India Economy Signature Series. And I think that we have copies of this report available if you do not already have it in the back here. So he will be speaking, looking at the, as I said, the Emerging India Economy Series. His remarks will be on India's budget economy and the 2014 elections. I think that gives him a broad canvas with which then he can take whatever portions of that you wish to speak on. I should mention that he'll be speaking in his personal capacity, not as a representative of Tata Steele or Tata International, but of course I feel confident that his remarks will be certainly informed by his experiences working in these areas. Before he begins, let me call attention to a couple of recent news items to set the stage for this discussion. The first one is a Reuters piece last week which was entitled India Economy to Remain Subdued. This was a Reuters poll of economists. So it's to remain subdued. I think that that subdued would be better than stalled. I think that's where the U.S. economy is or better than submerged, which is I think where some of our Europeans' friends' economies are. But anyway, it says it will be subdued and I'll just read you what this report said that economists polled for the latest quarterly survey lowered their growth forecast for India's third largest economy for the eighth consecutive time. Gross domestic product will increase 6.0% in the current fiscal year to March, 2014. After it grew at a decade low of 5% in the previous fiscal year, according to this forecast of 27 economists. And they said that weak demand for Indian goods and services abroad has been a major factor in the slowdown in addition to lack of policy initiatives from the government. So that's what we're hearing from the Reuters poll. Now on a more positive upbeat note, as many of you know, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has just concluded a trip to Germany in a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel. And during his trip to Berlin, India and Germany set a target of concluding the long awaited India-EU free trade agreement this year, notwithstanding a number of unresolved issues, it says. It said that both leaders on Manmohan Singh and Angela Merkel said that the free trade agreement will generate jobs and growth in both countries and that they hope for this to be concluded in 2013. I should add here, as we know, Angela Merkel has a certain reputation these days for austerity and some of her European friends sometimes wish that she would sort of lighten up a bit. She did say at this meeting with the Prime Minister that she candidly advocated that the two sides do have difficulties to overcome and she pressed for an increase in the foreign equity cap in India's insurance sector and reduction in tariffs on import of automobiles from Europe. I think that that's par for the course with the Chancellor. She does candidly advocate a lot of economic measures, but the fact is that it does appear that this free trade agreement is moving forward and one that I hope, as we have written on here at CSIS, that the US will be able to start orienting itself to over the longer term free trade agreement with India. Now, we have for you on the table outside as well the full bio for our speaker. Let me just mention very quickly in terms of by way of background that our speaker joined Tata Steel in 1966. And if I'm not mistaken, Tata has operations in 26 countries. Is that correct? A little more. Commercial presence in more than 50 countries. Am I getting closer? Okay. Anyway, obviously a major international concern that reaches around the world. He has held various positions, including vice president of both marketing and sales and the cold rolling meal projects. In addition, he serves on the boards of Bosch, India Limited, Tata Industries, and Strategic Energy Technology Systems. He also served, and we talked about this on our way down, as president of the Confederation of Indian Industry, CII from 2011 through 2012. We are close partners with CII and much of what we do here at CSIS. And last year, he received, he was received from the government of India, the prestigious Padma Bushna Award for his significant contribution to Indian trade and industry. Congratulations and a well-deserved award for his lifetime work and achievement in this field. So as I said, it's our privilege and honor to have you with us. And I would now like to turn it over to our speaker for his remarks, and then we will have an interactive discussion following that. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador, for that wonderful introduction. I'm sure my mother would have been extremely happy to hear all that you told her. Good afternoon to everybody. And I want to thank all of you, first of all, for this opportunity to be at the CSIS, sharing some of my thoughts on India's growth story. You know, India's growth story often gets looked up, looked at with different kind of eyes. There are people who will tell you that India is a fantastic growth story and everything is hunky-dory, and it will become the third largest economy in the world by 2030 or 2040 or whatever that year is. There are also people who will tell you like the Reuters report that it is stalling. It is also a question of, I think, what we look at. We look at numbers or we look at activities. We look at the spirit of what's happening over there. So what I hope to bring to you for the next 15, 20 minutes is what's been happening in India, let's say over the last 20 years, and more importantly in the last two, three years, and where is India going, and what we at least some of us want to achieve, want to see India achieve in the near future and in the long-term future. Let me start with the story that began in 1991. I often actually say that India is a country which is just about 22 years old, and we must judge that country on its 22-year performance and not on a 5,000-year performance. Because what happened prior to 1991 was that between 1947 when India got independence and 1991 when economic liberalization was announced, we were, as you all know, we were a completely closed economy. Nothing could come in and nothing could go out, which really means even technology is an innovation and ideas and, you know, so if you're a close country, you're not going to be highly innovative or highly creative. And we had huge import barriers, import tariffs, both tariff and non-tariff barriers, and nothing could come into India. And I still remember if you wanted to buy a car, of which we had a choice of two cars or two models, both of which were some 1940 or 1950 vintage, we had to wait for about three, four years to buy a car. If you wanted a gas connection in your house, you probably waited for a year. If you wanted a telephone connection, you waited for maybe two or three years. But if you wanted to make a telephone call, you probably waited for three, four hours before you could reach the other person. So these are the conditions prior to 1991. So it is not surprising that by 1991 or thereabouts, India became bankrupt and the World Bank and the IMF actually forced us to liberalize. And I still remember the comment made by the then Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narasimha Rao, I think it was a US journalist who asked the question that Mr. Prime Minister, you've been extraordinarily courageous. You know, how did you take the courage to liberalize your economy almost overnight? To which our Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao, said that it's actually quite easy because when you have no choices left, decisions are extremely easy. So that's how the liberalization of India was announced. And if you were to look at a scorecard, if I were to use the word scorecard, for what India has achieved in the last 22 years, it runs somewhat like this. The GDP of India grew by something like five times between 1991 and 2011. And in the previous 20 years, it grew twice. And in this 20 years post liberalization, the GDP of India grew something like five times. And it is now a more than a trillion dollar economy. Some of the other statistics, but I thought I should give some of these positive statistics before we get down to some of the problems. The per capita income grew by 400% in the last 20 years. And in the previous 20 years, it grew by something like 40%. The household savings increased by 12 times in the last 20 years. The foreign direct investment increased by 250 times. Of course, I'll beat from a very small base because by in 1991, we had nothing coming. But it's still an impressive number. Foreign exchange reserves grew something like 30 times. Exports increased by 15 times. And in 1991, we had for a population of about a billion people, we had 500,000 telephone connections. Today, the number of telephone connections probably close to a billion or maybe 900 million or so. And we are adding something like 15 to 18 million subscribers every month, which is higher than the population of sort of many countries of the world. We no longer wait for buying a new car. It's there off the shelf. We no longer wait for many things. So what India has achieved over the last 20 years is indeed impressive if you look at it, India as a country which is 20 years old. Because if you're not in a competitive arena, if you're not in exposed to the world, then I'm not even sure whether you can count those years as relevant to a country. India of course has had a rich tradition from spanning many, many years. And often we Indians love to spend time in the past. And I think slowly we are spending a little more time in the present and future than only in the past. So this is the story of the last 20 years since liberalization. And if you look at this 20 years, from 1991 to say about 2000 or so, about eight, nine years, India grew at a rate of about 5%, 5.5%, 4.4, around 5%. Prior to 1991, for that 44 long years, between 1947 and 1991, India grew between three and 4%. What we used to call as the Hindu rate of growth. That sort of got up to about 5, 5.5%. And post 2000, once the reforms were settling in, even though we still have to do a large number of reforms yet to be done. But whatever we had done during those eight, nine years resulted in a plus 9% growth successively for four, five years. Even during the 2008, 2009 global financial crisis and global economic crisis, India actually clocked GDP growth rate of 6.4% during 2008, 2009. Then it got up to 8.6%. But the last two years, as some of the reports point out, it is indeed a fact that India has slowed down a bit. The growth rate in 2011, 12 was 6.9%. And the growth rate in 2012, 13 was further down at 5%. And it has caused an enormous amount of worry. Part of the reason is politics. Part of the reason is global economy. But I for one believe that India's dependence on global, every economy, of course, is connected to the world economy. There is no question about it. For example, India exports a fairly large percentage of its exports to Europe. And European economy being what it is today, India's exports have got affected. But I do believe that India is such a large domestic market that India's economy for the current times at least need not be so much dependent on global economy. And it could have actually done much better if we had a better, shall we say, political cohesion among the various parties that run the government today. So the last two years have not been extremely good for India. And it is in the light of this scenario that the budget of 2013, 14 was presented. And when the budget was presented 2013, 14, the government was weak. The government was vulnerable. We have had several problems in India, including some scams and telecom mess and mining mess and land acquisition problems. It is in the midst of all that this budget was presented. And this budget is a budget just immediately preceding a general election next year. So it had to take care of many, many factors. It had to take care of the fact that our fiscal shape of India is a bit fragile. We are having a higher amount of fiscal deficit and revenues are a bit deficit than what we can afford, than what we can live with. Inflation over the last two, three years have been high. Inflation often has touched double digit figures. It's running at eight, nine percent now. And we have had a slowdown in economy. The investment growths have slowed down. The interest rate have been raising. The Reserve Bank of India has been raising interest rate for several quarters by now. The last one was a decrease by 25 basis points, but till then for almost 13 quarters, successively the interest rates have been going up. So it is in this backdrop that the budget was being presented. And I believe that the budget had three prime motives, three prime issues to deal with. The first issue is that the fiscal problems of the government has to be addressed. Physical consolidation needs to start. And we have just got too much of fiscal deficit and too much of revenue deficit for the health of the country. So that is the first issue that needed to be addressed. The second issue that needed to be addressed was, in India, the growth in the last 20 years post-liberalization has been healthy and robust and it has kept on increasing. And in spite of the global meltdown, we have had good growth rates, but they have fallen down to 6.9 percent and now 5 percent last year. So there is a need to revive growth. We must appreciate that in India, every year, every year something like 10 to 12 million people get into the job market. And in order to ensure that these 10 to 12 million are productively, which is almost 800,000, 900,000 jobs every month, and in order to ensure that all these people, all these youngsters get jobs and productive jobs and are useful to the country, we need to make sure that India grows economically at the GDP growth rate has got to be about at least 8 to 9 percent. If that doesn't happen, and adding some other issues that are social in nature, which probably I will touch upon a little bit later, you can have some social and restropping up at various places if the unemployment goes, you know, goes very high. So that's another worry. So the first issue to be addressed in the budget was the fiscal consolidation. Make sure that the numbers are okay. Make sure that the plan is okay so that we bring down the fiscal deficit. The second is to revive growth. And the third and very important one for India is that it's not sufficient if India just grows by 8 or 9 percent. That's not enough. I'm not talking merely numbers here. Even if you grow at 10 to 12 percent, it will not be enough unless you have equal opportunities to everybody and unless the growth is inclusive. The growth so far has not been inclusive and the growth has not been inclusive for two reasons. Primarily, the reason has been for many, many centuries in India, we have had this caste system of who will do what type of work and that has sort of got ingrained into Indians' mind and one is not able to get out of it. One is not able to get out of that mind so easily in such a short period of time of 20, 30 years. The second, of course, is the oncoming of industrialization. The industrialization is actually by its very nature unless you carefully address it, will lead and has led to inequality of opportunities. And both these factors and probably in India, the first factor of centuries old caste system has played a bigger part in this inequality of opportunities. So there is more than probably any other country in the world, India's need for inclusive growth is much greater. If we just grow economically and put the money into fewer hands of the population, it's not going to be so good as putting lesser amount of, shall we say, fortunes, lesser amount of money in a larger number of people. India is one country where this is going to play a very big part. In fact, I am of the view that if I were to choose between a very high growth rate which is not inclusive and on the one hand and on the other hand having a slightly lower growth rate but far more inclusive, I will choose the second one. And sometimes the more developed world does not, I think, easily see the social issues of India as being the more important issue to be resolved or an equally important issue to be resolved along with economic issues. If you solve only economic issues, India is not going to be a great country. If you solve the social issues along with economic countries, I think India will be a fantastic country. So these are the three priorities of the government in terms of formulating the budget of 2013-14. One is to get the physical numbers proper, physical consolidation, journey of physical consolidation to start. The second is to revive the economy and the third is to ensure that that economic growth is an inclusive one and not the way it has happened so far. And still we are not in an inclusive growth phase as much as we would desire. So if you see the budget, it is a budget which has been formulated under these constraints. It is a budget which has also been getting, was formulated or was announced or was read out in the parliament under these current global economic conditions. If you see the budget, there are just a few highlights of the budget that I want to talk about. One is there is, in terms of physical consolidation, last year, 2012-13, we ended with a physical deficit of 5.2%. And which I think is lower than what we had originally thought the number would be at the start of the year looking at revenue collections and the receipts and the expenditure and so on and so forth. And for the year, the plan has been made in such a way that for the year 2013-14, we will bring it down to 4.8%. And if you are able to stick to it, and I think that's a good sort of journey forward. In terms of revenue deficit, again, which is unbearably high, we have contained last year 2012-13 at 3.9%. And we are aiming to do a 3.3% physical deficit in the year 2013-14, which also, in my view, is a very positive step towards acknowledging the fact that we can't keep on widening the deficit and it's not going to be good for the health of the nation. In terms of reviving growth, the budget has announced a number of measures. For example, in India, given its population of 1.2-1.3 billion and given its current growth status in the hierarchy of growth, manufacturing has to occupy an extremely important part. Today in India, manufacturing contributes about 15% to 16% of the GDP. Whereas if you look at countries like China, China is close to 35%. Thailand is close to 40%. And the United States and Europe at their heights of economic growth also had more than 25% of their GDP coming from manufacturing. In fact, I don't know of any country in the world with a huge population to be effectively engaged in productive activities without having grown economically prosperous, without going through a solid phase of manufacturing growth. In India, it has not happened. And in India, at best, we have now reached a contribution of 16% of the GDP coming from manufacturing. And our own thought, the thought of the government is very rightly to reach a level of at least 25% in the next coming 10 years. And this budget has recognized that. For example, this budget has given a, what is called the introduced an investment allowance. If you invest so much above a certain number, you get a 15% tax deductible expenditure. So, and we are also talking about, we have evolved, the government announced a new manufacturing policy a few months ago. Sometime last year, the government announced a new manufacturing policy whereby we are going to create manufacturing clusters at a few locations in India, maybe about a dozen locations in India over time, which will have its own autonomy in terms of what kind of industries will come, what environmental standards, what, you know, what type of industries depending on the location of the clusters and so on. And the land acquisition process for those manufacturing clusters are going to be made easier. So, the country has announced a manufacturing policy. So, there are a number of small initiatives that have been announced in the budget, which will promote manufacturing. Also, a number of initiatives that have been announced for the infrastructure area, like for example, creation of a tax-free bond, I think up to 50,000 crores, which is about $10 billion or so. We need, of course, much more than that. Creating, there are four debt funds have been created, some more need to be created. We are planning two major ports in India with a total capacity of about 100 million tonnes per year, both the ports put together. So, there are a number of measures on the revival of the growth. I talked about fiscal consolidation, where government has pruned certain expenditures. But of course, one is not entirely happy that what has been cut is a planned expenditure on the capital account. What is called the non-planned expenditure, which is the subsidies and the wage bills and all, have not been cut as much as we would desire to cut. But we would also know that it is the election year and we are facing an election within one year from the announcement of the budget. So, we take that into account and we see the intentions of the government to go forward. We have, in fact, in the area of subsidies, which you may call as a part of inclusive growth, but it's not necessarily a good way to go about long-term inclusive growth. There are other better ways of doing that. Our subsidies on fertilizers have gone up, certainly subsidies on food has gone up. But what we have succeeded in doing it is to cap this or reduce the subsidies on fuel, on petrol and the gasoline and the diesel and so on. Over the last six months, if you see, the Government of India has taken some very bold moves, very bold decisions on the price of diesel and the price of petrol. And I see that journey going forward. I also see a time in the not too distant future where it will become market-oriented. So, we will start beginning. I think the era of subsidy reduction has just started in India where people have realized that there is no way in which you can give subsidies. Also, the subsidies are getting better directed to the appropriate recipients better than what it used to be before in terms of what is called the direct cash transfer to the beneficiaries and so on. So, the budget has been formulated in this context and the budget has actually got very good positives from a point of view of fiscal consolidation or starting of the fiscal consolidation and reviving the economic growth. And we do believe that this year the economic growth should be closer to 5% than what it was last year which was about, closer to 6% compared to last year which was about 5%. And if we are, if we have a good stable government in the next year, in the next elections and if we have cohesion of the parties I do see a lot more sort of bolder moves. In fact, let me also tell you that it's my perception that perhaps the government has taken more bold moves in the last 6 months than what they have been able to do in the previous, shall we say, 4 years of that tenure and which is a good sign that in spite of everything they have taken these bold steps like the FDI and retail and we are beginning to talk about the foreign directive increasing the foreign direct investment in defence areas and so on. So these are all very good moves. So much about the budget. The, in substance what I would talk about the budget is this has been a very responsible budget. It is also a budget which is just one year before the elections. So in practical terms you really, however, you know, well you may wish that much more reform oriented budget needs to be presented, it's not going to be practical because everyone loves their seat and all that is an important thing. Now coming to elections, I need to be a little bit careful here. I don't want to be drawn into a controversy of which party I am supporting. So let me choose my words a little bit carefully. You know, we have elections every 5 years and in India elections are very major, major issue. And it also I think to the credit of India it's one of the most well conducted elections anywhere around the world without any controversies, without too much of controversies, without too much of problems. There are people who believe that this government has not performed well. I for one believe that if you were to take into account the state of the global economy, that global economy in the rest of the world excepting China and India was almost flat or declining and India has its own problems, impact of the global economy on India. I'm not entirely sure whether the government could have done too much more compared to what they have done. But I do know that it is more a more analytical approach rather than a public approach where the public would see what results this government has achieved. So that's one point. And definitely there are lots of forces in India which are trying to blame the government for inaction for several years, for several months and years. And there has been a lot of criticism by the western press on the Indian government's inaction including the one that the ambassador had out just now. But I for one believe that in the context that exists at any given point of time, in the global economic conditions and the fact that the fiscal deficits have gone up because of the fact that there are stimulus that had to be given by the government for keeping up the industrialization pace or keeping up the GDP growth phase three, four years back. And we still have the overhang of that stimulus package weighing on our fiscal deficits and revenue deficits. I think the government has done a good job and I think government has done a reasonable job of what they should be doing. Of course, the elections is anybody's guess. Maybe during the question and answer session you can ask me about something specific and I can talk about it. But I don't want to make any predictions but I do believe that a continuance of a certain regime is a very good thing for a country. And I believe that in these difficult times it is necessary for continuity of leadership and a continuity of thought process and a continuity of philosophy for a complex country like India. With that I will stop and I'll be happy to take any questions. I'll take up my time. Excellent remarks. A great way to start off our discussion. I'd like to just pick up on a couple of points that our speaker has raised. I had not heard the reference before to the last six months of reform measures in India being more than the previous four years. And I'm reminded that when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke to the nation as these new measures were announced and his new finance minister, Mr. Janandram, was on board that he said something in his remarks. He said, I'm not willing to go down without a fight. And I thought, you know, that's the old Manmohan Singh from his days as the finance minister. So I found that to be very encouraging and very consistent with what you have just said. I'd like to ask to start off and then we'll open this up on the three issues that you mentioned. Fiscal consolidation, revival of growth and equal opportunities for everyone and inclusive and something that you said I think is extremely important in understanding India's national policies, that the social issues are as important as the economic issues. I'd like to ask you in terms of equal opportunity and inclusiveness, where do women fit in? What is being done in your view to bring women more into the mainstream of the economic workplace to provide them the kinds of opportunities that would assist both obviously with equal opportunities but also would assist greatly in the revival of growth. Where do you see the broad policies for women in the workplace and education and the rest? You know, I don't know how many of you are aware that the Indian parliament passed a bill recently reserving certain seats in the parliament for women. That I think is a good step but I believe that whether it is the women empowerment or any other bringing social equality to any other sections of the society, the issue is far more fundamental in the sense that I for one believe that merely by dictates or merely by government passing laws or government reserving certain percentage to certain sections of the population, I don't think that's a good answer. A good answer is actually from a cultural, from an inner self that this is the right thing to do and therefore you are doing it. And whether it is for women or whether it is for any sections of the society for example, I believe that you need to do it because of the fact that you have not done it well for hundreds of years or thousands of years and you need to do the right thing which is what industry is doing in India in terms of what we call it as the affirmative action which is a term which is sort of borrowed from the United States and in fact the term that I would like to use is giving due share, you know, which sounds to me a little more appropriate term. So industry in India has taken on a conscious move. In fact the confrontation of Indian industry, the association and the FICI and every one of those organizations, we have run programs in our own respective companies to give preference in terms of say providing scholarships to people who need scholarships to provide skills for people so that they are brought up to a level of enabling themselves to get equal opportunities in earning their livelihood. In terms of women, I don't think there are any specific programs by any corporates or individuals. In fact the first woman director in Tata Steel was appointed six months ago in a company which is more than 100 years old. We have the first woman director just a few months ago. So that I believe that consciousness is spreading and I believe actions are being taken including in the government where certain reservations are being made for women including in the parliament. So actions are going on but I think this is not going to get solved in short period of time. It's going to take a longer time and just like it is for women, it is for some other sections of the society which have been denied equal opportunity for several thousands of years in India where we want to take actually actions even some positive discrimination we want to do where we say if there are two people who are equal in every respect, you give preference to somebody who has been denied that right for many years as many companies are doing positive discrimination also. Okay, I'd like you to... There is one comment I wanted to make since you mentioned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh he was at the CI annual general meeting in early this month and he made a remark, he made a wonderful speech the last time he was at the AGM of CI was in 2007 and he was coming to address CI after six years. He said that he reminded us about what he told us in 2007 and in 2007 he said and this was before the global financial crisis and the mood was upbeat in the industry and everybody said that the world is moving so well and so fast and so smoothly that everything is going to be fantastic and he warned us at that time saying that look please don't have this euphoria that world is moving in great shape you don't know what is going to lie ahead of you you need to tighten your belts and improve your efficiency etc etc etc that's what he said in 2007 when the mood in the world was completely upbeat and now in 2013 he said that look I now see a situation where all of you are glum and you think that world has no future and you think that 5% is going to go down to 3% and 2% and no growth and you know, stumbling and so on but I want to tell you that things are not as bad as what you think you are because you people have a tendency to sort of inflate something which is on the high and deflate something which is on the low and you need to be careful of that approach which I think is got a point there having proved once right yeah please I wish that we had read those speeches ourselves in 2007 and today as well so I'm going to ask you to identify yourself and your affiliation and we'll just start right here Hi, thanks for joining us my name is Gretchen Phillips I had a question on your two pillars you talked about inclusivity and you talked about growth and I was curious to hear a little bit around how you see rural India there's been a lot of focus on rural versus urban but what are the changes we need to see in rural India to achieve those two objectives and how you think the budget addresses some of those needed shifts you know as I said inclusive growth is fundamental to India and we should not forget the huge impact that will have both negative and positive if we don't do this correctly or if we do it rightly and the way it is getting addressed now is by the government has programs and also the corporates have their own programs of for example upskilling people the country has taken on and it is still not enough in a country where there is unemployment if you go to some major construction sites or major project sites you will find that they are not able to get skilled people easily even now there is actually a shortage of skilled people there is no shortage of PhDs or you know the doctorates or you know highly qualified management professionals and so on there's not too much of shortage in that arena as much there is a shortage on the basic skill people with skills to do welding and cutting and plumbing and so on and so forth and that is important when you are building a nation so the government has a big program of skill development and this year in this budget the skill development much more money has been provided for skill development than in the earlier budgets and much more money has been provided for education than in the earlier years and also the bank loans for example if somebody wants to study MBA master of business administration he can go to a bank and he can get a loan quite easily for his studies but if somebody wants to learn welding he doesn't get a loan so the government has eased the loan mechanisms for skill development schemes also so there are measures where we are very conscious of that inclusive growth thing and government has taken measures on this and including the government is telling the industry associations for example we in our own companies skill people beyond the requirements of our own beyond the requirements far beyond the requirements because we feel it is a responsibility and the government alone cannot do it it's voluntary and many of our companies do it thank you for your talk my name is Abhishek I work at the World Bank in rural development I wanted to ask you specifically about a policy that the government passed a few years ago for the public sector units it's often that private sector gets gets blamed or gets criticized for not doing inclusive growth or not trying to reach the rural poor especially so the government has recently passed that law or a dictat for public sector units to spend one percent I think it's one percent of their profits on CSR activities and rural activities is that policy in whatever you've seen is that being effective and if it's being effective is it should the government give a directive more incentives like that for the private sector expand that to not as a dictat but as more as a opportunity let me give you my views on the subject and I do hold some strong views on the subject you know many some years ago in I think it was 93 or 92 or 93 when the India just economic liberalization it just announced by the current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh then Prime Minister was Mr. Narasimha Rao and he had called a meeting of top industrialists of the country in Delhi to tell them that they should spend at least one percent of their net profits on society in fact Mr. Ratan Tata attended that meeting and my boss I was not the CEO at that time my predecessors also attended that meeting they did not know what we were spending at that time so my boss came back to office after he stripped from Delhi and he said that look you guys have you ever calculated what is the percentage of net profit that we spend on society we said no we have never thought about it in those terms but let us do a calculation so we did a calculation between 1990 and that year in which that meeting took place in previous 10 years 1980 to 1992 some 10-12 years and Tata still had spent between 8 percent and 13 percent of its net profit on corporate social responsibility during those years the reason for 8 and 13 being widely divergent is because the numerator was the same was more or less the same irrespective of what the denominator was denominator being the profit and that vary depending on the cyclicality of the steel business and so on the point I am saying is many of our companies have been doing this without being asked to do so or without having any government dictate and I personally believe that that is the right way to go about it today we have a situation in the latest company bill company law bill the government is stipulating 2 percent of the profit to be spent on corporate social responsibility my view is that money is not to be spent after profits that money is part and parcel of the operations of a company and profits come after that so I have a fundamental disagreement on that for example the government has stipulated it and we had not liked it very much and the government has said okay it's a guideline and so on but what happens is some of these dictates of the government can get actually misused if it is not intended well but supposing you had another another way of doing it and you said that look I want to incentivize companies which do good work you will find a different kind of different kind of behavior because often you behave on the base of what you get measured and if you are measuring companies on the base of profitability or market capitalization they will only chase that but if you are measuring companies on the base of total returns to the society and other metrics which include the societal performance of a company the company will behave differently and there are companies like the Tata Group which have behaved like this irrespective of what the law have been and even if there are no laws so my own view is that the government should not mandate that maybe have a guideline but the companies must do it and we must propagate this thought to the companies and even incentivize companies into behaving in that manner Thank you very much Henning Speck from the German Embassy and thanks Rick for referring to the latest round of government consultations that the German government had with the Indians just last week which took Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and I believe a decent portion of his cabinet to Berlin at the meetings were very productive among others the question of skills development featured very prominently in the discussions where we both found ground to work together very closely to work out from both ends as well as technology cooperation I have one question concerning the three main challenges that you raised before I believe that in order to revive growth sustainably as you hinted at the question of energy supply is crucial also to generate the inclusive growth at the end of the day so the question is the scenes we saw last year with longer energy shortages how do you especially coming from an energy intensive industry envisage medium term energy strategy for India and how do you assess the policy of the government latest pass in that regard Energy is important for India there is no question because of huge population and the growth that is taking place and we are short of energy and a large part of our energy production is thermal because India has got lots of coal and therefore there is a lot of production from coal and in India coal production is dominated by a government company called coal India which is in the public sector which doesn't operate very efficiently and with the result that we always have perennial shortages of coal compared to what the power plants actually require and India in spite of having so much so many billion tons of coal in its deposit is actually having to import thermal coal from Indonesia and you know Australia and many other places so the government's policy has been in fact in the recent very recent past I would say in the last one year there have been lots of controversies about how power project used to be one how they had to be bid out is it going to be on the tariff or is it going to be on the through cost with fluctuating coal prices international coal prices people have we have had a problem and the government had set up a committee to resolve those issues and those issues are still to be resolved in the meanwhile government is also giving incentives for solar solar energy is coming up in a big way in India government is giving incentive to wind wind power which is also coming up fairly well in India so these are the you know in terms of energy India needs to solve the current problem which I hope it will get solved very soon and much of the energy requirement of India will be met through thermal sources because of the fact that India has got coal that is a more economical route for the current and a lot of incentives that is going for both wind power as well as solar that's a mix that we are going to buy and your point the first point that you talked about the comment that you made on the skill thing in fact Germany is one of those countries which has got a very highly developed skill development program exceedingly good skill development program and that's the reason why we are having conversation with the German companies and the German government on the subject do you see opportunities for the United States and India to collaborate on skills development yeah I do see that and I in fact mentioning it at lunchtime to a gentleman whom I met that many of these countries the United States, Germany many of these countries which have over a period of time developed very good infrastructure and systems for skill development actually can participate in the Indian companies and Indian government for this process it's a very very important process and the amount of skill development that is required in India is enormous enormous so it's not one country is going to solve our skill development problem there are opportunities to my mind for many countries this is something that the Wadi Foundation is very deeply involved in already so this is a great area of collaboration question here I'm Terry Otis I'm a consultant to several defense companies ITT, Excelis and others I'd like to ask India is engaged in a very ambitious defense modernization program what part of the economic development do you think that will play and how much should it or should it not play in the overall development are you talking about private sector involvement or what exactly is well I think India will require private sector involvement in any of major programs and so we're working through ways to try to make that happen it does involve skills it does involve investment and it also involves getting approval to transfer technology so it remains to be seen how it's all going to play out no it's an important question India's defense requirements are high and while this year's budget has seen a reduction in defense budget actually in the current budget I'm quite sure in the near future it's going to increase and India's defense requirements are huge and India does not have the technology except in a few public sector undertakings and a very few private sector undertakings and the government of India has always been a little bit reluctant into opening up the defense sector to private sector in India and I do believe that there is a big opportunity for foreign expert companies to come to India to do business in the defense area to establish facilities and so on. Indian government has also got a very good offset program I'm sure you are aware of it that if there is if there is a buy of equipments and a certain percentage of that needs to be manufactured in India it is to encourage defense production defense is an area which is extremely important from a point of view of getting overseas technology and overseas equipment and here is an area again for the United States to participate in India's growth. Do you think there is reports that the Indian government is going to raise the FDI cap on defense do you think it's going to go up to 49 percent? I think so we from the CI have been extremely supportive of that and we have been saying to the government that look you don't have to worry you know let's take it up to 49 percent otherwise you will not get people it's something which we have been batting for. You have very appropriately mentioned about the infrastructure and as you know India's finance minister has been undertaking road shows to attract foreign investment in India in tomorrow day after he is going to be in Washington and going to New York and Boston for inviting especially US venture capitalists to come to India but there are certain reservations among I have been meeting some of the CEOs and they feel that India is not still completely open or transparent so far as they are so what are your possibility of projections about because India has tremendous tremendous feature and opportunities for infrastructure development and American companies can definitely participate in that project thank you. No you are right actually India's needs for infrastructure is huge huge even you know if you are not traveled to India say in the last five years and if you are not taking a visit after five years you will see some very major changes in infrastructure development in India most of the airports in India are new compared to what you saw five years ago and so on and so forth and I am not seeing I know the issues involved I am not seeing too many American companies in the infrastructure area in India probably because of land acquisition problems probably because of you know counter guarantee what is involved and then you expect a guarantee from them and the guarantees will not be forthcoming and risk cannot be taken only by the guy who is coming there and not by the Indian government these are the problem but I would only ask the US companies to understand the complexity of India it is not that for example you take a company like Tata's we are we have got our ethical systems we have got our Ghanan systems we would not do anything beyond a line we would do everything right but we have succeeded perhaps there is a patience that is associated with doing business in India and perhaps one needs to get used to getting a little bit better patience I don't know what the answer is we will say Mark and that is why I think you see such a robust discussion here the question I have ties into a couple previous questions on offsets but also skills development one of the initiatives that the Wadwani foundation and my boss have been working on is community colleges in India so again those skills training institutes that are not it is not IIT private colleges but it is community colleges and I think Ramesh Wadwani is working on an initiative that is going to build 200 colleges in the next year but one of the issues is funding and so one of the questions I have is when I talk to US companies I think they would be very interested in funding some of these community colleges for skills training but there is currently not a vehicle for them to invest and so we talk about caps on foreign direct investment but specifically to the question I think Mr. Otis raised about defense offsets that right now the offsets market is essentially saturated in India so specifically if you take the bowing deal with the C17s for $4 billion they are having a very hard time finding a place to put the money so is there any thought about revising the offsets policy it could be in one method where you would have a two tier system the first tier would be a defense company like HAL but if there was no money to be able to or if there was not a destination for the money that you could have a second tier which would have colleges NGOs other areas where India needs the investment that allow the US companies to invest and also strengthen that partnership is there any discussion of that? Yeah, you are right and there is discussion on that subject going on in fact your point is very valid because today's offset policy is very restrictive and it doesn't allow you because all sudden then what India is expecting is money is to be spent on things that it needs and it needs many other things apart from what is strictly contained in that offset thing so in fact again CI is one of those institutions which is telling the government saying that please revise your offset policy and there is a conversation that is going on and we are hoping that this offset policy will get revised that's question one the earlier one that you talked about the vehicle for the community colleges you know CI can Sandeya you are here and I think you should go and meet the gentleman one approach is to approach the configuration of Indian industry as to how they can facilitate this process the second is we have a national skill development corporation which can do a joint venture with anybody and you can approach national skill development cooperation and I am willing to talk to the national skill development cooperation when I go back if I sort of take your contact details I will send your message back there are vehicles I do know that in this complex embryo of things to get it to the right person or a right institutions which can be used as a vehicle is a complex process in India I must admit that but I think there are ways of doing it and CI is would be happy and willing to sort of play that role yes that is correct where have you been I can understand where he has been you see if you just look at very broadly India being north south and east west if India was growing on an average of 6% you will find the south and the west would probably be growing at 12% and even in that south and the west you will find Gujarat growing a little higher than that percent and states like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu also growing at about 10-11% that is the story of the west and the south the north will probably a little bit lower maybe 6.5-7% but the east will probably be 2% or 3% the eastern part of the country has not been growing and I suspect that is where some of your work has been there rural areas no yeah in the rural areas Gurgaon is a completely different place today compared to what it was even 10 years ago cannot imagine but yeah 100 miles away from Gurgaon the story is a little bit different I agree with you which is why I am talking about inclusive growth we need to get both impacted you know people of the rural areas get impacted by it I agree Mike Delaney off to the US trade representative given that there seems to be a consensus that India has to increase its manufacturing sector relative to the size of its overall population in order to achieve its economic development goals everyone seems to agree on that and right now it's around 15-16% something like that what in your view would be the right policies for India to increase the share of manufacturing in its economy thank you you see you need I think 3-4 things one is you need a much faster land acquisition process because all manufacturing is going to require some fresh land so land acquisition process need to be made much simpler than what it is in India today because it often takes about 3-4 years to acquire some piece of land second is the cost of land needs to be reasonable and affordable by the industry the industry cannot be competitive if you got price of land equal to the price of land at which you will build a house or something like that so that is the second one the third is industries spring up in clusters associated industries come up in clusters so it is necessary to create conscious planned clusters of manufacturing industries and you need to earmark in fact I am of the view that the government needs to earmark lands for these clusters government needs to acquire these lands upfront and give it to people in fact overnight develop the land and give it and charge for whatever is to be charged rather than let each company go and acquire land which takes about 5-4-5 years if these 3-4 things are solved you don't require great amount of incentives and so on the land acquisition, the land cost formation of clusters I think will aid manufacturing in a big way we have another answer to that question if I could give that from Montaing, Alawalia if you happen to see the economic times just 2 days ago he also is focused on this question he said lack of consensus poor coordination among the stakeholders and antiquated labor laws or holding up implementation of the national manufacturing policy one and a half years after its introduction MIFT at the delay he is MIFT he is written to all the chief ministers asking them to hasten implementation of the policy that aims to increase India's share of manufacturing to GDP from 16% to 25% and create the 100 million jobs that you mentioned so at least at that level they are on the case the gentleman in the back thank you very much thank you for international studies now I'm a visiting fellow in CSIS I have two questions the first one is that in recent years we can find in India there is political decentralization it means some regional political parties become more and more powerful so and on one side these political parties blocked the foreign measures adopted by the central government and on the other side it encourages their economic development in their own region such as in Gujarat in other regions so I would like to know how do you think about this phenomenon will it encourage the economic development or block the economic development in India and my second question is a private question about the election if there are only two candidates one is Modi from Gujarat and one is Lahore Gandhi who will you who will your support thank you why don't you focus on number one the answer to the second question is that I'm not going to answer that question incidentally I was at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies two years ago I went and spent half a day there I got an admiration for that institute the answer to that first question is this issue of democracy and while over the last 25-30 years we have had debates on socialism and free market capitalism and I think the last century was a triumph of free market capitalism till I think the year 2008 arrived so every political system also is going to be questioned all the time but at least I am of the view that mankind has not yet found a better system than democracy with all its ills so some of the problems that you are explaining I'm sure are familiar with people in the United States also probably it's more complex in India because it is a younger democracy of only 23 years old and in a democracy you cannot help having these kind of things the essence of leadership in a democracy is to wade through all this and still be able to perform and still be able to deliver what you want to deliver and I know what you are saying that there are parties which support growth in certain parts of the states in which they may be in power and they may be against it when the center government wants to do it this is the political process of a democracy that can find a better form of government other than democracy I would be happy to listen to it but I don't think just now we have a better form you notice I have gone around the table we are saving the last question unless others of you want to save the last for the best thank you Mr. Ambassador thank you sir you had a great view I was fortunate to meet Mr. Ratan Tata his views were for India to and poverty in India and bring cars to every Indian household one how the government was helpful in his dream for the common and mass Indians and second of course the World Bank and IMF meetings are going to take place on Wednesday and US economy is at the low and finally what you think these meetings here will bring for India or what India should tell the world because the World Bank IMF meeting also their logo is END and poverty and global challenges thank you sir now your question is so widespread I don't know where to focus you know there is there is no question first on the car project you know we can't be depending on for everything on government that's that's not correct in fact I am of the view that you know if you look at the last five six hundred years of human civilization you would have had religious leadership on top in a certain era of time then you would have had military leadership on top in a certain other era we now have the democratic leadership on top by and large and I think slowly since the bulk of the wealth creation of in every country happens through a private sector businesses I think a business needs to take on that leadership you know beyond the religious leadership and the military leadership and the democratic leadership and I believe it will happen so you can't be depending on government to do everything nano we wanted to produce data said that he wants to provide everybody with a car that he can afford he or she can afford and we went about our job of sort of creating that car designing that car and manufacturing that car and now that car is being sold and used by people as many people as as they need in terms of the other issues that you raise on the World Bank and IMF and so on and so forth it is true you know look as I mentioned is on a certain path it is not strictly only on economic glory path if there is a case then you would only do that and you will not bother about inclusive growth you will not bother and you can you know suppress the social interests and so on that's not the way we want we are a democracy we will have problems it will take some time but we need to be directionally correct we need to be directionally correct not only for economic growth but also for social growth bringing happiness to a larger larger number of cross section of people must be the aim of society just creating wealth should cannot be the aim of society by itself that's the point that I would say well I should mention if any of you watch Fareed Zakaria GPS on Sunday yesterday he did a really fascinating interview with Ratan Tata and you can go online and see it you don't have to go on Sunday and he talked about the role of social responsibility in the corporate world it really was quite frankly inspirational so I urge you to click on to CNN and Fareed Zakaria I'd like to end with one final question because I was really interested in what you said that India is a country of 22 years not 5,000 going back to the reforms and what's occurred in terms of the US-India relationship we're a teenager we're 13 years going back 66 years to independence and recognition we really have started a new relationship over the last 13 years I'd like to get your sense of where this 13 year relationship is and where you think it could go I think in 13 years for getting the history of the past and so on and what sort of stopped us from getting closer to each other I think 13 years the relationship has grown quite well there has been far more exchanges far more listening to each other far more understanding more number of people have more number of very senior people from the US have gone to India made visits in the last 13 years than ever before so I think this engagement level is a good engagement level the point that I always keep saying is India and US to me are natural partners in many ways both are democracies both are freedom loving people both are expressive people the language is common between the two countries and for all those given those positives I always feel that this process needs a little bit pacing up a little bit speeding up and whatever one can do to make that speeding up process one would like to do when you return to New Delhi please take that note does touch on many of the issues we have been discussing this afternoon and finally I want to thank our distinguished speaker we thought what could we give him as a small token of appreciation and we went through the list of paperweight umbrella decided you probably have enough of those so we went out and we got you something which our intelligence folks told us that you would really like to have and I'll share this with you you can open it up here no actually you can't it is golf balls but from where? the white house or at least a white house gift store but nevertheless we understand that he's a great golfer talking of golf reminds me something I'll just take half a less than half a minute yesterday I was watching the masters along with my grandson who is six years old five and a half years old and he knows that I play golf because I gifted him with a small golf set small set which he can putt so he asked me grandpa are you a serious golfer are you a real golfer so I said yeah but why did you ask that question are you a real real golfer so I said yeah I think I'm a real golfer no but do you play this masters so that was the end of the conversation