 All right, thank you all for joining us today on this special panel discussion at the World Economic Forum India Economic Summit Without further ado, let me begin this conversation and the topic of conversation today is reform Transform and perform Will what reforms do India need to power this economy to a 10 trillion dollar economy that can be both broad-based and inclusive? Mr. Godres, maybe I'll start this conversation with you We're talking at a time when the the narrative of the India story Given the macroeconomic indicators have turned from being positive slightly to an area of doubt What is your assessment of what's going on in the economy and the reform that have already been put in place? I think the doubt has started When we published the April June GDP growth figures Which was at a low level of five point seven percent in my view During April and May we had reasonable growth. We don't publish monthly GDP growth figures But in June we had a rather low growth rate because that was a month preceding the introduction of GST and In GST in manufacturing items there were lower rates than the earlier combination of excise duty and VAT so obviously there was considerable de-stocking by the trade and there was Considerably lower production shown Production might have taken place, but it was not shown. Let me explain in our case One of our major items in our largest company called Woodridge consumer products is toilet soap the GST rate on toilet soap is about 7 to 8 percent lower than the earlier combination of excise duty and VAT We are also tight on capacity Because demand has turned very good. So we couldn't stop production in June We continued producing But cleared the goods only in July because obviously if we had cleared it earlier our tax costs would have been much higher So Obviously we showed much less production than we normally do So I think that was the aberration. I expect a reasonably good growth rate in the July September quarter and I expect a good Growth rate in the second half now you mentioned what in what does India need to do? We must remember that post the Liberalization of the economy in 1991 25 years ago a little more now This has been the biggest single economic reform GST And it will add a lot of value to India's GDP growth rate And we should wait a little and see and I think people are being unnecessarily pessimistic Already if you look at the revenue collections Under GST in July and August the first two months of GST Both months have been well above one 12th or each month has been well above one 12th of the earlier annual Prediction and there's still a lot of teething Problems which are being gradually resolved. I think they'll get resolved soon people will get used to that We must also remember that this is the first time that anybody has put their major indirect tax system entirely on the internet collection is not Based on paper work So I feel the economy is doing much better than is generally felt and I think we'll see the results of that So go there since you focus so much on GST radical coming on this When you talk to smaller suppliers for your own business, what's the sense that we get because What we hear is that there are operational challenges and so on. What are you hearing on the ground? Everything is automated. They need good consultants People have to appoint an outside Chartered accountant to advise them sure which they weren't necessarily doing earlier They're also getting used to it because some of the teething problems came for things which were the government gave time to file The returns etc. I think more teething problems will have to be attended to by the government Sure, and one of the problems is If people were in businesses where they evaded taxes In the past, that's all that will not be possible to do under GST, okay, I think you want to come quickly? completely agree with that and we work with about 650,000 small medium micro small enterprises, right? These are small merchants traders who are being forced Literally dragged kicking and screaming into the digital economy and into the taxed economy and we saw exactly everything that Mr. Goldridge mentioned about the GDP numbers We saw it on a smaller scale at the grassroots where the first couple of weeks in June People just took a step back our merchants took a step back They did not want to participate in any kind of commercial activities because they were just waiting and watching trying to figure out how GST is going to impact their business on a day-to-day basis and We worked very closely with them We worked with the government in providing them services that can get them GST numbers What is that? What is it that they need and I have to tell you that About 60% of all our merchants are GST enabled today That number in itself might not sound very impressive, but it is far better than we had estimated it to be Remember, you know go back to the same statement that this is a segment that was not in the taxed economy So the tax net is not bigger much larger much larger the other aspect and you heard the Prime Minister last evening Talk making a fairly strong defense of the the changes that have been made Mr. Beshek if you look at the growth numbers one aspect of the growth number I mean one reason people have been pointing out is the exports low-down As government what what is the thinking of ensuring that exports are back on track? Seek your intelligence to take this debate slightly away We are only looking at the GDP numbers of 5.7 6 7 7.5 and all that But why do we think that that is all the potential that India has? Why can't we do 9 10 11 12? So if the GDP numbers are 7.6 everyone is happy So my I would like to point out that what this government has been doing since last three years plus as Prime Minister has also pointed out several things is to identify the major challenges to making our country competitive You look at the infrastructure. We have a creaking infrastructure Inadequate infrastructure the investment that are being made project implementation that is being made Look at the taxes direct tax. We have one of the highest rates in the world not competitive But it is offset by huge amount number of exemptions Now the government finance minister has made a roadmap to phase out the exemptions and bring down the corporate tax rate In direct tax you have heard what a grim changing reform it is Nobody had heard about the issue of concept or ease of doing business in this country perhaps before 2014 Today we have made this is a prime agenda of the government so that you bring down the cost of doing business in the country We have a huge young population with demographic dividend But where is the where are the skilled people this government has trained about 12 million people in the last three years So all these things combined startups as a matter of fact, they are making our economy more competitive Our cost of logistics is 14 percent of GDP. It is 7 percent in china. How do you expect to compete? Your rnd spend is less than 1 percent. Where is the innovation? I think all these things have to be looked at together GDP numbers as mr Godres has correctly pointed out one quarter two quarter of one year is one thing But if you look at slightly, you know bigger view 30,000 feet view Then you will see that the changes that are required in this country are being actually drawn and addressed You want to but we really expect that all these things will happen in one year two years It will not okay any specific point you want to make on exports See so far the exports are concerned the government made this The you know provision in gst that they have to pay duties in the beginning on all the imports of raw materials inputs And after they manufacture an export they can get credit Now suddenly the exporters were stuck with a working capital requirement. This issue was known This was flagged to the gst council But at that time they took a view that you know, let them pay and they will try to expedite the refund Now the issues have come up again and the government is looking at it But you know making exports competitive also is the same issue The gst is actually reducing the cost of transportation by 30% already in such a short time sure all the checkposts are gone You ask those hundreds of thousands of truck drivers, you know, how they were stopping everywhere and paying bribes in every checkpost See the kind of changes that are being made are so fundamental That let's not I will recommend not to worry about one or two quarter numbers Miss wonder as as an outsider looking at the india story You know, what are investors telling you as somebody who looks at investments into this part of the world What do your mind are creep priorities for india? You know, many people say that Governance framework of india is resistant to change. Are you seeing that changing? First of all, I think investors having a meter to longer term view Investors not necessarily looking months by months dbd groups quota by quota When we look at the demographics of india, I have to tell you most of the ministers of finance of the list of the world They must be thinking They were the minister of finance of this country. So that's fine Demographics is the one Determining economic growth and in demographics the one it's very difficult to change quickly I'm a legendary from japan Demographics is tough. India is the completely opposite part That gives a definitely the reasons a lot of close border private investors to look at india At the same time also, I have to tell you one one thing I think there are a lot of things to be done in this country. For example india has 300 million people Living with that access to the power and Over a 70 million people living without access to the cream water this is Opportunity for the private investors at the same time. This is the area India can improve then they can attract more private investors Mr. Koudrej, you run a large conglomerate across multiple sectors This point about ease of doing business has that, you know, tangibly changed in the last couple of years. Let's put it this way Ease of doing business has been very poor in india historically It comes from our socialist In 91 We made some improvements And that improved ease of doing business I think this government has also taken many steps which have improved the ease of doing business But I would still feel that the ease of doing business in india needs much further improvement and We should keep taking steps Unfortunately, we have an attitude and a mentality That government needs to interfere in things for things to improve It is not only a Government mentality. I think it's general populace Who has that mentality? We must get over it And whenever if you look at the performance of the private sector in most Items it does better than when government handles it And this disinvestment And privatization I think will go a long way The last india government privatized quite a few enterprises, which are doing very well today And we should similarly look at that it gets revenue now for the government And it gets better performance In the future. So there's a lot of opportunity to leverage that thinking So Abhishek, you know, when we talk about reforms Reforms have been synonymous with basically Fixing, you know red tape or fixing legacy issues. That's what reforms have been so far Barring what we've seen with GST and so on Do you think government is open to changing the way government functions? Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I couldn't agree more with Mr. Godrej See today in this year, all the fdi that has come 97 percent of that has come under the automatic route Without need for any approval. You look at the date historical data. So Complete change in mindset also We are doing ranking of states on ease of doing business We are asking them and they are implementing actually that why do you need approval at all? Can we just inform that's it or if you don't get approval in certain time 30 days and all that it is deemed to be approved So technology driven governance completely removing the personal interface between the citizens and the government authorities or the municipal authorities Time-bound approvals deemed approvals all these things are being advocated risk based inspections risk based approvals Earlier 100 percent of the consignments import consignments were inspected by the customs people and the various agencies depending on their product Today only 10 percent are being inspected, which is the global risk management norm Can you imagine 100 percent to 10 percent? This is the change in mindset No hardly any direct food delivery was being given in this country at all Now in last one year it has gone up to 30 percent in the Jawaharlal airport trust 30 percent we want them to take it to 70 percent So the ease of doing business work the mindset change has started is going to take time But you know the initial period has been the toughest I think you want to come in on the ease of doing business And I heard mr. Goldridge point of view on you know how things have changed from 91 But I can tell you that we've been in business in this country for the last six years After living in the u.s. For about 15 years We came back and things have changed and Especially when you look at the consumer internet or the start-up ecosystem there is and we work closely with mr. Abashek on this the change has been that of day and night literally when we started the company in 2011 it took us about three months to get approval to just just get the company off the ground Now that has done in less than a day If you're starting doing a start-up here our technology startup, it's less than a day And uh, why are we just looking at economic reforms? Right? Let's look at social reforms triple Triple the luck that's gone away. Let's look at reforms that are happening on the infrastructure Basis as well jandhan jam. It is it's changed the way our consumer and and These are the grassroot consumers. These are the consumers the mass consumers that are there They are they are interacting with us. It's changed the way they are interacting with the government itself And now just take a 30,000 view The first time ever the government has actually taken a step back and had what they call a startup initiative Start-up india stand-up india Initiatives where they are ready to talk to entrepreneurs like me talk to other entrepreneurs who are trying to do something different We're trying to disrupt the way Business is done in india The prime minister actually spent more than a week with us in This program called the champions of change where There were 200 of us You know the new economy or the Technology startup entrepreneurs where we just brainstormed on the ideas about how we can make policy changes in india Whether that is around health whether that is around travel tourism Nothing has come out of it as yet But this has just happened and it's happened for the first time So going back to the attitude being right to the mindset being right. We are definitely starting on the right foot Can we expect changes to happen overnight? No For reform to get to transform there is going to be a time period We should look at a 2030 time period instead of looking at it You know how much change has happened this quarter next quarter. It's not going to happen overnight It is going to be an up-and-down cycle But we are all headed in the right direction, which is much more than we've been so far It's very optimistic about that. That's an optimistic point to make Radhika referred to infrastructure and one of the objectives that you look at is bridging infrastructure investment gaps We have a large gap here in india Do you see I mean and some of the transformative ideas need to come in in the area of infrastructure Would you look at funding something here in india? Is there something that interests you? What is your assessment of the gap that is here? Okay, well Some people not only necessarily india, but like some people think What's missing is the financing. So therefore those people kind of asking us Can you widening? We'll bring different types of investors such as financial fund or insurance company. However, I have a different view I think what's missing is not a financing. What missing is the investable project What I'm kind of recommending not only india, but also other Middle income country have our right future to government Development of finance institutions like gas and private investors to work together to identify potential project That we can work together, especially like identify the project to leverage private investors to invest in Not necessary using a lot of balance sheet of the government Mr. Gautres, her point is that capital is not the problem. There needs to be investable projects You want to come in on that? Aren't we seeing a problem of capital as well in india? Well, it depends on how you look at it There was a period where people in business became very optimistic And invested a lot of money And invested a lot of borrowed funds I think we should always keep an eye On the ratio between borrowed fund and equity fund It's a common lesson learned globally over the years And not rely excessively in good times on borrowed funds today we are seeing tremendous appreciation of that in terms of large collections of large amounts of ipos being transacted Equity is rising And that's the way to finance the future And I agree That we should have investments in projects Not necessarily rely on the government Because there's a limit to what the government can do if the fiscal balance has to be maintained But I think if we follow some of these fundamental guidelines I think we can do extremely well in the future Mr. Abhishek, I want to shift focus on another point And the topic of this conversation really is about how can we make reforms that's broad based and inclusive And we are living in one of the most unequal societies in the world And reforms tend to benefit already those who have benefited And I want to specifically point about agriculture And the case that's before us is agriculture as a job as a profession Is becoming unviable, unproductive Incomes are not growing How does one, you know, create reforms there? Agriculture is one of the most important priorities for the government Because still we have a majority of our population living off agriculture See, there are so many challenges in agriculture One was the independence on monsoons And the risks associated with any crop The crop insurance scheme which have been brought in by the government Gives much better coverage in terms of risks And a lot of people are availing of it One of the challenges of agriculture is marketing Because if the producer, the farmer doesn't get a good price Obviously, you know, they have no incentive to produce Now this electronic national e-market That is being set in motion in about 600 mandits of the country Actually, Karnataka is the pioneer in this regard I think we'll actually give the farmers a better price But then the state government has a major role in agriculture If they remember that central government has a limited role In many factor areas, including agriculture That you, you know, perhaps the farmer is the only person in the country Who needs a permission to or has a restriction to sell his produce I mean, nobody else has that restriction He can't sell it to somebody who comes to his house or his field He has to go to this particular market There are so many restrictions You cannot do contract farming So the kind of restrictions that have been put on farmers Need to be removed by the states Central government has been recommending it and advocating it for a long time We need to improve the marketing So I think agriculture, a lot of universities are being taken Doubling the farmers income by 2022 is one of the major goals Government has spent huge amount of money in the last two years On completing the pending irrigation projects Because we need to improve the irrigation part of it As a matter of fact, in procurement to give a better price For the first time, government procured 2 million tons of pulses Because the pulses production went up and all that So a lot of interventions are being done But agriculture is definitely the most important area And I would say, from my own experience of regulating futures market earlier Is that the marketing is the key And that the state governments have a major role in that Sure That on talking about agriculture This government initiative will double the income Of the agriculture race in five years is a very good initiative But besides agriculture, we need to pay a lot of attention To animal husbandry Not just daring But poultry, fisheries, prawn for example Animal husbandry can add a lot of income to agricultural families And animal husbandry promotion tends to include a lot of females In the household, into the economy It will add a lot of value to the economy And I think if we concentrate on that, we'll do a good job in our country Okay, I want to turn this focus of this conversation to something related Agriculture being one of the largest employers And the key question of jobs If we have to bring in inclusive growth It really boils down to can we create more jobs? There is no comprehensive data in this country Telling us what the unemployment numbers are Which is primarily the problem What should government be doing? And then we can go to the private sector The creation of jobs, of course, is the most important thing Now the jobs, it could be also self-employment opportunities It need not be that somebody is working for a salary So government has a policy of looking at both Now most of the jobs are actually getting created in the services sector Because in manufacturing, there's a limit to either you automate Either you introduce technology So most of our interventions are capital intensive Except in some sectors like textiles and leather footwear Gems and jewellery Which are still labor intensive industries But there we also need to have better FTAs To get better market for our products So I think most of the jobs get created in services sector And since we don't have a very good count of that Look at the opportunities and the jobs being created by e-commerce There are companies which are creating hundreds and thousands of jobs Each of them If Radhika is sourcing our products on our platform From 100,000 small producers and traders Look at the kind of job creation that is taking place And in job creation, as I said, please include the income-generating opportunities Look at the Mudra and Stand Up India program You have got crores of people have got loan and funding I think we really need to look at job profiles differently Not just the kind of jobs that are created in a particular manufacturing sector or services sector Basically we need income-generating opportunities Either by way of self-employment or by way of a salary employment Radhika, you want to come in on this and explain to us some of the experience that you have So, you know, pretty much on the cusp of what Mr. Golja and Mr. Abhishek said Is that, you know, about 45% of the population of our country is women And to be able to bring them into the organized economy To bring them into the job sector has been a huge challenge And it's something that I feel very personally very strongly about And through e-commerce as well Just we work with Facebook very closely And a lot of the private sector companies have come in in a big way To provide skill development to women that are sitting in rural India To women that are sitting in urban areas that have not had exposure to the job market Where they can come in and work from home opportunities as well And I think very similar to what Mr. Abhishek said 600,000 merchants on the platform Each merchant has about five employees who work with them If they are selling offline The minute they start selling online they add about two to three more employees Those are significant amount of jobs that are created Just by someone who caters to about 10% to 12% of the unit shipment In the entire e-commerce space So as the digital economy becomes more pervasive Job growth goes up And this is just the trade sector that I'm talking about I'm not talking about manufacturing as yet Which in itself has taken on a different growth So I think with all the start-up India, stand-up India We are on the cusp of that We work on the skill development program We are seeing jobs grow pretty rapidly Unfortunately for us it's the same thing We don't know what is the right number to look at To see what our contribution to the economy has been And we can talk about that and we can move forward on that So it's lack of data or metrics more than anything else But on the grass root level there have been changes for sure Ms Honda specifically about jobless growth And this is not an India specific phenomenon is it? Jobless growth we are actually observing several different countries Also at the same time I think there is not only one path to create more jobs Historic agricultural created a lot of jobs Then a second manufacturing created a lot of jobs Now as Mr. Secretary just mentioned Service industry creating a lot of jobs But going forward there may be some other Distractives technologies with destructive service model May create jobs and then India may be very well positioned Because of the Colin demographics Language proficiency and also the positioning In terms of the geopolitical positioning At the same time if I may yes I just want things to the India Now I'm very very very glad to have learned yesterday today Indian government is welcoming more foreign direct investment Some of the foreign direct investors who actually have a cutting edge technology Cutting edge business model are looking at opportunity India Can we consider to leverage them to create different types of job here And in different types of vocational training to have them in here Sure sure Just talking about the various opportunities Now we have been trying to promote Japanese investments in India There are only 20,000 Japanese language knowing people in India And we have you know 26 billion dollars of Japanese investment You know how many Japanese knowing people are there in China 20 million And no wonder they have 300 billion dollars plus FDI from Japan in China We have not focused on these areas now we are doing that now Look at the kind of job opportunities there in just knowing the languages of these countries We are trying now to have more language training for Japanese Chinese for Korean and languages Where we are actually getting a lot of investment and we can get much more just one area But then these things have been neglected over decades So but I think now that we have started our attention on that Many of these opportunities will be created Mr. Gowadry coming back to the point about jobs, what can private sector do? No a lot of things for example One side we say that there are people who are unable to get jobs On the other side we say there are a lot of job opportunities Which are going unfilled For example, we have an acute shortage in the health and education sector Of people now there's a new scheme being introduced Of having school teachers being trained without necessarily getting a bachelor of teaching degree That can add a lot of value we need more teachers we need more health workers Etc. So we should match people's skills With the needs and I like to sometimes say there is no unemployment in India only unemployment ability There are many sectors where we can't get people And we got to work hard to see that they match For example with the corporate social responsibility program started a lot of people are training a lot of people Which helps their own businesses We are for example In our group Training housewives To start hair salons in their homes We have a we are leaders in the hair color business in India is helping our business It's creating a lot of employment self employment women employment So there are lots of ways to push this but we must work hard at doing What is needed? Okay, my last thought of question before I throw it out to the audience Mr. Abhishek GST is done from a structural reform standpoint what makes I think this mindset change is very critical A lot of mindset change has taken place in the last three years Since my department we work very closely with all ministries departments and states In improving it's of doing business investing by investment promotion and so on I think we really need to carry it forward much more Because that is where a lot of things get stuck a lot of people ask us, you know And we deal with hundreds and hundreds of such things every week every month That things are getting stuck in so many places I think it's going to take some time but we are on the job But all the things that have been started see that this government is very flexible and responsive It doesn't claim that it knows all the solutions. It doesn't say that it has all the answers That's why we keep talking to stakeholders and checking with them. What should be done? You want to improve chemical sector? You want to improve the retail sector? What should be done? And then the government is very proactive in taking those decisions I think this responsiveness of the government sensitivity And this determination that we need to create a new India Where the mindset change is the really the precondition So I think all these things we will take it forward So on startups, I personally have had at least 100 meetings with the startups and the ecosystem partners in last one year Just to understand we fight for them. We fight for the investors with other departments Whether it's e-pharmacy or any other issue that why are you having this regulation on mobility On any issue. So I think this work has to go on and this mindset change has to percolate down to every level Radhika, what next would you like to see in India? One thing that has got a lot of negative press, but I think it's going to be a game changer Going forward and so far as well is the cashless economy upi. I feel it's not got its Share it's not got its deal. It's going to change the way business is done I think financial inclusion, economic inclusion All of that when you look at the root of the economy and their participation into everything that we are doing in the urban areas Is going to be phenomenal. I'm very very excited about that and I think that's going to change things Let's go there On this cashless economy Uh or the movement towards that Helping in a lot of sectors. We have to be careful of one thing We sometimes forget That cash as a mode of payment Is the only thing which is free Everything else costs money all over the world Cash is subsidized by government And we learned it the hard way during the demonetization period when wholesalers who do a lot of sales between our distributors and the millions of retailers in India Were had difficulty because of non availability of cash I was myself surprised to find out That the gross margin of our wholesalers is one and a half percent gross margin Any mode of payment other than cash Doesn't work for them not to evade taxes But from a cost point of view Now we have to bear in mind if we can find other modes of payment Where like cash is subsidized by government then it could be very easily adopted for such activity It should solve that if I just put the point a little further other than the cash economy of course, uh, would you say Labor is an area that that requires reform Yes, I think so and not It requires reform because we sometimes forget And we we talk of robotics and et cetera and artificial intelligence and feel that it will affect us negatively All growth in the world has come from productivity So we should welcome productivity Only thing is we should adjust to the productivity increase and see that the growth added Takes care of the jobs That might get displayed So yes, I feel we should be positive and work towards strong Development in these areas we get too negative sometimes about global developments And about the trend. Okay, let me get a little negative now Keko risks you look at risk profile of of of countries across the world if you look at India What your mind are risks to the story? And well India is not a high risk country Among the country that we serve that's I have to say that but at the same time If you if India wants to Optimize the potential realize the potential Of course, there is some room to improve for example If you really want to enhance this infrastructure Government cannot really responsible for building every single power stations every single lord every single bridges And you probably wants to Leverage some private including foreign private investors. Sure, then those foreign private investors have perceived risk For example, if they really need to going into like a long term such as 15 to 20 years of Power purchase agreement with some of the soe of the government They have to kind of think about potential like bridge of contract by governments I'm not really saying one central governments. Maybe regional governments or maybe soe. I think those risks What I'm recommending to the private investor is slice the risk and find a way to mitigate the risk For example, one thing I'm so I'm so sorry. I have to kind of also introduce miga miga provide Created enhancement for the government at the same time miga also provide potential of reach of the governments If it's perceived risk we cover then they are going to come So appreciate risks to the story yeah, I said You look at the macroeconomic fundamentals So which are very strong You look at the reform story, which is very robust and is gaining strength And look at the audacity of the government to do reforms No government perhaps would have dared to bring down the rate of savings gpf ppf and all that But how do you bring the cost of capital in the country if you don't bring down those rates? This government actually took the bull by the horn and did that The monetization people may have a different Version and stories, but the fact is that no one can question the audacity of that reform And similarly gst the government could have taken the easier option You know life was going on and why have all these conversations and bad press But the government has taken that risk So here actually all the risks in this country are being taken by the government today Okay, all that note I throw it open to the audience if you have a question, please raise your hand Introduce yourself, and I'll send a mic across to you. I'll come to the gentleman in the third row Can you pass a mic here, please? If you can stand up and Rajeev pcc w my question is to ramesh and radhika And it pertains to broadband and what reforms can we do to bring broadband to the households, right? I think adi mentioned that this is the first tax gst is the first tax when Everything is on the internet and radhika's and their business model is pretty caring on internet being available to every household in the country And we are in trouble there last one year has been good on the telecom side But telecom is now going into serious red waters and investment has pretty much stopped except for one player Right on fixed line. We've got an atrocious story to tell in India You know maybe 20 million connections most of it in 512 kbps and government sector connections really, right? What can be done? You know unless we get this internet to all the households 280 million households across the country We can't just sit in bombings and delis in 50 cities in india and just assume that india is going to be these 50 cities 9000 cities and six lakh villages. How are we going to do it? See if you look at the optical fiber network under the Extending the broadband in the country less than 100 kilometers Of optical fiber network was laid when this government came to power Today we have actually connected more than 100,000 gram panchayats in the country with broadband network This is the kind of work that has happened in the last one and a half to two years in extending the optical fiber network Now what is being done in the second phase is to connect the rest 150,000 panchayats And the various states have various models. So now we have a flexible model You want to go underground overground optical fiber network v sat all all models wi-fi everything is being done And the government of india is actually supporting the states in doing it For us, it's very important that our digital infrastructure is key to our economy and all the growth that we are looking at So I think the you see the amount of work that has been done on extending optical fiber network is quite staggering actually I just want to add to that that Yes, the last deal has been fabulous for us honestly with geo bringing in so many new consumers And especially from tier three tier four of course sustainability doesn't look too bright right now, but I think The extension of a broadband is going to be through a partnership of government and private I don't know if you know about seven percent of internet consumption is through indian railways right now Where google has worked and has partnered with the government and provided free wi-fi So I think a lot of those partnerships will be needed And significant inroads will have to be made on that. We were very excited when the budget talked about barat net and the extension It's again one of those things that you cannot expect an overnight change, but we are seeing change in tier three tier four right now Yes, sir. Can we pass the mic here please the first room? I'm ratul puri from hindistan power first I'd like to just Concurve at the panel that I think the reforms of the government is undertaken truly are transformative I think we we I'm in a business that engages a lot of the government and We are we truly are seeing a government that is engaging willing to listen Be proactive and and make change One of the discussions in the last Some of the discussions the last two days of the forum have been around the fourth I are and the impact of the fourth. I are I think on on the world and on india And one of the fears I have are is that you know, this essentially Creates could potentially creates a huge opportunity for india But also could create a challenge in as much as a lot of the jobs that traditionally china and many other economies Created at the bottom end of the pyramid may not exist in the future How are we going to potentially deal with this because the fourth eye is real It's here and it's happening faster than we think We are used to facing the challenges head on so it's okay He the fourth industrial revolution is something that will also open up great opportunities for us We have a very smart innovative young population our they are really doing a normal amount of work on iot that's what you're talking about right iot robotics on additive printing and so on We are now coming out with a policy in consultation with the stakeholders on how we can actually take advantage And do a transition to industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing Think that profile of jobs being created in the country and in any economy is completely changing now While you may have some robots coming into manufacturing Which india will take much longer than it is taking in china or japan or somewhere But then the kind of efficiencies they bring in mr. Godres talked about productivity That will actually create jobs in other sectors See one of the job creating sectors is going to be logistics and in in this whole after gst Particularly in retail. I think there are tremendous opportunities of job creation retail and logistics today But that requires an efficient and competitive production of goods and services in the country And that is where all these data big data analytics all iot or and 3d printing artificial intelligence Is going to make a big difference and I can see that with a strong msme sector If we take the do the right policies we do the right promotion Actually is going to be a game changer for us and for our small businesses and industry as well But we need skilling we need re-skilling of people That as mr. Godres said we have so many people and we have so many demands of the economy I mean, but you have to match them. So the skilling is very critical if you really want to Take full advantage of industry 4.0. You want to add mr. Godres? I go to the next page I'll just give you one example this fourth industrial revolution Will help india in many forms as secretary just mentioned But let me tell you what happens Incomes rise in certain sectors as a result And I would like to give you What can happen to create jobs? Just in the fast-moving consumer goods sector There are only three package branded items That are fully penetrated in india. That means every family uses soaps detergents and matchsticks Everything else is under penetrated even things like toothpaste and shampoo are under penetrated as incomes rise People start consuming much more of these goods which then require a lot of people In manufacturing. Yes considerable people, but as mentioned in distribution in logistics The number of jobs added is tremendous And that can add significantly to the economy. We shouldn't forget the positive effects It can have in other sectors. I've just given you one example Yes, sir You're right Hello, I'm Rishi Chawla from phillips lighting in the limited. I represent the led lighting segment LED lighting is one of the focused vertical Of the government of india and make in india has seen a lot of results making the story in the led sector The manufacturing has grown in the led sector and there is a lot of Consumption or a lot of demand like we've heard from a minister piyush koel as well in the previous session But I want to raise a risk here, sir We've seen we have noticed 60 percent of the led products that are available in the market are illegal They should not be allowed to be sold. They are not contributing to the taxes to the duties They are not contributing to make an india story to in any form to the economy That's happening only in cash. Sorry, when you mean illegal When I mean when I say illegal, they do not have Manufacturers name and a manufacturer's address. So once you don't have a manufacturer name or address That means you are not contributing to any of the taxes They're not into the system, but they are being openly sold in the market Now the risk is of law enforcement These are imported as well as manufactured But because of some regulations the the finished see led manufacturing or led assembling is very easy So components are being imported and these are being assembled in households In sheds as illegal manufacturing and being sold without any brand Or maybe fictitious brands in the market and this is a ac nielson report. I'm citing So this report has been done by the lighting segment and we can present to you Whenever I'm glad we have done something in this area. So I have something to say He I'll just take you to the broader question of having quality control orders or technical regulations In european union, there are 1500 quality control orders on various products in india. We have 150 We have another area of major neglect has been issue of technical regulations in our country So you can either check whether the quality is there in the imported product or in the domestically manufactured product We have started this work on a war footing that having quality control orders for almost every product that we are consumed in the country And this work has picked up on led lighting See there again There has been some issue of which ministry deals with it my department ministry of electronics ministry of power We have sorted it out the quality control orders under the BIS act or the compulsory regulations order are being issued now That will take care of the any imported stuff of poor quality Which doesn't meet the standards and we are also going to set up this conformity assessment procedures On domestic manufacturing, which is done. See the gst is going to issue these questions Fully, that's why it's very disruptive earlier. There was no nobody was tracking people could buy stuff Which was not tax paid now. Nobody can buy stuff which is not tax paid because they will have to pay the tax themselves So there are a lot of mechanisms with gst as mr. Godres pointed out is very difficult to evade taxes under the gst regime I'm sure some of the ingenious people may still try to find out But it's going to get more and more difficult as the time passes Because the use of cash the direct tax regime the gst regime all combined and the kind of it Database that is being created is going to make it very difficult for this kind of illegal manufacturing. So you should fully support gst They come back again and with greater force. I don't know how Great Indian ingenuity for that. I have time for one last question the lady there Thank you so much. I'm nisha garwal with oxfam India You talked about the rising inequality in India whether you look at income We are second only to brazil or south africa or wealth. We are second only to russia So when you ask that question, what is the next set of reforms needed to get a more inclusive india I'm not sure I heard about reforms. Is it Tax reforms? There's an article in the economic times on in inheritance taxes being introduced Is it public expenditure reforms? Is it labor market reform? What needs to be done because the We're really now at number two and we're going to soon be at number one If we don't look at the inequality issues really as part of part of the major problems that we are facing It's very good To go for Growth which is inclusive But I don't think inclusive growth Means we should look only at the ratio Of highest incomes to lowest incomes or only to the ratio of highest wealth to lowest wealth We should look to Is the lowest wealth Increasing sufficiently is the lowest income increasing sufficiently Free enterprise based growth Which is the best known growth system in the world people have tried a lot of other things like communism etc etc and rejected them Does mean that the more capable people Will tend to do better But what is most important to bear in mind is are the bottom layer Increasing their wealth or income strongly for example, the statistic in india is that below poverty level population has Come down very considerably Which is to my mind a good thing So I think economically we should study. What are the important markers? Just in communism Perhaps these ratios you talk about might have been best, but there was no growth So what's the use of having good ratios without growth? You must have high growth and then the best possible ratio Sorry, you want to come in over Uh I think reducing inequality is one of the most important duty of any government absolutely But while reducing inequality is important We also should look at the per capita income of the people below, you know at that lower rank of society in terms of income I think 80 percent of our people work in the MSME sector contributing to 20 percent of that value of the output So there is a tremendous under employment in the among the 80 to 90 percent people in the country in china 70 percent people work in MSME sector contributing to 80 percent of the value of the output So you can see how the income distribution is different I think if you want to improve the incomes of our people and inequality is of course one part of it We really need to do the skilling If you don't have skills, if you don't improve the quality of education No one is going to get a higher income. We don't we have an army of unskilled people who are not suited to so many jobs So I think that is one important area Second one of the major interventions of the government in terms of direct benefit to the poor has been Direct bank transfer through the use of adhar and you know bank accounts and all that I'm not saying that this is going to it's not increase the income But at least billions of dollars of government money in terms of subsidy That was being wasted and going to the wrong people brokers and bureaucracy and all those kind of people is now finished So at least that is also helping directly to the people But of course, I think skilling and education are really the key All right on that now. Thank you all for joining us. I thank the panel as well for joining us on the discussion Thank you so much. Thank you so much