AGENDA
10:00-11:00 – ARIVAL AND FORMAL PICTURE AT SILVER OAK PATIO
11:00-11:30 – INAGURAL SESSION IN SILVER OAK HALL
11:30-13:00 – CONFERRING OF AWARDS IN SILVER OAK HALL
13:00 -15:00 – BANQUET IN HONOUR OF THE AWARDEES AT SILVER OAK LAWN
15:00-15:30 – COLLECTION OF PACKED AWARDS AND DEPARTURE FROM SILVER OAK PATION
Thank you for inviting me for this book release function. You know, starting with Gujarat. You know one is of course the business model, very business friendly policies by then Chief Minister Modiji. And then when I was doing research on Agriculture, I mean one thing we talked about is the main thing is the water management in Gujarat. We used to discuss a lot in agriculture research and all because that's the state, a model state for water management. The, you know, check dams were there, Narmada River. And the second thing of course the rural electrification Jyoti Gram scheme that also revolutionized the thing. And this is the probably the first state to have reliable electricity with power reforms. So it benefited a lot. You know, the water thing and all agriculture as well as the other, even drinking water and other. And coming to the India in the 2014 to There are three things. One is growth, higher growth and the second is the inclusive and then sustainability. So all these things I think under the prime ministership Modi then it delivered. So one is the growth. There were many reforms like starting with IBC and you know, rera, you know, real estate thing and GST of course. So then it's a continuous reforms now, new generation reforms, ease of doing business and deregulation and private privatization, disinvestment. So many reforms were undertaken. So as a result it has become, you know, attracting the private investment and foreign direct investment. So that led to because growth major drivers are two investment and exports. In spite of protectionist policies, we still have a lot of scope for, you know, these exports and investment rate hopefully will increase further. The private investment also will increase. Coming to inclusive growth, there are three things. One is, you know, you know, as Mr. Samir Kocher mentioned, the employment is the most inclusive quality employment is the most inclusive growth. It covers many sectors. Other thing so that has improved, the formal sector has improved. And the second thing is also you mentioned the decline in poverty almost single digit now, extreme poverty to 4, 4 to 5% now. And also similar similarly health, education thing. Third thing of course all these programs Gendan and the welfare programs, there are so many including food and nutrition programs and cash transfers to women and also farmers. PM Kisan so the government has followed two pronged approach. One is the development, you know, because unless growth is there, if the cake is not high, you can't distribute. So with 3.5% growth in the first three decades, we didn't have anything to distribute. So when there is 7% or so, you can distribute much more. So lastly on sustainability also Prime Minister is very keen on that because this 2017 net zero emissions and also under his leadership, we already achieved the 50% of renewable energy already. And he's also promoting the lifestyle for environment. So all these things I think Sabka sats VIKAS has benefited the country and we are having Vixit Bharas again. These three goals, growth, inclusion and by 2047 we'll have a developed nation and also benefit. The human development indicators like life expectancy and other things will improve much further and also the climate resilient economy will achieve. So that way it has benefited and it will benefit. I am hopeful that we will be a developed country by 2047.
Thank you. Good evening everyone. Ms Sindhu Gangadharan Not audible. Ms Sai Sathya Singh Hello. Hello. Yeah, good evening everyone. I would like to start my presentation with a question. Who controls a nation in the 21st century? Is it the government we elect or the algorithms and infrastructure that process our data? This question is not rhetorical. Across the world, nations are realizing that sovereignty is no longer just bounded to territory, but also the ability to govern its digital infrastructure, secure data and also shape rules in its cyberspace. The Scotch Development foundation has been working on translating this realization into a rigorous framework. We today propose a way to measure digital sovereignty and security systematically through indicators derived from actual laws across the countries. Us, uk, China, India and the European Union. Now the question arises why digital sovereignty matters? And what exactly is digital sovereignty? Digital sovereignty is the capacity of the state to control its digital destiny, its data, its infrastructure and its governance frameworks. Without it, even the strongest states can be dependent on external platforms for communications, cloud services as well as critical infrastructure. Yet despite its importance, we lack a clear, systematic way to assess how sovereign or Vulnerable digitally, a country is. This is the gap our framework addresses. As you can see on the screen, our framework has seven legal and jurisdictional sovereignty, data protection and digital rights, cybersecurity and resilience, digital infrastructure and cloud governance, risk management and compliance, AI automation and emerging tech accountancy, institutional and regulatory framework. These seven pillars are built around the key themes. Now the key themes are first, governance and legal autonomy. Does the country have laws and regulations and institutions to govern its digital space independently? Second comes its technological infrastructure. Is the country investing in its digital infrastructures from data centers to telecom networks? Third comes the data sovereignty and localization. How is it sensitive? How the sensitive data is stored, processed and protected? Next comes the cyber security capacity and a country's economic and industrial capability. Each pillar is measurable through a set of indicators and sub indicators, allowing for comparability across countries and over time. There are 38 indicators and 136 sub indicators identified for the implication of the framework. We can imagine a country that has a robust cyber security defenses but relies almost on for the majority of their work on foreign data centers. Under this framework, the country would score high on security but low on sovereignty and terms of infrastructure and data control. This approach allows us to diagnose vulnerabilities and prioritize areas of interventions rather than treating digital sovereignty as a mere political slogan. I would also like to specially mention that these indicators are not abstract or speculative. They are coded directly from legal and regulatory frameworks across five countries. We have systematically analyzed laws, strategies, policy documents and translated the qualitative fragmented provisions into quantitative comparable indicators. This framework not only makes our framework not only makes it theoretically robust, but also empirically verified verifiable. Each framework is in the binary yes, no form and is mapped directly to the law that substantiates its being. For example, if we go to the pillar data protection and digital rights, as you can see on the screen, the first right, which is very important for data fiduciary, that is right to access. When you go on the country's the countries are marked either yes or no and when you click on the yes, it will directly lead you to the law, which. Okay, I hope. Yeah, okay. So it will directly lead us to the law where the indicator has been mentioned. This framework, lastly, I would like to say it creates a structured basis for comparative research on digital governance. It also provides a diagnostic tool for policy analysis, identifying where sovereignty is strong and where it is compromised and offers evidence to hold states and corporations accountable for digital sovereignty. As I conclude, I would like to Say, just as GDP gave us a universal metric to talk about economic strength, we need a framework to talk about digital sovereignty with rigor and clarity. This indicator framework, or you may call the Scotch indicators is our first step in the direction by building a systematic law, grounded and comparative tool to evaluate digital sovereignty across nations. Thank you.
Thank you. Good evening everyone. Ms Sindhu Gangadharan Not audible. Ms Sai Sathya Singh Hello. Hello. Yeah, good evening everyone. I would like to start my presentation with a question. Who controls a nation in the 21st century? Is it the government we elect or the algorithms and infrastructure that process our data? This question is not rhetorical. Across the world, nations are realizing that sovereignty is no longer just bounded to territory, but also the ability to govern its digital infrastructure, secure data and also shape rules in its cyberspace. The Scotch Development foundation has been working on translating this realization into a rigorous framework. We today propose a way to measure digital sovereignty and security systematically through indicators derived from actual laws across the countries. Us, uk, China, India and the European Union. Now the question arises why digital sovereignty matters? And what exactly is digital sovereignty? Digital sovereignty is the capacity of the state to control its digital destiny, its data, its infrastructure and its governance frameworks. Without it, even the strongest states can be dependent on external platforms for communications, cloud services as well as critical infrastructure. Yet despite its importance, we lack a clear, systematic way to assess how sovereign or Vulnerable digitally, a country is. This is the gap our framework addresses. As you can see on the screen, our framework has seven legal and jurisdictional sovereignty, data protection and digital rights, cybersecurity and resilience, digital infrastructure and cloud governance, risk management and compliance, AI automation and emerging tech accountancy, institutional and regulatory framework. These seven pillars are built around the key themes. Now the key themes are first, governance and legal autonomy. Does the country have laws and regulations and institutions to govern its digital space independently? Second comes its technological infrastructure. Is the country investing in its digital infrastructures from data centers to telecom networks? Third comes the data sovereignty and localization. How is it sensitive? How the sensitive data is stored, processed and protected? Next comes the cyber security capacity and a country's economic and industrial capability. Each pillar is measurable through a set of indicators and sub indicators, allowing for comparability across countries and over time. There are 38 indicators and 136 sub indicators identified for the implication of the framework. We can imagine a country that has a robust cyber security defenses but relies almost on for the majority of their work on foreign data centers. Under this framework, the country would score high on security but low on sovereignty and terms of infrastructure and data control. This approach allows us to diagnose vulnerabilities and prioritize areas of interventions rather than treating digital sovereignty as a mere political slogan. I would also like to specially mention that these indicators are not abstract or speculative. They are coded directly from legal and regulatory frameworks across five countries. We have systematically analyzed laws, strategies, policy documents and translated the qualitative fragmented provisions into quantitative comparable indicators. This framework not only makes our framework not only makes it theoretically robust, but also empirically verified verifiable. Each framework is in the binary yes, no form and is mapped directly to the law that substantiates its being. For example, if we go to the pillar data protection and digital rights, as you can see on the screen, the first right, which is very important for data fiduciary, that is right to access. When you go on the country's the countries are marked either yes or no and when you click on the yes, it will directly lead you to the law, which. Okay, I hope. Yeah, okay. So it will directly lead us to the law where the indicator has been mentioned. This framework, lastly, I would like to say it creates a structured basis for comparative research on digital governance. It also provides a diagnostic tool for policy analysis, identifying where sovereignty is strong and where it is compromised and offers evidence to hold states and corporations accountable for digital sovereignty. As I conclude, I would like to Say, just as GDP gave us a universal metric to talk about economic strength, we need a framework to talk about digital sovereignty with rigor and clarity. This indicator framework, or you may call the Scotch indicators is our first step in the direction by building a systematic law, grounded and comparative tool to evaluate digital sovereignty across nations. Thank you.
Thank you. Good evening everyone. Ms Sindhu Gangadharan Not audible. Ms Sai Sathya Singh Hello. Hello. Yeah, good evening everyone. I would like to start my presentation with a question. Who controls a nation in the 21st century? Is it the government we elect or the algorithms and infrastructure that process our data? This question is not rhetorical. Across the world, nations are realizing that sovereignty is no longer just bounded to territory, but also the ability to govern its digital infrastructure, secure data and also shape rules in its cyberspace. The Scotch Development foundation has been working on translating this realization into a rigorous framework. We today propose a way to measure digital sovereignty and security systematically through indicators derived from actual laws across the countries. Us, uk, China, India and the European Union. Now the question arises why digital sovereignty matters? And what exactly is digital sovereignty? Digital sovereignty is the capacity of the state to control its digital destiny, its data, its infrastructure and its governance frameworks. Without it, even the strongest states can be dependent on external platforms for communications, cloud services as well as critical infrastructure. Yet despite its importance, we lack a clear, systematic way to assess how sovereign or Vulnerable digitally, a country is. This is the gap our framework addresses. As you can see on the screen, our framework has seven legal and jurisdictional sovereignty, data protection and digital rights, cybersecurity and resilience, digital infrastructure and cloud governance, risk management and compliance, AI automation and emerging tech accountancy, institutional and regulatory framework. These seven pillars are built around the key themes. Now the key themes are first, governance and legal autonomy. Does the country have laws and regulations and institutions to govern its digital space independently? Second comes its technological infrastructure. Is the country investing in its digital infrastructures from data centers to telecom networks? Third comes the data sovereignty and localization. How is it sensitive? How the sensitive data is stored, processed and protected? Next comes the cyber security capacity and a country's economic and industrial capability. Each pillar is measurable through a set of indicators and sub indicators, allowing for comparability across countries and over time. There are 38 indicators and 136 sub indicators identified for the implication of the framework. We can imagine a country that has a robust cyber security defenses but relies almost on for the majority of their work on foreign data centers. Under this framework, the country would score high on security but low on sovereignty and terms of infrastructure and data control. This approach allows us to diagnose vulnerabilities and prioritize areas of interventions rather than treating digital sovereignty as a mere political slogan. I would also like to specially mention that these indicators are not abstract or speculative. They are coded directly from legal and regulatory frameworks across five countries. We have systematically analyzed laws, strategies, policy documents and translated the qualitative fragmented provisions into quantitative comparable indicators. This framework not only makes our framework not only makes it theoretically robust, but also empirically verified verifiable. Each framework is in the binary yes, no form and is mapped directly to the law that substantiates its being. For example, if we go to the pillar data protection and digital rights, as you can see on the screen, the first right, which is very important for data fiduciary, that is right to access. When you go on the country's the countries are marked either yes or no and when you click on the yes, it will directly lead you to the law, which. Okay, I hope. Yeah, okay. So it will directly lead us to the law where the indicator has been mentioned. This framework, lastly, I would like to say it creates a structured basis for comparative research on digital governance. It also provides a diagnostic tool for policy analysis, identifying where sovereignty is strong and where it is compromised and offers evidence to hold states and corporations accountable for digital sovereignty. As I conclude, I would like to Say, just as GDP gave us a universal metric to talk about economic strength, we need a framework to talk about digital sovereignty with rigor and clarity. This indicator framework, or you may call the Scotch indicators is our first step in the direction by building a systematic law, grounded and comparative tool to evaluate digital sovereignty across nations. Thank you.
Thank you. Good evening everyone. Ms Sindhu Gangadharan Not audible. Ms Sai Sathya Singh Hello. Hello. Yeah, good evening everyone. I would like to start my presentation with a question. Who controls a nation in the 21st century? Is it the government we elect or the algorithms and infrastructure that process our data? This question is not rhetorical. Across the world, nations are realizing that sovereignty is no longer just bounded to territory, but also the ability to govern its digital infrastructure, secure data and also shape rules in its cyberspace. The Scotch Development foundation has been working on translating this realization into a rigorous framework. We today propose a way to measure digital sovereignty and security systematically through indicators derived from actual laws across the countries. Us, uk, China, India and the European Union. Now the question arises why digital sovereignty matters? And what exactly is digital sovereignty? Digital sovereignty is the capacity of the state to control its digital destiny, its data, its infrastructure and its governance frameworks. Without it, even the strongest states can be dependent on external platforms for communications, cloud services as well as critical infrastructure. Yet despite its importance, we lack a clear, systematic way to assess how sovereign or Vulnerable digitally, a country is. This is the gap our framework addresses. As you can see on the screen, our framework has seven legal and jurisdictional sovereignty, data protection and digital rights, cybersecurity and resilience, digital infrastructure and cloud governance, risk management and compliance, AI automation and emerging tech accountancy, institutional and regulatory framework. These seven pillars are built around the key themes. Now the key themes are first, governance and legal autonomy. Does the country have laws and regulations and institutions to govern its digital space independently? Second comes its technological infrastructure. Is the country investing in its digital infrastructures from data centers to telecom networks? Third comes the data sovereignty and localization. How is it sensitive? How the sensitive data is stored, processed and protected? Next comes the cyber security capacity and a country's economic and industrial capability. Each pillar is measurable through a set of indicators and sub indicators, allowing for comparability across countries and over time. There are 38 indicators and 136 sub indicators identified for the implication of the framework. We can imagine a country that has a robust cyber security defenses but relies almost on for the majority of their work on foreign data centers. Under this framework, the country would score high on security but low on sovereignty and terms of infrastructure and data control. This approach allows us to diagnose vulnerabilities and prioritize areas of interventions rather than treating digital sovereignty as a mere political slogan. I would also like to specially mention that these indicators are not abstract or speculative. They are coded directly from legal and regulatory frameworks across five countries. We have systematically analyzed laws, strategies, policy documents and translated the qualitative fragmented provisions into quantitative comparable indicators. This framework not only makes our framework not only makes it theoretically robust, but also empirically verified verifiable. Each framework is in the binary yes, no form and is mapped directly to the law that substantiates its being. For example, if we go to the pillar data protection and digital rights, as you can see on the screen, the first right, which is very important for data fiduciary, that is right to access. When you go on the country's the countries are marked either yes or no and when you click on the yes, it will directly lead you to the law, which. Okay, I hope. Yeah, okay. So it will directly lead us to the law where the indicator has been mentioned. This framework, lastly, I would like to say it creates a structured basis for comparative research on digital governance. It also provides a diagnostic tool for policy analysis, identifying where sovereignty is strong and where it is compromised and offers evidence to hold states and corporations accountable for digital sovereignty. As I conclude, I would like to Say, just as GDP gave us a universal metric to talk about economic strength, we need a framework to talk about digital sovereignty with rigor and clarity. This indicator framework, or you may call the Scotch indicators is our first step in the direction by building a systematic law, grounded and comparative tool to evaluate digital sovereignty across nations. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you Rohan. With your permission I must make. I must start my statement by first complimenting Sri Sameer Kocher for taking this trouble. He has narrated what has happened since 2001 if I get it right, 2002 to up to now Prime Minister Modi's time as Chief Minister and then as Prime Minister and as he rightly mentioned as a reforms historian, he has been observing, watching and it's not just a narration, it's also a confirmation of what he and his team saw experienced in different parts of Gujarat, subsequently in different parts of the country as well as to how these programs are making a big difference. So I must compliment you for taking this trouble. I am not very sure. I am not a great reader. Professor Dev may confirm. I do not know whether there is such a comprehensive publication which covers both the periods and not just narration but the importance of schemes and programs and how they made a difference. And I was going through his book and looking at the various programs which were taken up as Chief Minister and I think the advantage Prime Minister Modi had was he had ground level interactions with people so he did not need to be educated as to what are the problems of people. So he had that awareness and he got that opportunity to convert those thoughts into action through the various schemes. And there are quite a number of schemes and programs mentioned. Starting with Jyoti, Gram, Yodina and things like. Like that which he has listed Mission, Mangalam, Education and the Girl Child. You know, every aspect of society about which we used to keep dreaming that has been taken up as programs. And I think it's on that foundation that he further built up programs for the country as a whole. And just two observations, Rohan, with your permission, My interaction with Prime Minister Modi was in the early years as you mentioned. The urban renewal mission was at its peak. And Gujarat would always stand out as far as submitting programs, getting approval and implementation of programs for the urban sector is concerned. That led to jealousies in the country. How is this one state always ahead? But that was the team leadership which one could see. And whenever I used to visit he used to insist on meeting him and he would ask how are we doing? And generally it is a good performance because you know, there are some states which excel as far as implementation is concerned. So our problem was the resource allocation was limited. And once a project or program is taken up and completed there was not much scope to give more schemes of programs to a particular state. But his keenness was what more can I take advantage of as far as projects benefiting the people is concerned? And he used to focus on that. As Pinky Ji rightly mentioned. I too used to be part of the vibrant Gujarat conferences at that time. And it was such an even. It was not just a conclave for the sake of a conclave. It was meaningful. It addressed issues and it came up with the recommendations or programs which need to be taken up. And I think he focused on it as this is one platform which is available where people would get together and point out what more needs to be done. And I think he made it a point to take it forward from there. I'll also mention one instance I had an opportunity to go to Gujarat where a Metro car project was being set up, if I remember correct. And Chief Minister Modi was the key speaker at that event. Normally when any program is organized relating to a particular topic there are some general points which political leaders make. But I was so impressed by the speech he delivered. It was Metro naturally means it is related to urban transport. His speech right from start till the end was focused on the issues relating to urban transport and how we need to address them. I mean you all have interacted much, much more. He is one person who prepares for every occasion and he had that full knowledge. It was not a political speech at all. He did not want to refer to other political issues or the like or even other larger issues. But the focus was on urban transport issues. I thought here was, here is a statesman who can, you know, sort of draft what a policy for proper urban transportation should be. So just those two statements then. Moving on. I think as far as programs are concerned, since you have mentioned my role in the urban development sector also those were days. Mahendrav Jit of the plan era. So plan era means resources are there. It has to be fitted into so many things in urban. We used to get excited about asking for more schemes, more programs for that larger number of people, larger number of cities and towns can be covered but. But there is always a cut. So when it is waste management it will be some small allocation which will be spread over a five year period. I was so impressed by Prime Minister Modi's announcement about the Swachh Bharat Mission. I mean it has been discussed so many times whether a Prime Minister should have made an announcement from Red Fort. But it meant so much for people because I mean I have worked in parts of UP where pardon my saying, women have to get up early in the morning and get out to meet the requirements of nature. So providing for nature, providing for toilets and making it an All India mission and make that work, that shows the type of change which could have been brought about even earlier. But that change happened because of his keenness to bring about that type of a change. Similarly the Chula Yojana, the cylinders that made a big difference. I have worked in Uttarakhand. Women have to get out. I mean sorry to say men would not be involved in these activities. Women have to go out, collect those firewood, come back and use that to do all the cooking. Now that that time has totally changed because of the availability. So I am not trying to focus on small parts of the entire scheme but how much of a difference these make to people. And for him I think the people, the people at the ground level was much, much more important. And the types of schemes and programs which have been brought about show that there is that one is the inclusiveness which Sameer Ji mentioned and the larger growth as an overall process where everyone gets involved, every part of the country gets involved, every corner gets its advantage. And I think if we take our work forward in this format, the period which Rohan was referring to, we are bound to achieve make achievements and we are bound to stand out differently. As far as the International Committee of Nations is concerned, there is no doubt about that. But it is a question of the centers, states all getting together and working together to take this agenda forward. Because this is meant for people. People of us, amongst us, living within the country and particularly focusing on those who have not had opportunities. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you Rohan. With your permission I must make. I must start my statement by first complimenting Sri Sameer Kocher for taking this trouble. He has narrated what has happened since 2001 if I get it right, 2002 to up to now Prime Minister Modi's time as Chief Minister and then as Prime Minister and as he rightly mentioned as a reforms historian, he has been observing, watching and it's not just a narration, it's also a confirmation of what he and his team saw experienced in different parts of Gujarat, subsequently in different parts of the country as well as to how these programs are making a big difference. So I must compliment you for taking this trouble. I am not very sure. I am not a great reader. Professor Dev may confirm. I do not know whether there is such a comprehensive publication which covers both the periods and not just narration but the importance of schemes and programs and how they made a difference. And I was going through his book and looking at the various programs which were taken up as Chief Minister and I think the advantage Prime Minister Modi had was he had ground level interactions with people so he did not need to be educated as to what are the problems of people. So he had that awareness and he got that opportunity to convert those thoughts into action through the various schemes. And there are quite a number of schemes and programs mentioned. Starting with Jyoti, Gram, Yodina and things like. Like that which he has listed Mission, Mangalam, Education and the Girl Child. You know, every aspect of society about which we used to keep dreaming that has been taken up as programs. And I think it's on that foundation that he further built up programs for the country as a whole. And just two observations, Rohan, with your permission, My interaction with Prime Minister Modi was in the early years as you mentioned. The urban renewal mission was at its peak. And Gujarat would always stand out as far as submitting programs, getting approval and implementation of programs for the urban sector is concerned. That led to jealousies in the country. How is this one state always ahead? But that was the team leadership which one could see. And whenever I used to visit he used to insist on meeting him and he would ask how are we doing? And generally it is a good performance because you know, there are some states which excel as far as implementation is concerned. So our problem was the resource allocation was limited. And once a project or program is taken up and completed there was not much scope to give more schemes of programs to a particular state. But his keenness was what more can I take advantage of as far as projects benefiting the people is concerned? And he used to focus on that. As Pinky Ji rightly mentioned. I too used to be part of the vibrant Gujarat conferences at that time. And it was such an even. It was not just a conclave for the sake of a conclave. It was meaningful. It addressed issues and it came up with the recommendations or programs which need to be taken up. And I think he focused on it as this is one platform which is available where people would get together and point out what more needs to be done. And I think he made it a point to take it forward from there. I'll also mention one instance I had an opportunity to go to Gujarat where a Metro car project was being set up, if I remember correct. And Chief Minister Modi was the key speaker at that event. Normally when any program is organized relating to a particular topic there are some general points which political leaders make. But I was so impressed by the speech he delivered. It was Metro naturally means it is related to urban transport. His speech right from start till the end was focused on the issues relating to urban transport and how we need to address them. I mean you all have interacted much, much more. He is one person who prepares for every occasion and he had that full knowledge. It was not a political speech at all. He did not want to refer to other political issues or the like or even other larger issues. But the focus was on urban transport issues. I thought here was, here is a statesman who can, you know, sort of draft what a policy for proper urban transportation should be. So just those two statements then. Moving on. I think as far as programs are concerned, since you have mentioned my role in the urban development sector also those were days. Mahendrav Jit of the plan era. So plan era means resources are there. It has to be fitted into so many things in urban. We used to get excited about asking for more schemes, more programs for that larger number of people, larger number of cities and towns can be covered but. But there is always a cut. So when it is waste management it will be some small allocation which will be spread over a five year period. I was so impressed by Prime Minister Modi's announcement about the Swachh Bharat Mission. I mean it has been discussed so many times whether a Prime Minister should have made an announcement from Red Fort. But it meant so much for people because I mean I have worked in parts of UP where pardon my saying, women have to get up early in the morning and get out to meet the requirements of nature. So providing for nature, providing for toilets and making it an All India mission and make that work, that shows the type of change which could have been brought about even earlier. But that change happened because of his keenness to bring about that type of a change. Similarly the Chula Yojana, the cylinders that made a big difference. I have worked in Uttarakhand. Women have to get out. I mean sorry to say men would not be involved in these activities. Women have to go out, collect those firewood, come back and use that to do all the cooking. Now that that time has totally changed because of the availability. So I am not trying to focus on small parts of the entire scheme but how much of a difference these make to people. And for him I think the people, the people at the ground level was much, much more important. And the types of schemes and programs which have been brought about show that there is that one is the inclusiveness which Sameer Ji mentioned and the larger growth as an overall process where everyone gets involved, every part of the country gets involved, every corner gets its advantage. And I think if we take our work forward in this format, the period which Rohan was referring to, we are bound to achieve make achievements and we are bound to stand out differently. As far as the International Committee of Nations is concerned, there is no doubt about that. But it is a question of the centers, states all getting together and working together to take this agenda forward. Because this is meant for people. People of us, amongst us, living within the country and particularly focusing on those who have not had opportunities. Thank you.
Let me begin with the person who's chairing this session. Mahendra Dev. A renowned economist. But for me importantly, sharing some of our finest moments when I was Director General of the Indian Council of Social Science Research and he was Director of for CESS in Hyderabad. I retain the same respect for you then as I did today. Thank you. To the gentleman who calls himself reformist historian. Reform historian Sameer Kocher. I admire him for many reasons. Reasons. But recently the one reason for which my admiration for him has grown is because he has resisted the measurement of Indian development by standards. Criteria which are Western or European or American. He has come up with criteria which are Indian by nature. And his message to us is why should we not judge other nations by Indian criteria? And there is a growing feeling enunciated by many Indians today. That message which goes out to the west and says, you talk to us, we talk to you, you preach to us, we disconnect. And that really is the. Is the message that Prime Minister Modi, whom we honour today with the release of the book sends out loud and clear across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States of America. I'm saying this also for a reason. One of the things that I have recently Championed the cause of apart from CSR of course, is sustainability. And why is the subject of sustainability so closely linked to Prime Minister Modi? There is a reason. Think the first ever presence that India ever had in the sustainability ecosystem of the world was 1972, the Stockholm Conference. One leader went from India, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. And she left an indelible mark on that conference because she linked poverty to sustainability and said the biggest polluter is poverty. 43 years had to pass before India again made its presence felt in the sustainability dialogue of the planet. I fast forward you ladies and gentlemen and gentlemen, 43 years. Prime Minister Modi becomes Prime Minister in 2014. 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change Paris 2015 one year, just one year after the Prime Minister has taken charge, he changes the entire thought process of the world with what now stands together as the Paris Agreement. That Paris Agreement from 2015 to 2015, all of these 10 years has ruled the conversation on sustainability. Because the one part that we cannot forget about that Paris Agreement is that we must control the rise of the planetary temperature to below 2 degrees centigrade. A thought given by whom? A Prime Minister who is the Prime Minister of a Nation for just one year. I fast forward you again. 2021, the same conference of parties, the same United Nations Climate Change Conference. Not Paris now, Glasgow in the uk. And this same Prime Minister who has now been Prime Minister for seven years makes five promises before the planet, before the globe, before the committee of nations. Everybody can't recall all five and I don't wish to recall them. We need to recall only one. And he said India will achieve its net zero target by 2 070. And all of us here, every single one of us, are committed to achieving that target by that date. So what am I trying to get across to you here? That in every real substantive dialogue anywhere in the world, India holds its head high. Why is it that through all this tariff mess that has been created by one single individual in the United States, India has stood firm? Why have we stood strong? Why have we said we will not play by your rules while the rest of the world kowtows before you? It's because we have the strength in our legs, in our hearts, in our hands to be able to stand and say alright, if you dictate this way we will find our own path. Another thing that Sameer talks of and which I strongly support and have done so for many years now is what we call Bharatiyata. In other words, what can we provide that is unique that the west will Stand back and say, that is the Bharatiya model, the Indian model, the unique model. And in 2009, when I was secretary for public sector enterprises, we created the fabric for corporate social responsibility created in India, for India, by India. A model that brought in aspects that the rest of the world had never even thought of. Again, I can go on and on till the cows come home. Just very briefly, we took CSR from the back room to the boardroom room. We got the best minds of companies to deliberate upon and set the CSR agenda for their companies. I realized what is India's strength and it came to this civil society organization. The corporate world derisively called them the Chappal and Jholawalas. But they are those organizations that live and breathe in communities that work their chappals off night and day, serve the disadvantaged, the voiceless and the those who don't find a place in the dialogue of our nation, who are not in the mainstream. We have 3.3 million of them in India. We are home to the largest number of civil society organizations on the planet. And I said in my model that whereas corporate India would provide the funds for carrying out CSR projects, the implementing agencies would be civil society organizations. See the Bharat Theta of this model. Finally, what is csr? Can we Indianize that too? And indeed we did. When I was writing the CSR law way back in around 2010 11, there were no SDGs. They came later. What did we have? We had the Millennium development goals, the MDGs, and if you look at Schedule 7, I derived my complete inspiration from the MDGs, but Indianized them completely. And Schedule 7 is an Indianization of the world thought process. It has again stood the test of time. I will conclude with one observation which I now will take from Neel Kant. And he said rightly that Orissa as a state developed so much faster than Jharkhand. There is a reason which I feel proud of being because Mr. Ramachandran was also in this room. I served under Mr. Naveen Patnaik. I had also served under his father, Biju Patnaiak. What did Naveen Patnaik do that was different? Remember, ladies and gentlemen, the bureaucracy of India was known as the steel frame, subsequently referred to derisively as the bamboo frame. But Naveen Patnaik restored the steel frame of the Odisha bureaucracy, democracy. He ran his administration through his administrators. He empowered them. He allowed them to execute the briefs that he as a political leader placed before his state. And it is they who drove, developed and implemented that agenda. And the result is there for everybody to see. And so with that, Sameer to Bharatiyata to Indian Models, to the ability for us, everyone in this room to be proud of what we are doing. Thank you. Jai Hind.
Am I audible? A very warm welcome once again to the honorable ministers, honorable justices, India's leading economists, constitutional law experts, distinguished public service leaders, captains of industry, doans of your respective domains, those amongst us today and those who will be joining us through the course of the day. Uh thank you for joining us for the 103rd Skoch Summit. Modinomics a journey of inclusive growth is an important book for India and it's more than just a book. It's a comprehensive account of Prime Minister Modi's 25 years in public office and an in-depth verdict on his promise of inclusive growth from his early days in Gujarat to over a decade of national leadership. Mr. Modi has consistently placed the idea of subkasat subka vikas sapka vishwas at the heart of governance and this book explores how that philosophy translated into policies and programs that reshaped India's economic and social landscape through financial inclusion direct benefit transfers housing rural electrification sanitation healthcare digital empowerment and infrastructure expansion millions who had long remained on the margins were brought into the fold world of development by connecting households with banking through the Janhan Yojana, ensuring clean cooking fuel through Ojala, building toilets under Swatch Bharat, electrifying villages and expanding digital access. Modi G's governance reached the last mile both with scale and speed. Equally, the book assesses the reforms that powered India's macroeconomic resilience, GST, the insolveny and bankruptcy code, digital payments architecture, the welfare delivery systems that made growth more transparent, efficient and accountable. At the same time, it doesn't shy away from asking the central question. Has growth been truly inclusive and to what extent have India's poorest experienced transformation in their everyday lives? Balancing this narrative with evidence, Modinomics places India's journey in a global context, highlighting a country once defined by poverty and scarcity which has increasingly become associated with opportunity, aspiration and scale, marking a quarter century of Modi G in governance. This book is both a chronicle and a verdict measuring the distance traveled, the promises kept and the challenges that remain. It is an essential read for policy makers, scholars, business leaders and citizens who wish to understand not just the economics of Modi but the larger story of India's quest for inclusive and sustainable governance. And how we thought we'll structure this book discussion today is by sharing some reflections from the very book that was released a little earlier. So what we've done is we've highlighted certain quotes from the book which I'll be reading out and post which I'll be inviting discussions to comment but at the very opening let me invite Mr. Samir Kocher, chairman Scotch Group and the author of Modiomics, a journey of inclusive growth for his remarks.
Thank you so much. First of all I was very happy to see Venkata because I am in my Bangalore clothes now I can say I'm in more my tech clothes. We are certainly more. You know, we are underdressed compared to many of you. You know, I want to talk about the sovereign part and I think Sameer requested me to cover that as briefly as possible. You know, I want to tell you about in a way about not his current book but his future book. I don't know what he'll call it but let's assume for a moment he calls it Modinomics 3.0. What would that be about? I think it will be a significant departure from what is happening today. We are in the midst of a non linear change. And things are as a country will have to change very significantly. And if they don't, we'll be relegated to the sidelines in geopolitics. We won't be able to grow as an economy. So what are these changes that are upon us? And I wanted to share that with you now. Indication. And I'll talk about 10 new buzzwords that you can keep in mind. And then a few years from now you can tell me whether these 10 buzzwords which are not important today become important in the future. And if they do then you can remember me. Otherwise you can forget me as we go forward. So the first is that there is going to be less emphasis on the size of the economy. We will have to talk about structure of the Economy. Why is this important? I'll take you back to 2008. You know, G20 was created in the aftermath of the big recession that took place, the Great Recession. And there was one person who was involved in selecting the countries for G20. His name is Larry Summers. He. He describes this in his book and in many talks. He's down to the last country and last slot and two countries. And he asks himself, which one can I keep? So he frames the question and says, which of these two countries supply technology that the rest of the world cares for? So he asks about the first country. He says, big economy, but gosh, all that they give to the rest of the world is olive oil. Doesn't matter. Second country, he says, hey, nuclear submarines, commercial planes, nuclear plants, and so on and so forth. And these two countries are Spain and France. They're roughly the same size in economic power, but one is in G20, the other is not. And today, if I ask you a question, who will Trump treat better, Canada or Korea? What do you think? How many of you think it is Canada or how many of you think it's Korea? It's Korea. Because in his mind, what does Canada offer? Lumber, labor for auto parts. He doesn't need any of that. What does Korea offer? Technology. So we as a country will be treated based on our ability to produce technology that the rest of the world needs. If they already have it, they don't care for it, but distinctive technology that the rest of the world needs. So I hope as technologists, two technologists on this stage, you will forgive us for our dress. You know, I think we need that to make the new India happen. Second, is that why is this important? Because we are about to hit a roadblock. And I know this is a very unpopular thing to say in Delhi. Delhi likes positive messages and this is not a positive message. Back 25 years ago, there was this concept that was introduced by Indamit Singh Gill, who is currently the chief economist of World bank, called the Middle Income Trap. And you can actually see this playing out with Thailand as we speak. And you know, how many of you been to Vietnam for a holiday? See, I see some hands going up. Vietnam is gaining market share for everything because people say, why not get it done in Vietnam where the PPP per capita income is 11,000 versus Thailand, where PPP per capita income is 18,000. If I am going to get the same results, why not go to a cheaper place, right? So we know this is a phenomena that has taken place in Latin America for what I call as LATAM8, 25 years ago and none of those eight countries were able to break through the middle income trap. India is going to hit this middle income trap in five to seven years because this used to happen at roughly about $10,000 per capita. Not GP GDP and PPP but nominal per capita per capita. But now is going to happen much sooner because of robotics and AI. AI makes it, you know, you hit the gap much sooner. Now we this is related to the first point because to get to that point, to middle income trap, you should be the job. You should be the job shop of the world. You say, hey, don't manufacture auto parts in your own country. I'll do them for you better, right? And I'll do, I am a bpo. I'll give you labor arbitrage when it comes to IT services. You are essentially knocker of the world. And what Trump and others have done has said, if you are a knocker, you can't sit on the same table as me, right? This is what we told Pakistan since 2014. We never let them sit on our table. This is what China is doing to us now because we are not in the same league. We don't have a path to be able to cross the job shop mindset that we have. And as we look back, one of the biggest handicaps that we have in our country is that we started thinking that if we are the job shop of the world, if we are the back office of the world, somehow we will become a prosperous country. Many of us knew that is never going to be the case. But many of you thought that would be the case. Unfortunately, this was the prevailing wisdom in Delhi and continues to be the prevailing wisdom in Delhi. So we'll have to give this up as we go forward. We will have to find a way to overcome the middle income trap. Otherwise we will not be a viable economy as we go forward. So this means that we have to focus on things that people want from us. Not job shop products, not services. And the products ecosystem is a very, very different ecosystem than anything else. Let me ask you a question. How many of you know about Foxconn, right? How many of you know about TSMC? 1 is roughly 12 times bigger than the other by revenue. Which one is big by revenue? Yes. Foxconn. The other is bigger by profits. Which one is bigger by profits? TSMC by market cap. Also, who do you think the west is? Which company motivates the west to say we will save you Taiwan from becoming part of China? Foxconn. No, they don't care A shit about Foxconn. It's about tsmc. Right now we know how to build Foxconn type companies in India. We can build hospitals, Indigo Airlines, JIO and Airtel as mobile operators, good banks. These are all services players. And I'm glad we are able to do that because that's one place where we can employ people. There's no harm about this. We should not be ashamed of being able to do that. But being able to do that doesn't account for very much in modern economy. What accounts for is our ability to build viable product companies. And building viable product companies and the ecosystem that supports it is fundamentally different from building viable services companies. And this is something that we will have to internalize here again in the policy making capital of the country. We will have to internalize this change in a very, very big way. Now, is this possible? Of course it is possible. You know, today. Let me ask you another trick question. We are 3% of global trade. We are 7 to 8% of global economy. On nominal basis, we are 17 to 18% of global population. What is our proportion of global digital transactions? Are they more than 17% or less than 17%? How many of you think it's more than 17%? Alright, so many people believe so. Is it 34% or is it 51%? 51%. Why is this the case? Why does an economy contribute to more than half of the global digital transactions of the world despite being only 17% of the population, 7% of the economy and 3% of global trade? Because the architecture of our digital system is completely different. It's called India Stack. And what it does is that it creates building blocks for flow of people, flow of money and flow of information. A reference to DPDP ACT was made which is part of flow of information. But these are all techno legal implementations. DPDP ACT is important and don't misunderstand me, but more important is the tech counterpart of it, which most of you may not even have heard, called depa. Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture. In India, the magic happens when DEPA and DPDP work together. It's called techno legal regulation, right? And so. So? So the fact of the matter is that the ecosystem, in the battle of ecosystems that we are, we are engaged in when we want to build product companies. If you want a successful quantum company out of India, which is going to be relevant in the world, then we have to create an ecosystem. The battle is not of volume one company versus the other. It is a battle of an ecosystem versus the other. How many of you have an iPhone here and I can bet all of you at one day had a Nokia phone. And Nokia was defeated not because it was a poorer phone, it was defeated because the ecosystem of iPhone was superior to the ecosystem of Nokia. And so we have to learn how to build something called ecosystems. They are called Triple Helix ecosystems. Because in this Triple Helix ecosystem, the most important part of the helix is called research. Researchers like Venkata, who has how many citations, how many papers, how many patents, right? And it is the researchers coming together with market players and policymakers acting, acting in concert. We are starting to do this right on the back of some of the India stack success. What we have had success in telecom. We are beginning to get our playbook right in this fashion. But this is a very, very different, different animal from the animal that we've had so far. So one of the buzzwords, I don't know how many buzzwords I've already mentioned, probably four or five, but one of them is that you must have a triple Helix kind of a model battle of ecosystems is what we need. Can we do this? It'll be difficult. Very, very difficult. Can we do this without a humbling. That's the real challenge before us. Because if we are humbled like we were in 91, 92, of course we will be woken up into do this. There's little or no doubt, you know, we'll get a punch in the stomach and we'll be forced to adopt this. The question is, can we do this without a punch in our stomach? And that is hard. Why is it hard? Because I think it requires Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai to come together. Bangalore for research, Delhi for policy making, and Mumbai for its market activity. We have to have all the three coming together today. You know, Bangalore is ready in my opinion. And I can say I can be critical of Delhi because I grew up in Delhi, my father was in the civil service. So I can afford to criticize Delhi because it's my old city, not my new city. But I think Bangalore is ready. Is Delhi ready? No, not at all. Is Mumbai ready? What do you think? How many of you think Mumbai is ready? Market is ready? Mr Sameer Kochhar No. Mr Sharad Sharma Last financial year for the first time, we had five companies which had over $10 billion of profits. Now this is significant. General Electric, whose engines, you know, populate the planes that are getting delayed in Europe because of the cyber security attack, had only $7.8 billion profits. So $10 billion profit is no mean achievement. So this is adani Ambani Tatas, ICICF bank, not ICIC, HDFC bank and SBI. Two banks, three companies, their combined spend on R&D, 0.1%. And you can humor me. You can go to Fortune 500, organize the list by profitability, look at only companies above $10 billion profit and then remove these five and then reorder it by spend on RD. Remove these five companies. The next company that you will see has an R and D investment of 2.1%. There's not even average. This is the next number. So if you have to be viable, our big players have to learn to not double their investment in R and D. Increase their investment by 21 times. It requires a mindset shift which is as big as the mindset shift that you need here in Delhi. Right. So will that happen without a sock in the stomach? If there's sock in the stomach, I can assure you this will happen. But will this happen without shock in the stomach? That depends on you. That depends on these conversations that you are having. Because if you can't galvanize this kind of a change because of these conversations, what's the point of having these conversations? Right. So that's the other stuff that you need. Then of course, you know, we are living this as we speak. That even if we get our act together, in fact everything that we have done, whether it's space, it is nuclear, it's the green revolution. More recently is India Stack. What's happened on the telecom side, even the Metro rail. All of these have been done by technocrats, not bureaucrats. How many of you in the room who are bureaucrats? You have to learn to work under technocrats. Because all these changes are moonshot changes. There is nowhere in the world a moonshot. A Manhattan Project happens inside bureaucracy.
Mr L Venkata Subramaniam So in the next 10 to 15 minutes, I'm going to talk about security, right? You're all lucky you're here because right now there is a big cyber attack happening in the airports, in, in the Europe. So right now flights out of London, Brussels, Berlin, all of them are delayed. So if you were traveling to one of these places, you can imagine your plight. Right? But that's just one. It's not a life and matter situation. Okay, so let's, let's talk about other situations. Right. So we just had a war recently. You all know this war we had. How was this war different from the war we had six years ago? How is it different? Yes, last time our aircraft had to cross the border. This time we didn't cross nothing from our side. We just fired things. What is the next war going to look like? So these missiles. Okay, so ma' am just told you about cyber security encryption. How quantum is going to break encryption. So I'll give you an example of how quantum breaks encryption. Dr L Murugan Okay. Mr L Venkata Subramaniam So today encryption is based on using what are called prime numbers. What is a prime number? Any number which is only divisible by one or by itself. So five is a prime number. Four is not a prime number because four is divisible by two also. So you take two large prime numbers and multiply them and you use that as your key. So today's encryption is based on the fact that if you take two large prime numbers, multiply them, use that as your key for the best supercomputer to break a 2048 bit key, it will take 8 billion years. Billion with a B. So that's why we take these large prime numbers, multiply them and use them as our keys. Whether it's your password, whether it is that missile which flows flew from India to Pakistan, that missile encryption, because the ground is sending signals to it. Dr L Murugan Okay. Mr L Venkata Subramaniam How does it know where to go and hit it is being sent signals which are encrypted using these large prime numbers. Now something which takes 8 billion years on your best supercomputer, on a quantum computer, it will take six hours, which means all your encryption gone, finished blockchain, your password, your Zoom calls, WhatsApp, everything can be broken. If somebody is listening to outside to the wi fi signals, they can crack it using quantum computer, okay? Which also means that in the next. MC War. Mr L Venkata Subramaniam If somebody can break into the code of that missile instead of it going and hitting, if it has to hit here, the person who can decrypt that could, instead of making it hit there, turn some, turn around and go and hit somewhere else, okay? And that's why two days ago the government of India, Department of Science and Technology constituted a committee to decide how India is going to secure its digital assets using encryption. And that's the topic here, right? Sovereignty and security. So how do we ensure sovereignty and security? Because today attacks, like I just said, I started by telling you that there are cyber attacks. You can check the news. Cyber attacks on London, Brussels, Berlin, all these airports, all the aircraft delayed. Well that's just flight delayed, right? But there are more strategic things. For example our nuclear power stations, for example our financial industry, the stock markets, all of these are protected using encryption. Today, even the government secrets, you know, whatever, everything is digital now. Very little happens on pen and paper. So all of those digital assets that the country has, whether it is national secrets being discussed by our ministers and like the visitor we had today or any of these people, that is all encrypted and stored with these keys which our Defense Research Development organization DRDO and all of these people produce. But there is a change, as I said, which is happening. And that's why two days ago the government of India constituted this committee to go and look into how do we secure the future in the next war. Our missiles should not be broken into. Somebody should not take control of the missile which we fired from somewhere in Rajasthan and instead of going and hitting the target comes back to hit a target inside India, right? So these are very, very deep questions. And I think today's session we are not going very deep into any of these topics. But just to say that there is a very present and important question in front of us as a country, as a country, because technology has made everything digital. Your UPI today, you know, we, we see these ads saying don't fall for digital arrest. Don't you know, let your share your otp, various things. But that is already happening. Why are these ads have coming? Because a lot of our citizens are getting fooled by these things. And that is only going to increase. Okay? It's only going to increase. It's not going to decrease. And we have to now take those steps which secure our national assets. Which ensure that we are able to protect what is our ours. And during wars, yes, we will not cross the border next time. But at the same time whatever we fire has to remain under our full control. Mr Sharad Sharma Okay? Mr L Venkata Subramaniam That's what is very important. And so I just wanted to bring up these points to you. I don't know. Do we have questions or. No? MC Okay. Mr Sameer Kochhar Any questions? Mr L Venkata Subramaniam Otherwise. Yeah, thank you. Okay, Thanks a lot.
Honorable guests, colleagues and friends, good afternoon. It's a privilege to open this important session on digital assets of India Sovereignty and security. Let me begin with two very simple realities. First, India's digital economy is already large and growing fast. It contributed roughly 11.7% of our national income in 2223. And it's projected to approach one fifth of the national income within the next few years. Second, India's online population is enormous. Nearly 900 million active Internet users and rising. Which means that India is not just a large market. We are one of the world's biggest generators of data. So if we start to look at data as a national asset, then data sovereignty is a policy expression that we must understand. At its simplest, it means that the data generated by us, at citizens, by our infrastructure and by our economy is subject to Indian legal and security frameworks that we can ensure accountability, privacy, protection for these assets even in a highly interconnected world. That brings us to the question of national security. Cyber incidents are not hypothetical, they're multi dimensional and frequent. Our authorities have reported millions of cybersecurity incidents in the recent years, underscoring a serious threat to our public safety, to commercial continuity and sovereign decision making. Cyber posture therefore has to be treated as a core aspect of our national security policies. Beyond security, good data management is also an aspect of development policy. Data fuels digital public goods, drives AI and analytics multiplies productivity across sectors. Niti Aayog's recent work shows that accelerated AI adoption could add hundreds of billions of dollars to India's GDP by 2035. But that upside is only going to be possible on high quality, well governed digital assets and institutions that steward that responsibility. Well, while India is a fast growing digital economy, we still have a lot of catching up to do on the policy and government side. Our legal architecture for personal data, that's the DPDP act of 23. All of us are familiar with it. It's a major step forward, but implementation and rulemaking have been iterative at the same time. An independent analysis shows that gaps across state and sub national capacities in how digital governance translates into everyday protections for everyday citizens and businesses still requires a lot of work. We need to close these gaps in if the promise of our digital economy is to be realized equitably and inclusively. We hear a lot about AI, cybersecurity and blockchain, and rightly so. But today we're going to be focusing on a next gen inflection that will reshape everything else. Quantum Technology Quantum computing threatens some of the current cryptographic primitives while promising transformative advances in sensing, communication, communication materials. International standards bodies have already started publishing post quantum cryptography standards and our ministries have also started to publish roadmaps and white papers for priority prioritizing quantum readiness. Our national Quantum mission is a multi year, multi thousand crore initiative, which is an explicit recognition by the government that quantum is strategically important for us as a nation. But turning funding and strategy into actual robust industrial capacity will require focused work. There are also some trade dimensions that we want to acknowledge. Recent trade agreements and negotiations have begun to include digital trade that touches upon cross border data flows, localization and digital services. Those provisions obviously offer us an opportunity to expand business growth, but if they're poorly calibrated, they could also constrain a sovereign state's ability to govern data in public interest. As India negotiates with partners, we must be clear about preserving policy flexibility while prioritizing both national interest and innovation. On that note, I look forward to hearing from our expert perspectives today on the panel and they will drill down into these questions and more and practical recommendations that we can take away away from today's celebrations. So with that, it's my Honor to invite Mr. L. Venkata Subramaniam, the Quantum India lead for IBM. Mr. Subramaniam is an experienced leader in AI and Quantum Computing with a demonstrated history of innovation and product creation. He's a strong researcher who's developed new products, published in top publications and been recognized as a master inventor. He has led six products, three 38 patents, 150 papers and 3300 citations. Dr L Murugan Good afternoon. Mr L Venkata Subramaniam So in the next 10 to 15 minutes, I'm going to talk about security, right? You're all lucky you're here because right now there is a big cyber attack happening in the airports, in, in the Europe. So right now flights out of London, Brussels, Berlin, all of them are delayed. So if you were traveling to one of these places, you can imagine your plight. Right? But that's just one. It's not a life and matter situation. Okay, so let's, let's talk about other situations. Right. So we just had a war recently. You all know this war we had. How was this war different from the war we had six years ago? How is it different? Yes, last time our aircraft had to cross the border. This time we didn't cross nothing from our side. We just fired things. What is the next war going to look like? So these missiles. Okay, so ma' am just told you about cyber security encryption. How quantum is going to break encryption. So I'll give you an example of how quantum breaks encryption.
This indeed is a momentous occasion. The experience of modinomics has been repeated once again. The learning out of this has only been one to my mind that whatever was captured in modinomics one that was the story of the transformation of Gujarat. And now whatever has been captured in Modinomics 2 as the journey of inclusive growths is something which has scaled. Something that was born as part of the Gujarat model has now become the India model. You know what is unique about the book? It is not based on what has already been published. It is purely based on the experience which has been collected, drawn after having visited, spoken or interacted with the people who have been directly impacted by that. That is the sole reason why this is not a book which carries many references. It carries the references of the work which has been done by Mr. Kocher himself. And this has been done in first person. Believe me, 700 pages you can't write in first person. That's been A herculean task. So the experience, the wealth of experience that has been captured over last 25 years has gone along in these 708 pages. When you read, you realize that there is no hardcore economics in it. There is no trigonometry, there is no mathematics. It's purely inclusive growth. The very word modinomics means something when you come to define it, no dictionary will define. No person can easily define. As the very first book which was done, which said inclusive growth, inclusive governance. So that's been the hallmark of the honorable prime minister that whatever he does, he does with keeping in mind the last person in the queue. Many examples have been quoted in the book. There are nuances within that. I just quote one which is Ujwala yojana which the Honorable Minister talked about. Mr. Jaju also mentioned. It is not killing one bird, two birds with a single stone, it's multiple. Realizing that a woman wakes up at 4:00 in the morning, trudges to pick up fuel wood, comes home, cooks and experiences and inhales the smoke. And the house is also full of smoke, children, everybody in the family does clean cooking medium which is the lpg. So you brought cleanliness in the house. Second, a woman is not have to trudge. So you're saving her time which is what now she can devote to the family as mother and as the lady of the house. The third is you are preventing deforestation so you are saving on carbon, you are saving your climate. Fourth is that you are improving on the health quotient of not only the woman of the house but the entire family is equal to happiness. That means to say not falling sick is saving money. And this is not meant for you and me, this is meant for again the person in the last person in the queue. So there have been many such instances wherein we have gone beyond. While Mr. Kocher writing this book, capturing those attributes, those nuances which tell as to if you really indeed need to bring any kind of change, how do you do that? So the rest I leave up to you as readers. When you pick up the book, you will realize there is a ton of knowledge that it brings onto the table. So with this I express my heartfelt thanks and gratitude to the honorable minister. His words exude those ideas and aspirations which go towards fulfillment as a result of the book that it embodies. Our guest of honor, Mr. Sanjay Jaju. Thanks to him as well. Not only for gracing the occasion, but also bringing the critique, the inputs, his ideas as well as guidance. While Mr. Kocher went through the Book burning the midnight oil and producing it in a short span of four, four and a half months. Mr. Kocher Jr. Rohan, for bringing a perspective to the book and of course to our distinguished audience and the listeners for extending your support to us investing not only your time, you have also been participating in our process of evaluation of those projects which have actually delivered the outcomes and scale. One such project was mentioned by Mr. Jaju himself, Socram, which he said that we discovered. But yes, many such beacons of hope we have discovered in last 25 years and we have seen them scale. So congratulations to all of you and my heartfelt thanks to the gentleman on the stage once again. And congratulations to Mr. Sameer Kocher and indeed for bringing this together. Jai Hind.
Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting and Parliamentary Affairs, Dr. L. Muruganji, the man of the moment, Sameer Kocherjee. Bursharan Rohan. Ladies and gentlemen, it's indeed befitting that Modinomics is being released at the time when we are all part of the Seva Pakwada that's happening in our country. This is the time when all of us in the government and in the civil society get our acts together and take forward the the agenda that. And realize the vision that our honorable Prime Minister has laid out starting from his birth date on the 17th of September. It will go on till the 2nd of October. So it's, it's indeed a very auspicious moment that you know you have chosen to Release Modinomics Part 2. I mean I call it Modinomics Part 2 because Modinomics has almost become like a, like a word synonymous with the economics of the day. The economics that inclusive economics that Sameer was speaking about associated with the honorable Prime Minister's vision. And it's indeed a great moment that you know you, you're looking at the honorable Prime Minister who has, I mean nowhere in the world arguably Would somebody have the, the kind of experience, the blend of experience, I mean, 25 years of the other side of public life, 25 years of public life within the government. So it's almost like 50 years in public service. I don't think anybody in the world would have this level of experience unstopped and continuous without any break. 50 years of experience in public life, I think, and absolutely remarkable. And it's good that, you know, I heard this for the first time the word called reforms. Historian. It's really the, an absolutely appropriate word for the kind of documentation Sameer has done. And he came with this idea. I mean, it's almost two months now and he had the first draft and he wanted some information from within the government. And then we started to get the gaps plugged. And it is good that today the book is out and I'm pretty certain that all of us are going to enjoy it as much as we have enjoyed The Modinomics Part 1. And good thing is this documentation is not just about these 11 years. It's also about the entire 25 years of the journey that our honorable Prime Minister has had both as Chief Minister and the Prime Minister of our country. Friends, it's indeed a fact that our country is changing. Nobody can deny that I had recently been to a village and that too in a pocket, in an area in a state which is classified as a impoverished, which is classified as a very poor state. And I was amazed to look at that village, a small village. I mean, you just go around and you realize a complete transformation has happened in the village. You just don't look at anything that's still remains unfinished. You find, you don't find any juggi, you don't find any hut. You find people living in proper houses. They could be small, big, medium. But the fact is they're living in houses. They have pot water coming, they have good road that brings them from the highway to their village. Within villages, you find there are drains, there are village roads, you find a proper school, you find health infrastructure, you find people getting their benefits through the direct benefit transfer. So the entire amount that moves from the bank here in Delhi goes to his bank account via the UPI system and the DBT system without any loss, without any transmission loss. You find villages completely electrified. I mean, absolutely amazing that. You know, there were times when there were like electricity breaks. Eight hours without electricity. I village, you can't don't even hear of that. Every house has electricity, every house has ujjala. You find that you don't find Chulas anywhere. I mean this transformation and I am talking about the villages, when you go upward then you realize you come to the highway and then suddenly you move to the airport. You, you look on the other side, you realize there is a railway station coming up. So it's like a complete transformation that's happening across our country. And we might still have, I mean a lot of people might still say that look, we are still at $2,000 per capita economy, we're still a very poor country, stuff like that. But you know, I don't get into all that because you know this dollar rupee conversion is always a notional conversion. The exchange rate does not depend, does not really define. If you start looking at the purchasing power parity then possibly this would be somewhere there in 14,000 category. And then when you look at what are our requirements. I was just with another officer and I was looking at that village and I was saying that look, in my understanding the GDP here does not matter. This guy is got everything here. I mean he's, he doesn't really want to get into that kind of a consumer lifestyle which people would classify as a rich. I mean he is happy, he is getting his all the essentials met. He is having a fairly decent time. So don't really compare A to B. There are certain things in our economy which possibly will have no value but if you start putting value to it then the GDP will become much bigger. You don't require old age homes for our elders. I mean they, they are looked after. Well in our house I don't know that whether that is counted as a GDP but factually that is counted as GDP somewhere in the West. So all these calculations make no difference as long as we have inclusive growth. As long as our economic support. The last person on the road, last person in the village, last person in the hierarchy. I think our job is done and it is good that all this documentation is happening and it's a well researched work because he, Sameer has a, has this great advantage of researching. I know that for close to 25 years now I, I was in Vishakhapatnam as municipal commissioner. I, I've never told this in public but let me, let me tell you this. I was in Vishakhapatnam and there we started India's first online E governance model. Nothing of this was there anywhere in the country, in fact arguably in the world. So people still had to go to a bank, collect a slip, do a challan, pay property taxes, bus certificates, go around health offices and collect those Copies etc and I had the fortune of being one of those who could start that process there and Vishakhapatnam and the project Soccerium became India's first project where people could pay their bills online, people could come to a center and pay bills online. And later on you would have seen it all became like E Seva etc in the entire state and then later on in the country. I, I still remember I suddenly got a call from Delhi sitting there in Vishakhapatnam and he mentioned that my name is Sameer Kocher. I have, I wanted to talk to you so I said, you know, okay, tell me what exactly is my requirement? No, no, I have no requirement. You know, I have, I have heard from somebody and I am wanting to document Sokariyam and I said how did you come to know of Sakariyam? I am in Vishakhapatnam somewhere. And so we do this research and we have been, we've heard about it and, and then later in few days later I realized that he had published a report on it and that kind of became the first report actually a third party account on Socarium. So I think, I think this is what is required. There are a lot of people who will still have daggers drawn for anything that we do in the government. They don't understand the kind of effort which goes in to create lot of positive development that we see all around. Nobody wants to talk about it. It's so easy to, you know, criticize. It's so easy to given hindsight experience, it's so easy to you know, nail somebody down. But you know it's, it requires a lot of courage for people to talk good about good people talk good about good things and, and believe me that that's, that's a huge motivation. We don't understand the value that you know, if somebody has put some efforts in doing a particular activity and then that get that efforts get recognized, people in your peer group start talking about it. Then you know your enthusiasm goes many fold. That creates a positive attitude in you. And then eventually you know, you try and create more and more solutions for every problem. You find hundred solutions, not finding hundred problems to every solution. So I mean to that extent this entire journey Sameer, that you have taken through Scotch foundation and all the other activities that you do, where you have been documenting, you have been awarding rewarding many of us who have, whose. Whose efforts were possibly who, which all that would have remained completely undocumented. All that got documented and believe me that's a great service because you Know, we are very poor in documentation. We all, you know, busy with work. But if you start documenting, you will have millions of case studies which can still store straight away go to Harvard's or any other big business schools or anywhere. But we are very poor in documenting, especially in government. Because you also, and many of us who document actually are also criticized by many others who actually think that you know, by documenting you're trying to, you know, boast about your own work. But believe me, it's not nothing to do with boasting. When you document, you allow future generations to learn from the mistakes that you did. You also allow continuity to happen. And believe me, that remained after the soccer m experience. I had been continuously, wherever I am, I will, I've always been documenting and, and releasing all the fact sheets about the projects that we did. And that really kind of helps the future generations to take the legacy forward. So I'm very happy that you have documented what the Honorable Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi Ji has. Has. Has achieved, has done in the last 25 years of his public life. It has many chapters which brings, brings out the real development that has happened in our country. And I'm pretty certain all of us are going to lay our hands at this book and buy this book. I think important thing is not get a free copy. Buy this book, use it for our research work. Use it for any experience and if you have any inputs, provide that to Sameer so that you know he comes with Modinomics 3 in. In quick time as you have done at this time. So once again my congratulations to the Scotch group and Sameer. I am, I'm pretty certain this will be a bestseller in few days. Thank you.
Sri Sanjay Jajoji Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Sri Sameer Kocher Chairman Scots Group and author of this book. Sri Guru Saran Danjal Vice Chairman Scots Group Sri Rohan Kochar Founder, Scotch Law Office Ladies and gentlemen, namaste to you all. I am very happy to participate in this program to launch our honorable Prime Minister's book Modinamics. This is not a book. This is an journey of history and it is an one legend continuously 25 years he is occupying the public office early first of Chief Minister of Gujarat and second of as a Prime Minister of this big country. So I must congratulate to the organizers and author to release such a kind of book on the occasion of our Honorable Prime Minister's 75th year of the birth birthday. So the nation is celebrating our honorable Prime Minister's birthday from 17th to October 2nd. As in Seva Pakwada for the two weeks the people are participating or they are organizing such of blood donation camps and medical camps and various activities. The entire 15 days they are taking place. One side is a party, one side is government. Another side volunteers and another one side for the NGOs so various kind of works they are all taking participating. So this our Sameer Kochaji's releasing Prime minister's contribution to the economy. This book is an journey of the legend of our honorable Prime Minister. So friends, while we talk about the economics we all everyone thinks that one is for it is in trade or commerce or exchange or here the economies is inclusive economy. Our Prime Minister's first major concept is inclusive. While we started he started in 2014 for Jandan account early People doesn't know I am coming from a rural background. People doesn't know Even my father, my mother doesn't know how to go to the bank. After 2014 only the people come to know to the bank is facilitating. Bank is giving accounts. Bank is giving free account. And bank through bank the government schemes are coming to the beneficiary. So this revolution is happened in 2014 through the Jandana count. After the Jandan account you know the Bhima, Suraksha, Yojana and Suraksha for the accident benefits. And also the girls children child for the Betty Pachao Beti Padao. Like so many schemes came up for the welfare of the public. One side we are Talking about the 2047 is for our Vixit Bharat. If we go to the Vixit Bharat. One side our honorable prime minister is working for the nations development for the infrastructure development. Another side our honorable prime minister is developing the social development. So the prime Kisan farmers youth magilla and as well as the 4 these 4 category people has to come up the simultaneously that is the our Prime Minister's concept For that Prime Minister's Kisan Sammanidhi for the youths new Bharat Ang Bharat my India. So the force facilities and for the Garibs Prime Ministers Awas Yojana Prime Minister Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana Prime Minister Soch Bharat mission like various schemes are taking place because of the last 1012 years our Prime Minister's initiative in the social sector 25 crore people are come from came from to the poverty line to the upper level. So this first time it is happening in the country. Our people are pride. They are happy. 25 crore people are coming up from the poverty line. So this is a major achievement in the aspect of economic area. And also recent days we are seeing our country's growth is in 7.8 percentage. While after the COVID in the global level all countries they are all going back in the economy and we are marching forward. Our economy's growth is tremendously. We are growing in this our Prime Minister's continuous steps. Now we are the biggest fourth economic in the world. So these achievements are happening. This our honorable Prime Minister Sri Narendra Modi Ji's era. That and all we are very happy. And apart from this we are seeing our in infa one side infrastructure tax revolutions recent days gen GST how it is in getting our before 22nd another two days is there the rates are going to implement. But some of few companies like Anand Mahendra and now ITC they are all came forward. They reduced the rate. They are not waited for the up to 22nd they are reduced the rates. Now you see morning you take the newspapers. You are seeing the reduce all companies. All corporate companies are producers Advertisement that reduced prices are available. So this GST revolution is one side our economies, our people's participation economies and our the money or whatever the transaction is taking place. And while we talk about the economies and the same time we are I mentioned about the banks and the same time the digital transaction. While the discussion was there in parliament my Tamil Nadu person only he criticized Our PC Damaram was criticized Already Kocharjee mentioned the paralysis of the early government. Like his mindset. He told the people doesn't know. The people are not educated. The people doesn't know to operate the mobile phones or Internet. How they will participate in the digital transaction. I want to tell on example also here in my personal experience you are all aware that one in Tamil Nadu one district is Erodu district Irodu district Satimangalam. Satimangalam is the deepest forest area. In that forest area I visited that village. I want to visit some area. I traveled through that one roadside vendor was there. He sell. He sold that cucumber. So I purchased. Because of that time summertime everywhere in roadside Tamil Nadu they send this time I purchased the cucumber and I asked how to pay. He he recognized me. He initially he told no you don't pay. No, no no. We are all used to pay how you pay. You Tell me that he told Google pay. Anna you give Google pay. He told his number and I. So you see how it is. The digital transaction is reached the common man layman that is the. We our honorable prime minister trusted the citizens. So for that result we are getting and now everywhere in the street vendors everywhere. The digital transaction, the cash transaction is very less. No? You see in this hall you ask anyone to give 100 rupees. I think no carry money cash. So this is the. This is the status now the people are transforming and government is trusting the people. The people also trusting the government. So this under our honorable prime minister's dynamic leader he is taking our nations towards the Vixit Bharat 2047. We are all seeing the highways, express highways, modern highways, industrial highways like Coridas like one side railway is taking a huge infrastructure development. Airports like this one side and another side the social sector is getting ready to go to the celebrate Vixit Bharat 2047 while we celebrate 100th year of our independence we will be our Abdul Kalam former president. He is also from Tamil Naduki told you dream your dream will be fulfilled. That dream is Vixit Bharat. Our country will be the progressive country. So we all work together. We will take our nation as an Vixit Bharat. Thank you very much. Thank you. Once again I congratulate the organizers to initiate this such. Thank you very much.
Hon. Muruganji Sanjay Jaju ji, I have a very difficult job. You know, the job of a reforms historian is very close to that of a doctor performing an open heart surgery. You know, the body is still alive. The body, the machine outside is pumping and you are operating on the body. So you are writing about things that are still very close to they have happened. Reform history of India started in 1991 onwards. And to be able to do that and do that Truthfully, without anybody questioning what you have said takes a great amount of skill and a lot of bravado, if I may say so. None of my works has ever been questioned by any part of the political spectrum. And I have privilege of having friends across all parties, whether it's the UPA Bloc, NDA Bloc, Trinamool, I mean, you name it and I have a great amount of affection and regard all across. Unfortunately, it is also the job of a reforms historian to keep rekindling public memory because public memory is very short. So if you look at the period up to 91 to 2010 in the Indian reform, it was a great period of reform. There was a great story, the country was taking great strides. Unfortunately, what we may have forgotten already was the kind of problem and the kind of issues the country was facing. From 2010 to 2013 there was complete policy paralysis. We had these EGOM's empowered group of minister committees which I describe in my book as grey towers of power with no accountability. Every decision used to go there and get stuck. There was an entire narrative of corruption about India. Whether it was the Commonwealth Games, whether it was telecom, whether it was coal. It was very difficult to keep your head up and talk in community of nations because this whole story about corruption was so rampant. The GDP had petered down, it had become very low. Inflation was high, interest rates are higher still, starving business out of crucial credit. There was joblessness. And those of you do not remember, we had this great person called Jairam Ramesh in the Environment Ministry followed by Jayanti Nitrajan. Between the two of them, probably they shaved off 2% of Indian GDP. The I core was in a bad shape. Incremental capital output ratio. So the country was in a situation of utter hopelessness. And this is when somewhere towards the middle of 2013 rose a beacon of hope from Gujarat Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was not the prime ministerial candidate then I recall, I have met him on several occasions. So this was one occasion when this whole idea of Modi nomics was born. This was 17th of August 2013 at Mahatma Mandir in Gujarat. He had hosted a conference on Panchayati Raj and rural development. And this is where he made this big statement about opening the statue, you know, making the statue of unity. And I saw the kind of response people gave when he said that I want something from you. And he said that, you know, you are all farmers and Sardar Vallabh bhai Patelo is a farmer and what I want from you is one implement and that iron will be Melted and it will go into making the statue of unity. Modi. Modi. Modi. The whole hall, you know, I mean I can still feel the reverbation in my heart and in my body of that day. So much of connect he had with the people. This was the time when he was not declared yet as a Prime ministerial candidate. But there was a real fear in the opposition that he may be the person becoming the Prime Minister. So there was a whole narrative being made on Modiji and what possibly can go wrong with the country if he becomes the prime minister. So one very famous quote that was given those days was by a senior minister in the UPA government who said that the knowledge of Modi Ji on economics can fit behind a post aid stamp. So this was something that I brought up there. And Modi Ji asked me, he said Kocher Ji Jante, knowledge of economics, pure economics, inclusive economics, inclusive governance. So 91 onwards, what has happened in India while the economic reforms are delivered? Well, there have been close to zero governance reform and therefore the fruits have not reached the last mile. Then the growth is not inclusive. The growth will only be inclusive when governance reforms along with the economic reform. And he said then what is to be done? So I sitting in front of him, I coined the term Modi Nomics and I said sir, I am going to write this book about Gujarat model and how you use inclusive economics and inclusive governance in Gujarat to make Gujarat what it is as a shining example of hope that the entire country is looking forward to. It was probably one of the fastest written books. In the 17th of August we were discussing this and on 14th of February 2014 the book was released right here at the India Habitat Center. Modi Ji was to come and release the book himself. Unfortunately there was a political emergency at the last minute he could not do that. So he requested Mr. Arun Jaitley who came at an extremely short notice to come and release this book right here in this hall which was Modinomics. Ever since I have written that authoritative account I find that for people who are in the standard prototype or definitions of being economists or statisticians or administrators very seldom can understand what is Modinomics because it's not about any ism. It cuts across all these things. It's basically about common sense and it brings all these together things together to give maximum impact. So on 15 August 2014, when Modi ji launched Jandhan Yojana in September 2014, just a month later, I had written a book Defeating Poverty, Jandhan and Beyond. And I had said this one step of Jandhan Yojana and the Mudra Yojana and other things that he's talking about is what is going to defeat poverty in India. And I read that laid down the entire roadmap. It is not as if Mr. Modi had told me what he's going to do. It is just that I do have that depth of understanding of that person's mindset having studied him for 25 years over which various rules. Similarly in 2016 I came out with a book called Digital India Developed India which then panned out to. So the big difference that 2016 launch relaunch of Digital India made was that before 2016 Digital India was only about e governance and how to improve government efficiency. In 2016 it became about making India one of the largest digital economies. And the country is now well within. So the UPI revolution happened, the direct benefit transfers happened. So rest is all history. And my book will be available outside. I would pitch that you please buy a copy and read it because you will have all these details available there. In 2016 Mudra Yojana was launched. In 2017 there were questions about joblessness in India and that is where we came out with the first report on Pradhan Mantri Mudra Jojana and a job generative impact. How 5 crore 44 lakh jobs had been generated just over a period of two years because of the Mudra Yojana alone. In 2019 I wrote a book India 2030 when Modiji had given the vision of 10 trillion economy soon Covid hit so that had to be revised. So I came up with a book called India 2047 High Income with equity. And we defined inclusive growth or India 2047 as in India where there is growth which is job generative, it is spatially dispersed, it is equitable and it is sustainable. In 2024 elections happened and as the want of opposition is again big question marks on job creation. Now this obsession with formal jobs which is factories and shops and offices has to end. I think if we had continued with that obsession under Modi Ji's period. By the end of 2014 we were already facing a crisis of livelihoods in India. So the focus of Modi Ji schemes was on livelihoods at the least quality, life, education, health, clean cooking, fuel, ponche. So he had very basic priorities which was the unfinished agenda since independence which he is trying to now finish. So in 2024 when the elections there was this big debate about lack of jobs and the opposition was creating a lot of noise I think out came my report which Modiji reported, quoted five times across media on how so many jobs have been created due to centrally sponsored schemes as well as Pradhan, Mantri, Mudra, Yojana. And finally we are today when he has finished 25 years in public service, the biggest tribute that I could give to him was to bring together this work. So the fastest book written earlier was Modinomics. Now the fastest book written is Modinomics Journey of Inclusive Growth. The job was easy for me to finish in four months because I had already written six books on the subject and I had studied it across the country. And not only had studied Modi nomics, I had talked to hundreds and hundreds of people across various states of India documenting how which Yojana changed their life. And this book is interspersed with all those anecdotes. So they are real people, real Indians whose lives got changed in this journey of inclusive growth. God's blessings be added to Modi Ji's work. And I hope to see a Vixit Bharat along with all of you together by 2047. If not faster. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is indeed a great pleasure and privilege to introduce you to the next step of the Modinomics journey, the Modinomics journey of inclusive growth authored by Mr Samir Kochhar Skotch Group. Modinomics a journey of inclusive growth is more than a book, it is a comprehensive account of Prime Minister Narendra Modi Ji's 25 years in public office and an in depth verdict on his promise of inclusive growth to this great nation. From his early days in Gujarat to over a decade of national leadership, Modi Ji has consistently placed the idea of Sabka Sat, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas at the heart of governance. This book explores how the philosophy translated into policies and programs that reshaped India's economic and social landscape through financial inclusion, direct benefit transfers, housing, rural electrification, sanitation, health care, digital empowerment and infrastructure expansion. Millions who had long remained on on the margins were brought into the fold of development. By connecting households with banking through the Jandhan Yojana, ensuring clean cooking fuel through Ujwala, building toilets under Swachh Bharat, electrifying villages and expanding digital access. Modiji's governance reached the last mile with both scale and speed. Equally, the book assesses the reforms that powered India's macroeconomic resilience, GST insolvency and bankruptcy code, digital payments architecture and welfare delivery systems that made growth more transparent, efficient and accountable. At the same time, the book does not shy away from asking the central question, has the growth been truly inclusive? And to what extent have India's poor experience transformation in their everyday lives? Balancing narrative with evidence, Modinomics places India's journey in a global context. Highlighting how a country once defined by poverty and scarcity has increasingly become associated with opportunity, aspiration and scale. Marking a quarter of century of Mr. Modi in governance. This book is both a chronicle and a verdict. Measuring the distance traveled, the promises kept and the challenges that remain. It is an essential read for policymakers, scholars, business leaders and citizens who wish to understand not just the economics of Modi Ji, but also the larger story of India's quest for inclusive and sustainable growth.
Ladies and gentlemen, across our great nation, there is consensus on one small thing that whenever there is an auspicious occasion, be it a marriage in the family or the birth of a child, there is always a hundred rupee note which is given with a one rupee coin. And the journey that Scotch Group has seen across 100 summits today it is seeing the Shagun in the 101st Scotch Summit. So it's an auspicious day. I must say I've seen the entire Scotch family come up since 1997 and work hard to make this day a reality. So many congratulations to all of you for being a part of this journey and thank you very much. A very warm welcome to the Honorable Ministers, Honorable Justices, India's leading economists, constitutional law experts, distinguished public service leaders, captains of industry, doyens of your respective domain, as the saying goes. If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. And I humbly salute those amongst us and those who will be joining us through the course of the day. Thank you very much for your kind presence this morning from the length and breadth of the this great nation at the 101st Scotch Summit in New Delhi. Scotch has been at the forefront of nudging government to regulate online gaming in a way that balances innovation with social responsibility, always working towards the betterment of all stakeholders. Over the past several years it has engaged in a wide range of actors. State governments, regulators, medical experts at aims, legal scholarship, industry leaders to build consensus on a regulatory framework that is constitutionally sound, socially ethical and economically viable. Backed by empirical compliance studies and continuous dialogue with policymakers across several states, Scotch's work has helped shift the regulatory conversation from fragmented debates to a comprehensive, evidence based and stakeholder driven approach that proves promotes responsible growth for India's gaming ecosystem. Scotch has also come up with a comprehensive discussion framework on regulating gaming. Against this backdrop, the government should see Scotch as an important stakeholder in the gaming related legal landscape changes. The Promotion and Regulation of online Gaming Act 2025 is indeed a landmark initiative being the first national statute to address this sector and because of its dual qualities of being a novel and an ambitious initiative. It is all the more important that its implementation is robust, fair and constitutionally sound. This lecture therefore is titled Towards Responsible Regulation of Online Gaming in India. The honorable Prime Minister has rightly flagged that the mental harm caused by certain forms of online gaming, while welcoming the Online Gaming act as a step that safeguards society even as it boosts India's esport ecosystem. Scotch has addressed this very concern in its recent discussion paper which highlights how exploitative mechanics such as loot boxes, microtransactions and gambling style incentives aggravate risks of addiction psychological harm, especially in a country with limited mental health care infrastructure. The paper situates gaming within the broader domain of Internet related psychopathology and proposes the Responsible Digital Gaming Framework to ensure that innovation and esports goes hand in hand with protecting mental health and consumer well being. A balanced regulatory framework, ladies and gentlemen, is therefore not just economically prudent but also socially responsible. At present the acts design prohibiting all online money games without distinction of design purpose or harm profile risks transforming what was intended as a regulatory framework into a prohibitionist instrument. And such an approach, particularly bereft of stakeholder inputs, we respectfully submit, carries risks that are economic, social and constitutional. And our humble submissions are not offered in the spirit of criticism but in the spirit of constructive feedback. And we believe that by approaching implementation with with balance, consultation and humility, we can ensure that the act becomes a framework that protects consumers, supports innovation and respects our constitutional traditions. We had the privilege of listening to Professor R. Kavita Rao who said the tax to GDP ratio of states has been steadily increasing and the Center's trends have been slightly more volatile. The Union's tax to GDP ratio, if we look at it in the sense of a sum of its parts, the direct tax has been increasing and the indirect tax has been decreasing. India today has more than 500 million online gamers. The sector, if proportionately regulated, could contribute over 20,000 crores annually in GST and income taxes. The concern we humbly raise is that prohibition may unintentionally divert this activity offshore where neither revenues nor consumer protections are available to Indian citizens, and we recognize the government's broader ambition of positioning India as a global digital hub. To make this a reality, we suggest that regulation rather than prohibition is more consistent with fostering investor confidence and encouraging innovation across adjacent sectors such as fintech, education and advertising technology. A prohibition first approach sends a chilling signal to innovators and investors, deters capital inflows, and may threaten to hollow out adjacent sectors such as gamified education. International experience demonstrates that demand does not vanish with prohibition it migrates into informal and offshore spaces where enforcement becomes near impossible. These were the economic considerations, ladies and gentlemen, if you look at the social and public health risks, the social harms of compulsive play and addiction are real and we acknowledge the government's duty to address them. At the same time, we respectfully submit the that regulation provides more effective tools than prohibition visibility of platforms, parental control, spending caps, grievance, addressal and independence audits being some of them. If the activity does shift underground, these safeguards are lost and regulators are left without levers for intervention. A balanced regulatory model therefore serves both economic and public health objectives. We had the privilege of listening to Dr. M. Ramachandran today who said the Democratic Federal satcha should function in a proper way and if we are to discuss the constitutional safeguards on constitutional design, we humbly request that care be taken to preserve the balance between union and state powers. Matters of betting and gambling fall under the state list, while the center may rely on entry 31 for communication. Such an interpretation, if taken too far, could appear to encroach upon state competence. We also respectfully note that a blanket prohibition may face difficulty under the proportionality test of Article 191 as recognized in Modern dental college and the Puttaswamy judgment when less restrictive alternatives such as licensing and oversight are readily available. We raise these points to ensure that the act, once implemented, is robust and capable of withstanding judicial scrutiny and is able to effectively curb the harms with gaming rather than simply driving them underground and and rendering them invisible. Our policy suggestions, ladies and gentlemen, are as follows. On subordinate rulemaking the act leaves several technical details such as classification of permissible formats, due diligence obligations, consumer safeguards, advertising norms to subordinate legislation and we respectfully suggest publishing draft rules for public comment and organizing structured roundtables on sensitive issues to make consultation permanent. We humbly suggest the formation of a Standing Advisory Committee under Metis, bringing together regulators, industry, mental health professionals and consumer groups, and such a body could provide continuous feedback as trai, sebi and RBI already do we request for greater certainty and we humbly request consideration of the following clarifications around ambiguities that prohibition applies only to pooled stake formats and and not subscription or ad funded games that gamified marketing schemes and loyalty programs be carved out that ancillary service providers be shielded from liability that Indian firms may lawfully export gaming services to other jurisdictions where compliant with local laws that the Act's relationship with states laws and older central statutes be clearly specified and that the act provide detailed guidance on due diligence obligations, standards for content rating, parental controls, responsible gaming interventions and grievance redressal on approval and oversight mechanisms. Ladies and Gentlemen, we humbly submit a hybrid model for consideration. Self Certification with deemed approval Operators may self certify Green Zone and Yellow Zone games with deemed approval unless where objections are raised within a fixed period A central Registry where approved games may be listed in a central registry to give certainty to banks, app stores and payment providers. Regulatory Oversight where regulators should retain the ability to review applications, issue reasoned orders and provide appeals and this balances, we believe, efficiency with accountability and avoids unnecessary disruption. We also request for a reasonable transition period. We respectfully recommend a phased implementation, ideally over 18 months, which would allow operators to wind down responsibly to refund balances to consumers and give regulators time to establish digital compliance infrastructure. We had the privilege of listening to Professor S. Mahindra Dev who said that the State's role in growth is very important and the States play an important role in cooperative federalism and in that spirit we wish to discuss the broader legal and constitutional considerations such as federal and legislative competence. The Constitution, ladies and gentlemen, places betting and gambling under entry 34 of list 2, which is the State list. While Mighty is may wish to invoke Entry 31 of List 1 to regulate the online activity, such an expansive interpretation risks eroding state competence. Courts have historically guarded this balance, as in the case of RMD Chamar Bhagwala vs Union of India 1957. Affirming gambling as a distinct legislative subject for states in KR Lakshmanan vs State of Tamil Nadu in 1996, holding that even skill based games with wagering elements fall under gambling regulation and the principle of federal Balance recognized in SRB Union of India 1994 forms part of the basic structure. An interpretation that hollowed out large parts of list 2 and 3 merely because activities have migrated online may be seen to be constitutionally untenable when faced with judicial scrutiny on fundamental rights and proportionality. Ladies and gentlemen, Article 19 1G guarantees the freedom to practice any trade or profession and and restrictions must satisfy the test of proportionality which is based on four prongs, the first being legitimate aim, the second being a rational connection, the third being least restrictive means. And a blanket prohibition may not be seen as the least restrictive option when regulation can achieve the objective balancing of impact. Killing an entire business model is perhaps disproportionate to the social harm that is sought to be avoided. And this framework, as I mentioned earlier was crystallized in Modern Dental College versus State of Madhya Pradesh 2016 and the KS Puttaswamy versus Union of India 2017 judgment. And it underscores that prohibition may fail constitutional scrutiny. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, in the spirit of institutional balance, we suggest a co regulatory model. The center could handle cross border aspects payments, money laundering, fraud while states regulate gambling, advertising and consumer protection. To coordinate a national gaming and responsible Technology authority could be established modeled along the lines of the GST Council and such a body would ensure national coherence while respecting state competence. We also recommend a risk based classification where we propose replacing the outdated and archaic skills versus chance binary with a risk purpose matrix. The green zone which which will include educational and social games with minimal oversight. The yellow zone which will have casual games within apps purchases with a light safeguard orange zone for moderate risk formats with licensing and audits and the red zone for high stakes formats with stringent safeguards or prohibition. If unmitigable, corporate digital responsibility needs to be embedded in licensing obligations, parental controls, pending caps, playtime prompts, cooling off periods, independent audits, design features that exploit compul behavior, strict advertising codes particularly around celebrity endorsements, independent ombudsman for grievances, transparency dashboards with quarterly compliant data. This ladies and gentlemen, in our view would align India with international best practices and send a strong message of responsible governance. In summation, ladies and gentlemen, the Promotion and Regulation of online Gaming Act 2025 is a milestone. It is a landmark initiative. Our suggestions are humble recommendations intended to strengthen its implementation. We believe that a framework that is consultative in process, proportionate in design and cooperative in governance will safeguard consumers, preserve revenues and enhance India's reputation as a responsible digital leader. We place these thoughts before you with the utmost respect and stand ready to support the government and in refining rules, engaging with stakeholders and building institutional capacity. Thank you.
Dr M Ramachandran Thank you. Let me start by thanking Sri Sameer Kocher and the Scotch foundation for this opportunity being given to me. As I always mention, the topics which you choose are little complicated. You talk about federalism, finances and development. So where is the intersection point? Or where is the meeting point if that is possible? I suppose the eminent speakers who have already spoken here have thrown enough light on what we need to take care of in this process of either reaching the intersection or deciding to go beyond the intersection. I will just start with two statements. Democracy is desirable because it nurtures development and is mindful of justice. So we opted for a democratic scheme of things and that is important. And while planning for this talk today, while planning for this talk today, I was thinking we have esteemed leaders from different states also here when it is Independence Day, we always talk about celebrating independence. I think there is lot of meaning in that. Preserving that independence which we got with great struggle, that means whole lot of things. And that is something which needs to be conveyed properly to the younger generation, more so the students and more so those who are supposed to take the country forward. And there is, there is whole lot of thing which needs to be done. When we see what is happening around us in democratic systems, in established democracies, there are indications that we have to be even more alert as far as preserving this system scheme is concerned. The second statement I would like to refer to is democracy alone provides a credible covenant for an egalitarian and inclusive social order. Now again, those words have lot of meaning. And I suppose the leaders we elect, the governance system which we establish constantly tries to address these points so that it means meaningful for the large number of people we have in our country. When we look at the federal structure, I think one point which is clear is it involves gives, give and take. On the one hand we have the central government, on the other hand we have the state governments. There are grievances, there are achievements, there are celebrations. But at the same time it's a question of give and take on both sides which alone will strengthen this process which we have taken for ourselves. Elections form an integral part of this process. There have been discussions about the election process. I suppose when everything is laid down as to how we participate in this process of democracy election, it's important for us to address where our contribution or our role comes. Having been part of a service, I have seen those days when electoral rolls are prepared, elections are held and the process is taken forward. And it happens because there is a whole lot of well aligned system in our entire country. And at each stage there is opportunity for people to participate in this process. I have moved from city to city, place to place. When we go to a new place, we try to get our name enrolled in the electoral list. Ideally, if my name figures at another place in this scheme of things, a message would go to the earlier place that so and so has registered at this new place. So his or her name need to be deleted. That is one way of looking at things. There is so much talk about the electoral load preparation. I think that is again a very well laid down system where electoral loads are prepared. People get opportunity and those who think they are left out, they have an opportunity to represent and get their name included in the process. These aspects which have been well laid down as far as the electoral role or the democratic process is concerned, that needs to be understood by each one of us and those who can help us in the process. That is where probably the representatives, the political parties at the booth level come in. It is not a massive process, it is a booth level process where participation should be ensured. And if there is something missing that could be corrected and that is something which is laid down. So what we should try to do is strengthen that process so that each person's right to cast his or her vote gets listed in the electoral role and then it is up to each one of us to exercise that franchise. I must also mention here, since it is an opportunity given to me. I was in one of the UP districts, there was a very powerful politician. I won't take names. A politician who used to depend largely on the caste support he used to get in the area. There were complaints. So a repoll was ordered and as divisional commissioner and dig of the range the two of us had to go and camp in that area to get the repoll done. One of the things which we did was to shuffle the polling personnel because there was a general statement that the powerful politicians succeed in getting their preferred persons as polling officers. And I hope my political leader here won't mind it. I'm talking about a different part of the country where the poll officials are also deputed in such a way that he or they will show some consideration for that particular candidate. So a total reshuffle took place. The poll process went on. All right. And this candidate, a powerful person again I won't mention his name and I remember the time also from 7 in the evening till 7:30 in the evening he gave me a lecture on telephone that. Do you think because I am an outsider in a state like UP coming from the south, do you think you can reform the poll process of the country by taking steps like this? That was the crux of his statement. And some of you know me well, I am, I am a good listener. So I do not argue with a person. So, and especially when a candidate wants to say something, I thought it is good to listen to the person as to what is the grievance or point he or she has to make. So these are all part of the processes in, in the democratic scheme of things, elections. But to be. To be fair, it's the system which makes this happen and the system does Its best to make sure that the election process is fair and impartial. Process of consultation with chief ministers. There was a reference to the Interstate Council. One hopes that that process is strengthened so that there is more dialogue between the central scheme of things and the state scheme of things that becomes important. The GST Council has already been mentioned. Here is a good example where a good platform has become available. And that again happened as democracy or governance evolved in our country. This is something which was not there in the beginning. It came up subsequently and a process has been established. And as we notice the deliberations at this council they are detailed deliberations and even the latest deliberations. We noticed that what came out was a consensus approach. As far as the changes are concerned. I would also like to refer to the role of the All India Services. We must go back to the framers of the constitution as to why they made a reference to the All India Service. And look at the beauty of the system. I mean, I always feel proud that coming from Kerala I had an opportunity to work in Uttar Pradesh. Later in Uttarakhand at the center also. So this concept of All India Service that gives certain stability to the entire process of governance as far as our system is concerned. And that needs to be strengthened. And that system has to be as fair and impartial as possible. And it is one of the mechanism which have been introduced to see to it that our democratic federal structure functions in a proper way. There are concerns at the global level. We need to look at what these challenges are and what needs to be addressed at a particular level. As far as our country is concerned. I must also make a reference to those days when relations between the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister used to make a lot of difference. And to again quote one more example. Atal Bihari Bajpai Ji was the Prime Minister. Sri Narayanya Tiwari was the Chief Minister in the state. And they had a very good rapport. And when it came came to questions of development, the Chief Minister was successful in getting as much as possible from the central government for the state. So that is there is a personality equation also as far as good democracy is concerned, good governance is concerned and strengthening the federal system is concerned. There are other examples. I do not want to take you to those ones. Moving on to the area of finances, there was a reference to the Finance Commission mechanism. There are always discussions about the terms of reference of the finance Commission. Whether that is sufficient. And let's see what the present Finance commission comes up with. We have an expert in the area of finance sitting here, Professor Alok Quite often the states feel somewhat unhappy or dissatisfied as far as the process is concerned. I think that's also something which needs to evolve better because there was a reference to the revenues being raised. There is a feeling among states that more is being kept with the center though it has gone to the 41, 42% level as well. And there are other schemes also where states can take advantage. Again, I would like to make a reference to my experience as a secretary to the government. When I once traveled to the state of West Bengal. The chief minister was so definite about the process of the central scheme that the moment I entered his room he said My state has not been capable of taking advantage of whatever benefits you are providing and we have to improve. That's the type of approach chief ministers have as far as taking advantage of central resources is concerned. At the same time, Gujarat at that time was a well performing state which came up with large number of schemes. And when schemes are approved, projects, funds are allocated. The state would make it a point to fully utilize it as early as possible. I am only taking one or two examples and the state chief minister would look for opportunities of what more can I get from the federal sources? So that again is a concept of working in a cooperative manner. Cooperative federalism does not mean just a theory or a statement. You look for opportunities where you can take advantage, you perform well, you naturally get the advantage of that. And since there is a method of allocating resources among states, probably that is the limit to which states can take advantage. Whether one can go beyond that or not. Finance commissions have tried with mechanisms of incentives. I don't know whether they have really worked or they need to be improved upon. That is something which need to look into borrowing limits of states. I think it is increasingly becoming a matter of concern. Again an area where lot of focus is required. I live in a state where probably they borrow to the extent possible and if possible even beyond that. So on the one hand one can say that the state is keen to do more. At the same time there is a certain fiscal responsibility which we all have to fulfill. I have often wondered when states go for debt. I mean they cannot cross limits, but when they go for debt, does this aspect of burdening the future generations come to notice relevance or not? I don't think our discussions really take note of this aspect. As to how much is the burdening which we are passing on to the next generation. It's a difficult area. Political systems normally last for five years. So they want to do their best. But I think an ideal balance between revenue generation utilization would make a lot of difference. And I think fiscal personalities like Professor Rao would start thinking in terms of. I keep myself in that category, this steep increase in salaries, pensions, I don't know where we are going to end up with. So one has to also think in those terms as to where the line has to be because development expenditure has to come from somewhere and that comes from out of this total kitty only. Is my time over now? There was a brief reference. When we talk about center state relations quite often what is not discussed in detail is the relation between the states and the local bodies, urban local bodies, panchayats and again I am reminded of a statement by a veteran chief minister who said at that time, many years back that he said about the state government. So that was the type of attitude the chief ministers had towards the local bodies. Now we have a Madam Minister here, the 18 items listed in the list for urban bodies to be transferred to the local bodies so that governance lies where it should be. I don't know whether there is one single state Alokji, whether there is one single state which has done all 18. I don't think there is any single state in our country which has transferred all the 18 functions to the urban or other Panchayat bodies. There is more transfer urban bodies. It does not happen Empowerment when we talk about when we have states complain to the center about we are not allowed to perform and function. There is another category in the states where the local bodies, particularly the urban local bodies, they cannot go and borrow as they wish. It is again controlled or limited by the state system ideally so because local bodies cannot be allowed to borrow any amount. But there is a limitation there also they do not have the capacity to raise the type of resources they need because again it is all within the scheme of things of the state. So when we have expectations from cities and urban bodies, how do they perform those tasks? That is the critical question and that is something which needs to be addressed much, much more proactively if our system is to remain strong enough. Because we talk about decentralization, governance, going to those levels. So if that has to happen, there has to be enough facilitation at that level as well so that they can perform those tasks better which they are supposed to do. Now that's again I think one area which needs to be looked into in much, much more detail. From my time onwards we have been talking about empowering the local bodies, you know, devouring more resources and things like that. Sometimes the finance Commission gives some sort of relief and one manages to live with that. But when the finance commission came with points about incentives, I don't think the performance has been equally good all over the country. So that is something which needs to be looked into. And I think there are newer areas also getting added. We all live in our cities and towns. We talk about potholes on the roads, we talk about flooding in the cities. Now these are all massive tasks which need huge resource allocation. If we have to address these issues properly without looking at the resource part of it, we are all happy complaining that this is not happening. That is not happening. Either there is a problem about management of resources at the local body level or as I said, there is limitation as far as generation of resources is concerned or there is some sort of fine tuning of understanding required between the state governments and the local body governments. If these issues have to be addressed, ultimately all our living, all our activities are going to be at the city end, an ordinary person, citizen living there. Luckily the problems of water, electricity are no longer there. But he or she would look for proper mobility, easy access and decent standards of living as far as cities are concerned. Now there again, I think we need to have a relook at our scheme of things so that more can happen there and people feel comfortable at that level. When we come to the development part of it, we all know it is a joint effort and there have been lots of efforts. Reducing poverty, bringing about improvements in health parameters, education standards, these are all critical issues. There is always a discussion about what percentage of GDP you are spending on these. I think some of these also require increased focus so that we reach the certain minimum levels which are required. And that's where probably more needs to be done. When we look at higher education in the states, what we find today is problems between the chancellor who is normally the governor and the state government or vice chancellors. Whereas our focus should be on bringing about improvements in our in our education standards, more so at the higher education level because that's the only option left for people to prosper in life, move to areas where they can do more of the work. So unfortunately some of these aspects get more highlighted, more focused on than the critical aspect which needs to be addressed. And that's a matter of concern. As I say, at the same time when we talk about various central schemes, there are states which have taken advantage of that and brought about changes. I came across a statement by a Meghalaya officer who referred to taking advantage of central schemes and follow on of central schemes. How states have Benefited And I just read out the statement made by the officer. I argue that implementation of NG NREGA Narega people call it in Meghalaya and the development of village level institutions called village employment Councils have not only enabled participatory governance but has also enhanced the institutional capability of village level development institutions. It has created an overall framework for delivering development to the village. So there is an appreciation of the. The content of the program, the change it has brought about and how it is making a difference. It makes a difference in smaller states where issues are much, much more prominent and where these initiatives bring about changes. And that is where I think we should appreciate the relevance of these programs and take them forward as required. So I come back to the point. When we talk about lack of discussion between the federal system and the state system, it equally well applies to the state and the local body system as well. So both levels we need to bring about improvement so that we can achieve what we want to. Also I would like to stress upon the require need for having independent neutral oversight mechanisms. If there are problems issues. That is one platform we can have which could take advantage of these issues. I. I always argue this point that senior citizens who have had experience in life programs projects can equally well play a role if they are neutral as far as their approach is concerned. We need to strengthen our institutions. All the more relevant due in the context of recent discussions which are going on. Whether it is the election commission or the CAG mechanism or the finance Committee commission. Platforms for dialogue have to be there and you have to take advantage of that. And I think probably if politics can be kept aside when these discussions take place, then it should be possible for all our leaders to do a lot as far as developing the country, taking the country and to the goals of Vikasit Bharat, which was referred to here, can happen in every democracy. Good governance does not happen automatically. And we have seen this over a period of time. We have had trials and tribulations. We have overcome and we have brought about changes. And that is what is critical. And that is where I think organizations like this foundation could play a more active role in bringing out what needs to be done. I do not know, Sameerji, whether someone has looked at it or allergy, someone has looked at it. How each state performs as far as this entire schema of things is concerned, if that could come out not to criticize the states but to highlight where they stand with regard to these various essential parameters and where they stand with regard to their level of performance in a professional manner. I mean, some win awards for some schemes, that's fine. But overall, where is it and what can be done to bring about changes? If it is done in an independent, neutral manner, I think that would be helpful for the states. It has to be. The citizens have to play a very active role in making this happen. And I am hopeful that India will be a country free of hunger, illiteracy and poverty as early as possible. Here the issue of inclusion becomes important. And I think the constitution matters to each citizen because it provides the structure of governance as well as shaping the direction of our policies. So I am glad that Scotch decided to highlight this particular topic. And I do hope today's deliberations will take us forward as far as bringing about the required corrections are concerned and we all should be able to work together as far as taking our country forward is concerned. It's a big challenge. There are issues, but I'm sure with the type of capability we have and the type of understanding we have and the mutual appreciation we have, it should be possible for all of us together to take this forward. Thank you once again for this opportunity.
Prof R Kavita Rao Thank you very much for inviting me here today. It is. It's an honor to. I think the slides. Okay. It's an honor to be here. It is also with great pleasure I've been seeing the awards that the various states have been given. The idea that we recognize states which are doing good work and present the success story for everybody else to take home lessons is a wonderful idea. So congratulations to you sir on that idea. I'm honored that you've asked me to be here today. I would like to take 10, 15 minutes to talk a little bit about the way we the question about how we finance growth and development. As Mr. Kocher spoke in the morning. Democracy is about negotiation for us. The federal structure is about a system where center collects a lot of revenue where the states spend a larger share to states collectible about 35% of revenue but spend about 60%. And we do observe that there is a large role, larger growing role we are assigning to the states. We are expecting them to develop visions for growth. A lot of the states are developing their own Vixit Bharat State versions. And so ultimately we come down to the elephant in the room. How do we finance it? We can borrow, but there's only limited space. Given all, we have all committed ourselves to frbm. So then the story comes back to taxes. And so we'll spend 10, 15 minutes talking a little bit about what reforms in taxation has meant for India, how far we have come in our effort to raise revenues and what might be the challenges going forward. I hope this is visible. Basically, the slide is showing you the tax to GDP ratio of the states and the center. The big takeaway from the slide is that the revenues of the states have been more or less steadily increasing. They've gone up from about 4%, a little over 4% to 7% over the last 20, 35 years from 1980 onwards. In contrast, while centre raises a lot more revenue, it raises two thirds of the revenues in the country. The revenue profile of the centre is more volatile. There are big ups and there are also big downward movements. The idea that we need to improve our tax GDP ratio has been a part of our discourse. Everybody, every tax reform commission has spoken about it, every finance commission has spoken about it, every plan document has spoken about it. So there is no controversy, there is no disagreement on that broad idea. What if you look at Union Government's tax to GDP ratio in terms of direct taxes, which is income tax and corporate tax vis a vis indirect taxes. The big story from this slide is that the share of direct taxes has gone up, the share of indirect taxes has gone down. Indirect taxes includes at this moment GST and customs. Earlier it would include excise duty, service tax and customs. What you will also observe is that post 20078 direct taxes are not that buoyant. So the trend is flat. So till 2008 income taxes show a clear consistent growth. Thereafter it is not there. So what is it that our tax reforms commissions have given? Given. So big picture, we have increased. If you go back to the earlier slide, we have increased from less than 14% to 18 and a half percent. So we have had about 5 percentage point growth in our tax to GDP ratio over a 45 year period. If you look at the lines, the vertical lines, they present for us, identify for us the major periods of reform. So the first line represents the introduction of MOD VAT. That was 1987. The idea of MOD VAT was there is too much cascading in the system. So we should reduce cascading. So therefore we should give tax credit. The advantage is it creates a more efficient tax system. The disadvantage is it reduces the amount of revenues you collect. It caps the amount of revenues you collect. 1991 is the second vertical line that you see. And that is the period when we undertook major reforms. It's referred to as Chalaya Committee on Tax reforms. There were reforms in income. Tax rates were brought down. There were many slabs. We got it down to four slabs. The peak rate was brought down. The customs duties were brought down as a measure of improvement efficiency in the economy. In terms of tax to GDP ratio. However, you will see that decade brought the tax to GDP ratio down. We didn't actually see an improvement. So there is economic growth, there's better efficiency, but that does not directly translate into revenues. The period from 2001 to 20078 is considered an outlier for India. A period of very high growth but also very high sharp increases in corporate tax collections. And what drives this large part of the driver seem to have been related to IT sector IT adoption in the corporate tax administration. So there were tax administration driven improvements which led to a huge increase in tax to GDP ratio. If you look at 2007 onwards, there is again a decline. And this is the period when global financial crisis required the government to do macro stabilization in the form of fiscal incentives. So we reduced our excise duty rates and that brought down our tax to GDP ratios. Thereafter you will find that it sort of fluctuates around that broad trend. There are ups and downs. If you look at the last vertical line, that is 2017-18, that's the introduction of GST. Once again, GST is introduced as a way to do a more efficient tax system. It was intended only to be revenue neutral. In the initial years there were a few hiccups. So we were not revenue neutral. And that followed Those initial years we also saw the impact of COVID So we had a drop in revenue collections alongside 2019. I haven't flagged it for you. Here is also the year when the Union government introduced the alternative scheme of taxation for corporate taxes. So there is an alternative to tax regime available which implies a lower tax liability. Once again, observe tax to GDP ratio falls. When we are announcing big changes in our tax system where we are aiming for efficiency and simplification, rationalization and simplification. There are a few quotes. I will skip them because I promise to take about 50, 15 minutes. I don't want to overshoot my time. The broad idea is that most of our tax reforms identified the challenge in the economy as a tax system which is not encouraging investment, creating distortions. And we wanted to clean it out with the idea, with the hope that we get better efficient economic functioning. So then, what is it we are missing? We seem to be missing something crucial. What is it we are missing to think about? Increases in tax to GDP ratio? Perhaps we have to talk about changes in the tax base. The average educated person on the street today, if you ask them if we would like a higher tax to GDP ratio, the answer is yes, but please find somebody else to tax. The idea is that not all of us are paying enough tax. There are people who are outside the system. So the identification of the missing taxpayer seems to have become a critical issue. So there are two ways of changing the tax base. One is to reduce exemptions and concessions. If you look at this slide, this is your revenue foregone, which is a reflection of how much incentive the system provides. Corporate tax we have actually reduced our exemptions and concessions. So you see the blue line which goes down in personal income tax. However, we have gone back and forth, so we haven't been consistent. We have brought in a new tax regime now for personal income tax as well. What does the new regime do for both corporate tax and personal income tax? We are proposing a regime which says that that you can choose a regime with higher taxes and exemption or you can choose a regime with no exemptions and lower tax rate. How do you think the taxpayers divide themselves? People who can avail exemptions, choose the higher rate but pay lower tax. People who think that that regime doesn't give them good opportunity go to the other regime. So in both cases we reduce the amount of revenues we are collecting. We hope efficiency improves, we hope investments happen. But so far we haven't seen those positive effects trickle down. The second element in the story is to bring in new sectors under tax. In services, we did a big job. 1994 is when we started bringing services under the tax base. By the time we came to 2003, four we had got a comprehensive coverage of services and GST actually brought in a structural and more efficient system of taxation. The big elephant in the room therefore is agriculture. There are indirect taxes on agriculture, but direct taxes on agriculture don't apply. As a tax country, we have to have a sense of whether this differentiation between agriculture and non agriculture is useful for us or is it problematic. That's a policy question that we need to think about. There Are no clear answers on whether we should step this way or that way. But we need to think about the other important thing is how to improve compliance. And what do we mean by that? How do we improve the extent of formalization in the economy? We describe India as an informal, large informal sector, which means there are many agents in the country who think being part of the tax system is not useful. It can be msme, it can be small manufacturers. There is the benefits of being in the tax system and the cost of being in the tax system don't work out. So perhaps instead of trying to reform the tax system, we have to go back to the drawing board to ask what is it that they are looking for in the formal economy and see if we can sort that out. Credit is usually presented as one element in that story. Finally, there are perceptions of how high tax and unfair tax, which creates problems. Income tax rates change every few years. The latest one we've just observed where we increase the exemption threshold to 12 lakhs. If you're in the new regime, what drives these increases? On the one side, we argue that we have very few people who pay taxes. So the few people who do pay taxes feel aggrieved that they are unfairly being made to pay tax. So every few years the central government has feels the need to assuage this concern and raise the exemption threshold which continues to keep the number of taxpayers small. So do we have to think of a way of cracking this disparity? I will just take two more minutes of your time and I'll stop. We did a small survey, very small, hundred odd people, and we were trying to understand what people's perceptions are. And I've picked out two slides out of that to highlight two points to you. This slide is trying to present a juxtaposition of two questions. We are asking people, is the amount of tax you paid fair or too much? And we are asking on the other side, are there deductions in the tax feature regime that you can avail to reduce your liability? I've circled through numbers. Those are the big clusters of people. There is one large chunk of people who believe that the amount of tax they pay is fair. And there are some exemptions available so they are satisfied with the system. And there are others who argue they pay too much and they don't want exemptions and they want lower rates of tax. So we have two separate groups arguing for completely different things from the tax structure. Finally, last slide, I promise I stopped there. The question was asked, why do you think people evade tax and people who are allowed to choose multiple options. The choice which brought the most votes, let's call them, is the taxes are too high when compared to the benefits people are getting and government does not providing services which people think are important. What this means is we have to do a better job of communicating what the money is doing. It is not that governments don't do enough, but if we differentiate, if we can communicate better on what is is being achieved through the revenues being raised, we perhaps have a better sense of how to satisfy the needs of the citizen in the country. I'll stop there. Thank you.
The distinguished panel members, Mr. Samir Kocher and all the participants. A very good morning to all of you. Let me first thank Mr. Sameer Kocher and others from Scotch foundation for inviting me for this function. You know, in my present position I can't give prescriptions so I can learn from them. What are the prescriptions from others. So I'll talk about briefly on regional disparities, finance and cooperative federalism. As you know, India's extraordinary progress over time has been shaped by two foundational constitutional principles. One is democracy, other is federalism. And our democratic institutions are very robust and for a long time. So democracy affords citizens the mechanisms for voice participation and accountability while federalism facilitates governance that is in tune with India's profound diversity. So this diversity we all know that cuts across linguistic, cultural, ethical ethic and socio economic variations across 28 states and eight union territories leading to a governance model that balances unity with autonomy. Regarding Vixit Bharat, as I already mentioned, you know we have three goals of Vixit Bharat. It's not just growth. Growth is one of the things in growth, of course we have to get $30 trillion by 2047 and the estimates per capita varies from 14,000 to $18,000 there. I think state's role in growth is important. In fact many of the states are announcing the. You know, by 2030 or 2047 their goals. Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and other UP Tamil Nadu all announced the goals for the Vixit Bharat or even before by 2030 thing. So state's role is important. Similarly the inclusive growth, the second goal of Vixit Bharat the where we have to achieve several indicators mentioned earlier the social sector and of course inclusive growth. Employment is one of the most important thing for quality. Employment is important. Similarly the social sector mentioned the life expectancy several things we have to achieve. And third of course is the sustainability because that's also becoming an important one. How do you have development with sustainable goals? The Prime Minister has announced net zero emissions by 2070. And then we already achieved this renewable energy by 50% of that. And also he also said lifestyle for environment is also important from the individual point of view. So three are important. And states play an important role in achieving these goals. And then I'll speak about because states spend 60% of the public expenditure and they deliver essential services including education, health, infrastructure, skill development, agriculture and urban administrations. So in essence India's essential developed status linked to the transformation of each state into a robust engine of growth, inclusive growth and sustainable growth. As already mentioned, the India's federal framework over time 1950s to 1970s and also with the economic reforms states role also become more important in inviting investment FDI as well as the domestic investment. And later of course the finance commissions also increase the share to 42%. The 14th Finance Commission and GST Council etc. And also the replacement of the planning commission by with Niti Aayog in 2015 was intended to advance this cooperative federalism. Because shifting from top down approach to the, you know, collaboration with the state state governments and these institutional evolutions over time particularly Niti Ayog and others it reflects the Indian's federal democracy. Now I come to the you know, regional disparities in for because to know about this you need for framing appropriate policies. You need to know what are the regional disparities. So the existence of wide inter regional variations in a vast country like India is well recognized. It's a diverse country. There are so many regional disparities. So all the five year plans earlier in the planning commission they talked about this. And now Niti Aayog also doing lots of studies at state level. It's a serious issue regional disparities. In the post reform period, of course the central government role declined because the deregulation in many sectors of the economy, more private sector played an important role. And the empirical evidence shows that interstate disparities in per capita GSDP has increased over time. That means rich states are growing faster whereas some of the states are growing other states like Bihar and other going but not at the same pace. So there is a divergence in the inter regional disparities. But in human development there is a decline in disparities like life expectancy, infant mortality. But that is expected because the less developed states will catch up with developed states like Bihar catching up the Kerala infant mortality or life expectancy. So that's expected. Moreover, many of the poorer states could contribute more to economic development because of demographic dividend because some of the states like Bihar, UP and other things will have more advantage later. For for example, the old age population in Kerala will be 17% by 2036 but in Bihar it will be 8%. So that has more advantage in demographic dividend. A study done by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister it shows they did the relative performance of states from 1960-61 to 2324. It shows some interesting results. As expected, western states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa and southern states have improved their positions. But in the north there is a difference between Punjab and Haryana performance. Haryana has done better than Punjab in relative status. In East, West Bengal has experienced a decline but the Bihar, although there is increase in the share still the per capita income is very low compared to other states. Hopefully it will catch up. But one state, Odisha has done very well in the last few years in the eastern region. In fact, recently Nithyayog brought out Fiscal Health Index. All of you know it 2025. The analysis clearly highlights strong revenue mobilization. Effective expenditure management and prudent fiscal practices are critical for determinants of success. The top performing states are Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Jharkhand and Gujarat in the fiscal Health index while the bottom five which the Nithya calls aspirational states are Haryana, Kerala, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh and Punjab. But of course Andhra Pradesh data refers to the earlier regime. However, the state's performance varies across the five subcategories in fiscal index. So fiscal health of state is emerging as a critical factor in shaping India's overall economic stability and growth trend trajectory. However, rising fiscal deficits, unbalanced expenditure and increasing off budget liabilities at the state level highlight the urgent need for consistent and transparent fiscal management policies. So thus strengthening state finances is vital for ensuring stable economic growth and achieving Vixit Bharat goals. Turning to finance commissions, they determined as mentioned they Were vertical share and horizontal shares. The horizontal distribution formula of the Finance Commission is an important instrument for tackling inequalities across states. In fact, in one of his articles on interstate inequalities, Dr. Y.V. reddy, the former Governor RBA Governor indicated that except the Finance Commission, all other public institutions did not focus on the inequalities among states. Even the earlier planning commissions per capita outlays were higher for richer states. Even centralist sponsored schemes required matching contributions from states and even private capital, private investment. And all richer states attract even the external market borrowings. And all even a central tax concessions also tend to be regressive. Thus, except the Finance Commission across you know which takes into account the inequalities others have not taken to account. And as mentioned that you know 12th Finance Commission to 14th 15th Finance Commission if you see the data again the comparable data of states show that there is increase in the disparities. So in the formula we all know Finance commissions per capita income distance is the most important indicator for tackling income disparities across states. So why this per capita income? Because important idea is income distance is important because backward states also should get more funds in order to improve their health, education, water, sanitation, etc. So based on the formula, less developed states should get more funds. But the richer and high performing states complain obviously they are being penalized performance because we are performing well, we are getting less funds. So the Finance Commission generally balances between these two viewpoints. I mean I can't go into the 16th Finance Committee what they are going to do and all now. So what are the determinants of economic growth across states? There have been a number of studies examined these determinants. Studies show that infrastructure development, social sector expenditure, credit, deposit ratio, urbanization, all these are important. So to conclude, India is now aspiring to achieve the status of a developed nation by 2047 with inclusive development at the 100th anniversary of independence. And role of states in this journey is equally crucial if India wants to become a developed country. In vast country like India, inter regional disparities are expected. In fact, one of the British economist John Robinson once said, whatever you can rightly say about India in one part of the country, the opposite is also true in another part of the country. Because if you say something on Kerala, opposite may be true what you say in Punjab. So this diversity is there. So it is the healthiest sign. States are competing by announcing goals of an SDP thing. Lastly also decentralization may be needed within states like getting to Panchayats, municipal councils and the other things. So the last point is the experience of GST reform and GST Council shows an important example of cooperative federalism which Mr. Kocher also mentioned. So to end, it may be noted that vibrant democracy and strengthened cooperative federalism are very important for achieving our Vixit Bharat. Thank you very much.
Namaskar and good morning. Welcome to this 101st Scotch Summit. It takes a very long journey to reach where we have reached today. And we have the privilege of people from all over the country being present here with us today. From honorable ministers from states to people from districts, from people from Panchayati Raj institutions. It's a very wide eclectical presence. But it's all of you together that make India work. So my opening remarks today is about federalism because the first conference that we're doing is on the subject of intersections of democracy. Democracy is an intersection. Democracy actually in a country like India is a negotiation. It's an ongoing negotiation between centers and states and the local bodies. And only with this negotiation is what would deliver to us the dream of Vixit Bharat which we define as a country which has got high income, which is 30 to $40 trillion, economy, per capita income of 18,000 to 26,000. There is no extreme poverty. It has been eradicated. And there are no regional disparities which have been eradicated through targeting aspirational districts, guaranteeing universal access to health, education, sanitation and digital infrastructure, and establishing global leadership and innovation, sustainability and governance reforms. Now how is all of this going to be delivered? It cannot be delivered without very active participation from the state governments. Because finally, India is a union of states and the sum of its parts has to be Greater than the whole. So if you look at India's federal revolution, we started off with a control and command economy till the 70s through the Planning Commission 91 onwards. When the liberalization was assured in nationally, states also got very active and they started, you know, very proactively addressing investments, doing development and so on and so forth. And that is how you saw the miracles that were Gujarat and Maharashtra. Dr M Ramachandran And. Mr Sameer Kochhar They kind of arrived as industrial hubs. 2015 onwards again there has been significant federal restructuring exemplified by the 14th Finance Commission's evolution of 42% and the establishment of the GST Council. Now GST Council is a best practice as far as we are concerned in terms of effectively negotiating between center and the states. And I think that is something that needs to be replicated across many, many domains. If that is done, then it's a battle half won. So if you look at what are the principal challenges in center state relations, first is the vertical imbalances. A lot of social sector expenditure is to be done by the states but their taxation authority is limited, more so after gst there is very few areas that they can tax. There are horizontal disparities. There are pronounced divergences in per capita income across states. There are centrally sponsored schemes which are very good. These are the schemes that are delivering. These are delivering where the states have failed. But there are other states where they have done well, so they are performing well there also. However, if there is some leeway available for them to structure them more in tune of their development priorities is a desirable way forward. Intergovernmental institutions for this dialogue largely don't function currently. Other than the GST Council which is the only success example, Interstate council has been mostly dysfunctional and that there is a need to create more spaces for dialogue because only this dialogue is going to deliver Vixit Bharat. So what are my recommendations? Recommendations essentially are that if you look at the Finance Commission, could we perhaps look at the Finance Commission becoming a semi permanent or permanent body? Could we rationalize the centrally sponsored schemes in the sense that could some of the well performing states have a larger stay, a larger say in how a centrally sponsored scheme is to be implemented in these states? So the model there could be the GST Council model. While formulating the centrally sponsored scheme, could the states also be consulted extensively and customized to various needs? There is also need to do a National Fiscal Council. The CSS of course could also be divided thematically. Mission clusters such as Human Capital, livelihoods and infrastructure which will give a higher degree of focus. Institute, National Fiscal Council and Autonomous statutory entity tasked with monitoring macroeconomic fiscal indicators, evaluating policy ramifications on central state equilibria and offering impartial arbitration and compliance evaluations. This is a difficult recommendation, but it is something that we would submit that if government could consider and if there is with some guardrails this can be done. Fortify the interstate council mandate quarterly convocations with dedicated committees addressing urbanization, climate adaption, digital inclusion and fiscal governance. So these are some of the things that could be done. Public finance needs to be harnessed for enhancing state capacity so there could be performance linked borrowing and incentives. For example 0.5% of GSTP contingent upon reforms benchmarks which is going to help everyone. Refining borrowing protocols which is augment transparency and scrutiny of off budget liabilities and guarantees. There are quite a few of them in the states and modernization of public fiscal public financial management bolster state proficiencies in outcome oriented budgeting, digital treasury operations and real time expenditure monitoring. So these are my humble suggestions. Of course I am no expert in this subject. The experts on the subject are with me on the dais and this is only for their kind consideration that these are some of the things that the government may look at. With that I invite Professor Mahindra Dev to come and give his inaugural address.
Mr Neelkant Mishra, Chief Economist, Axis Bank; Head of Global Time Director, AXIS Capital Research,Whole
Neelkanth joined Axis in May 2023 after a distinguished two-decade career at Credit Suisse, where he served as Co-Head of Asia Pacific Strategy and India Strategist. He is a part-time member of the Indian Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, the part-time Chairman of UIDAI (Aadhaar), and a part-time member of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). His advisory roles extend to government bodies such as the India Semiconductor Mission and the 15th & 16th Finance Commissions. In addition, Neelkanth is a member of the CII’s Economic Affairs Council and frequently presents to corporate boards. His professional journey includes stints at HUL and Infosys. An alumnus of IIT-Kanpur, he is a gold-medalist and Distinguished Alumnus Awardee, having ranked fourth in the entrance exam to the IITs.
Ms Sindhu Gangadharan, MD, SAP Labs India; Head, Customer Innovation Services, SAP
Ms Gangadharan, widely known as a technology humanist, has spent over 25 years at SAP, rising from a young developer to the first woman Managing Director of SAP Labs India. In 2024, she took on a global role as Head of Customer Innovation Services at SAP. Celebrated for her inclusive leadership and advocacy for diversity, she champions initiatives like Autism at Work and LGBTQIA+ inclusion. Sindhu also serves on boards including Siemens India and Titan Company, and chairs NASSCOM, shaping India’s USD 1 trillion digital economy vision.
Dr Bhasker Chatterjee, Former Secretary, Government of India, Present Chairman, National Sustainability Reporting and Disclosure, Standards Committee, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)
Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, acclaimed as the Father of CSR in India, is a former Secretary to the Government of India and ex-Director General & CEO of the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs. He framed the first CSR guidelines for PSEs (2010) and played a key role in enacting Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013. He spearheaded the NFCSR at IICA and has led CSR strategy for corporates, including Vedanta. Currently, he chairs CSR and ESG committees, advises corporates, and guides national policy. A respected author, teacher, and thought leader, he has received multiple awards for his pioneering contributions.
Dr Pinky Anand, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India
Dr Anand, a trustee of The Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust is a designated senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India and the incumbent Additional Solicitor General of India. A doctorate of law, graduate of Harvard Law School, an Inlaks scholar, honorary professor at Amity Law School, she is the second woman in India to have been awarded this high constitutional law office.
Her laurels include being an alternate country councillor (India) of LAWASIA and the vice president of the Bar Association of India. She has been the recipient of the National Order of Merit awarded by the President of France, and has several awards to her credit, including those for excellence in law awarded by FICCI, Lions Club, Amity University, Bharat Nirman, PHD Chamber for Progress, Harmony and Development. She has also been a spokesperson for the Bharatiya Janata Party and was even leading its all-India legal team at one point.
Mr Javin Aryan, Analyst, SKOCH Development Foundation
Javin Aryan is working with the SKOCH Development Foundation’s India 2047 Centre of Excellence on a public policy research paper on the State of Quantum Technology in India.
Javin is a graduate from the Master of International Affairs program at Columbia University, where he studied security policy, conflict resolution, and East Asia. He has a keen interest in great power competition, US-India-China relations, and technology policy.
Mr N K Singh, Chairman, 15th Finance Commission of India
Mr Singh is a renowned Indian economist, policymaker, and academician, currently Chairman of the 15th Finance Commission. A former Rajya Sabha Member (2008–2014), he earlier chaired the FRBM Review Committee, shaping India’s fiscal consolidation path. As a distinguished civil servant, he served as Expenditure Secretary, Revenue Secretary, and Secretary to the Prime Minister, and played a pivotal role in the 1991 economic reforms. Internationally, his contributions earned him Japan’s “Order of the Rising Sun” in 2016. An acclaimed author and columnist, his books include Politics of Change, Not by Reason Alone, and The New Bihar.
Mr Sharad Sharma, Co-Founder, iSPIRT Foundation
He has three decades of experience in the Internet, Enterprise Software, and Digital Infrastructure markets and is a prominent voice in India’s technology ecosystem. He is a passionate evangelist of the software product ecosystem in India. He co-founded iSPIRT Foundation, a non-profit technology think tank devoted to making India a product nation. Earlier, he chaired NASSCOM Product Forum in its formative years and was a member of the NASSCOM Executive Council from 2009-13. Sharad is a member of the National Startup Advisory Council and SEBI’s Financial and Regulatory Technology Committee. He has also served on RBI’s UK Sinha MSME Committee and National Digital Payments Committee.
Mr L Venkata Subramaniam, Quantum India Lead, IBM
Mr Subramaniam is an experienced leader in Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing with a demonstrated history of innovation and product creation. He is a strong researcher who has developed new products, published in top venues, and been recognised as a master inventor. He focuses on AI Science and Quantum AI/ML. My present goal is to advance quantum science and position India as a global leader in the field. He has contributed/led six products, 38 patents, 150 papers and 3300 citations.
Dr M Ramachandran, Distinguished Fellow, SKOCH Development Foundation and Former Secretary, Government of India
M Ramachandran, PhD and MPhil in economic planning from the University of Glasgow, UK, is a former Secretary, Urban Development to the Government of India and Distinguished Fellow and Principal Advisor to the SKOCH Development Foundation. He was identified as the “Infrastructure Man” in the state of Uttaranchal, where he took several new initiatives, including public-private partnership projects, lining up $1 billion Asian Development Bank assistance for the Power, Road and Urban Sectors, $120 million World Bank assistance for the Drinking Water sector and so on.
Prof. R Kavita Rao, Director, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP)
She has received her Ph.D. in economics from the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata, and her Master’s in economics from the Delhi School of Economics. Her research interests include the design and implementation of Goods and Sales Tax (GST) in India, methodology for assessing the comprehensive impact of various tax exemptions on the economy, sectoral interlinkages and their implications in planning a growth strategy.
Mr Sameer Kochhar Chairman SKOCH Group
Reforms historian and author of best-seller ModiNomics, Sameer Kochhar is Chairman, SKOCH Group. He is a passionate advocate of social, digital and financial inclusion and is a foremost expert on governance and inclusive growth. His work has been acclaimed globally and endorsed by Mr Narendra Modi, Mr M Venkaiah Naidu, Dr Manmohan Singh, Mr Arun Jaitley, Mr P Chidambaram, Mr Yashwant Sinha, Dr C Rangarajan and Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia and so on. In his thinking and writings and activities, his profound admiration for India’s economic reforms and in extension, those outstanding personalities who strive to make these reforms more meaningful and broad-based comes out clear and unambiguous. He has published over 18 volumes.
Prof. S. Mahendra Dev, Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM)
He served as Director and Vice Chancellor of IGIDR, Mumbai (2010–2022) and earlier chaired the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices. He was Vice Chairman of IFPRI’s Board, a member of the National Statistical Commission, and Director of CESS, Hyderabad. He holds a Ph.D. from the Delhi School of Economics and a post-doctoral from Yale. Currently, he chairs the Institute for Development Studies, AP, and is a Distinguished Professor at ICFAI. An eminent development and agricultural economist, he has 150 publications, 23 books, and has advised global agencies and Indian government committees. He has received several awards, including the Malcolm Adisesaiah Award.
Dr Ashwani Mahajan, National Co-Convener, Swadeshi Jagaran ManchAshwani Mahajan is the National Co-Convener of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM), an Indian political and cultural organisation. SJM is affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. Mahajan worked as an author and columnist. He is an Associate Professor at PGDAV College, Delhi. Mahajan has been the Chief Editor of the Journal of Contemporary Indian Polity and Economy since 2011. Mahajan is also a Visiting Professor and research guide at Pacific University, Udaipur and Mewar University. He works as a researcher and activist on the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other international trade agreements.
Ms Radha S Chauhan, Chairperson, Capacity Building Commission
Ms. S. Radha Chauhan is a seasoned civil servant with 36+ years of leadership across public policy, fiscal governance, institutional reform, and digital transformation. She is 1988 Batch IAS officer of UP Cadre (Retd.). She is a former Secretary of the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) and Founding CEO of Government eMarketplace (GeM), the world’s largest public procurement portal. She has demonstrated a track record in executive oversight, cross-sectoral policy design, governance modernisation, ESG-linked reforms, and stakeholder engagement at national and international levels. She is recognised for visionary leadership in India’s digital public infrastructure — Aadhaar, eDistrict, UMANG, and GeM. She is also an Architect of “Mission Karmayogi”, India’s digital HR transformation platform for civil servants.
