जिसका संज्ञान मुझे मिला तो वास्तव में मन बहुत व्याकुल हुआ, बहुत चिंता हुई कि देश की राजनीति किस ओर जा रही है, किस प्रकार से इस देश में एक विद्यार्थी, एक बच्चे के दुर्भाग्यपूर्ण देहांत को लेकर, उनकी मृत्यु को लेकर राजनीतिक कारणों से कुछ विपक्षी दल इस्तेमाल करते हैं परिवारजनों को छोटे राजनीतिक लाभ के लिए| जब जनसत्ता में, इंडियन एक्सप्रेस में मैंने रोहित वेमुला की माताजी, श्रीमती राधिका वेमुला जी का बयान पढ़ा तब बहुत मन व्याकुल हुआ कि कब तक इस देश में इस प्रकार की राजनीति, इस प्रकार का बहुत ही घिनौनी हरकतें कुछ विपक्षी दल करते रहेंगे|

एक दुख से घिरा हुआ परिवार माँ अपने बेटे के गम में, परिस्थितियां परिवार की अच्छी नहीं हैं ऐसे में पैसे का लोभ देकर, कुछ झूठे वादे देकर, एक माँ के शोक को राजनीतिक कारणों के लिए देशभर में लेकर जाना| खासतौर पर केरल में जिस प्रकार से इंडियन यूनियन मुस्लिम लीग ने उनको झांसा देकर, उनको गलत वादे देकर कि हम तुम्हें ₹20 लाख दे देंगे, ₹20 लाख से तुम्हारा घर बना देंगे, आप आकर हमारी रैलीज़ को संबोधित करिए, आप जनता में आरोप लगाइए, एक दुखद घटना को गलत प्रकार से पेश करिए और फिर उस वादे को पूरा नहीं करना| थोड़ा बहुत कुछ भेजकर – वह भी बैंक में 2.5 लाख रुपये के दो चेक दिए, जिसमें एक चेक बाउंस भी हो जाए और माता अपने बच्चे की डिलीवरी के लिए जाना चाहती हो, उस वक्त बोलना नहीं तुम केरल आओ, हमने रैली ऑर्गेनाइज कर रखी है, बहुत जरूरी है 30-40 हजार लोगों के सामने आपको खड़ा करना है|

माता शोक में, परिवार में एक नया बच्चा जन्म लेने वाला हो और उस बीच में भी यह झूठा आश्वासन देकर केरल लेकर जाना कि वहाँ चेक तैयार पड़ा है, आप आकर ले लो और फिर मीटिंग होते ही फिर भूल जाना और उनको वापिस रवाना कर देना| मैं समझता हूँ पहली बात तो इस प्रकार की हरकतें ही गलत हैं| अगर शोक में कुछ मुआवजा देना भी था तो वह कंडिशनलिटी के साथ नहीं हो सकता है और कंडिशनलिटी में एक दुखित परिवार को ऐसी चीजें करवाना, जो बेबुनियाद हैं झूठे आरोप लगवाना उनसे, यह लोभ देकर, यह लालच देकर कि आपको इसके वनिस्पत पैसे दे दिए जाएंगे|

मैं समझता हूँ यह इतनी घिनौनी हरकत है, जिसके लिए विपक्षी दलों ने, जिन्होंने इनको स्टेज पर खड़ा किया| मुझे जानकारी मिली कि कांग्रेस अध्यक्ष भी इनको कई जगह पर स्टेज पर लेकर, इनसे बयान करवाए| उसके पीछे क्या राज़ है, उसके पीछे क्या मंशा थी, उसके पीछे क्या प्रलोभन दिया गया| इसका भी खुलासा होना चाहिए और कांग्रेस अध्यक्ष ने आज देश के सामने माफी मांगनी चाहिए| राहुल गांधी जी ने माफी मांगनी चाहिए कि झूठ की बुनियाद पर किस प्रकार की राजनीति, किस प्रकार की ओछी राजनीति पर आज कांग्रेस उतर आई है|

एक व्याकुल महिला, एक पीड़ित परिवार शोक में, गम में माँ उनके साथ इस प्रकार का छल करने वाले लोग और राजनीतिक दल मैं समझता हूँ इस देश की जनता के कभी प्रिय नहीं हो सकते और इस देश का हर नागरिक इस बात को गंभीरता से ले और जवाब मांगे ऐसे राजनीतिज्ञों का, जो एक माँ के दुख को भी राजनीतिक और राजनीतिक लाभ में परिवर्तन करने की कोशिश कर सकते हैं| मैं समझता हूँ आगे आने वाले दिनों में इस प्रकार के बेबुनियाद आरोप-प्रत्यारोप विपक्षी दल जिनकी आदत है, जिनका यह राजनीति करने का ढंग रहा है इतने वर्षों में, इनका नकाब आज देश के समक्ष पूरी तरीके से बेनकाब हो चुका है और मुझे मीडिया के सभी बंधुओं से अनुरोध है कि और अच्छी तरीके से पूछताछ करके, जानकारियां लेकर ही हमने सेंसेशनलाइज करना चाहिए कोई भी खबर को, कोई भी इस प्रकार के आरोपों को कि वास्तविकता क्या है| किस प्रकार की राजनीति और ओछी राजनीति पर कुछ दल उतर आए हैं जिससे देश में जो अमन और शांति का माहौल है, वह खराब नहीं हो|

भारतीय जनता पार्टी समाज को बांटने में नहीं विश्वास करती है| समाज का हर व्यक्ति हमारे लिए अमूल्य है, सबके साथ काम करना, सबके विकास के लिए काम करना यह हमारा एकमात्र धर्म है और मैं समझता हूँ कि किसी भी व्यक्ति के ऊपर इस प्रकार का शोक हो उसका राजनीतिकरण करना यह निंदनीय है| It is absolutely condemnable and the BJP condemns all such type of very-very low level of politics and political misuse of such a sad incident that had happened. I feel extremely sorry for the mother and the family जिनको गत लगभग 2 वर्षों से, इन विपक्षी दलों ने राजनीति के कारण, मैं समझता हूँ जिनका शोषण किया है और इसके लिए भारत की जनता इस प्रकार के राजनीतिक नेताओं को कभी भी माफ नहीं करेगी ऐसा मेरा पूरा विश्वास है|

धन्यवाद!

Q: ….

A: Well, I think the mother’s statements are all before us. I believe there was even an effort made to pressurize the mother to retract from what she had said, probably again on the pretext of giving her some money. So, it clearly demonstrates that a number of political parties from the Opposition have tried to misuse this extremely unfortunate incident for their petty political gains. And we condemn all such efforts.

Q:….

A: I just mentioned that we don’t know under what pressure, she was forced to make that statement, retracting what she had said 2 days ago.

धन्यवाद!

Mr Allen Spore, Mr CP Sharma, Marot, distinguished ladies and gentlemen. I am delighted that in the continuing process of stakeholder consultation and engagement, Mr Ghanshyam Singh has involved the CII also to partner with the railways to engage through this Rail Contact 2018 programme, and work jointly with industry to come up with new ideas, to understand what are the issues that can help us fast forward our mission to make India one of the world’s finest and safest railway as we move towards a new India.

In fact, we have had a series of interactions with the private industry over the last three or four months. We have had a Nirman Samvad on 17^th January, where we were talking to various contractors, who are working with the railways in different areas. We have had a Supplier Samvad where we engaged with 300-400 or so of the people who supply different components and equipment to Indian railways on 22^nd February, both of which I personally attended.

I have had meetings both at official level, and again, at my level, with private freight terminal operators, coach manufacturers, people who are providing Wi-Fi services, signalling systems, electrification and different areas of the railway infrastructure drive.

And as Steve Jobs said, ‘Great things in business are never done by one person. They are always done by a team of people working in partnership, working as, with a joint and collective effort, working towards a common goal.’ And I am sure, today’s engagement will also come up with some good ideas, some good suggestions, some innovative thoughts, possibly certain problems that each one of you or some of you may have faced in the past, even now.

I don’t mind if you can even visualize future problems, but please do engage with the railways. Because I believe very firmly that as much as we talk to each other, as much as we understand each other, we will be able to truly bring about the metamorphosis in the way the railways as Vikram said thinks, the mindset of the railways, and the way we deliver on customer satisfaction.

Ultimately, the people of India are looking for an efficient rail transport system, both for passengers and for moving the large volume of freight that railways has the capacity and potentially has also the capacity to grow. And, as honourable Prime Minister often says, the railways will become the engine of India’s development journey. And a good, efficient, modern railway system can do wonders to the future of the Indian railways, to the future of Indian economy and lives of the people of India.

In fact, it is more energy efficient than road transport or even air transport. And with the current plans on the anvil to move towards optimum or near-100% electrification of the railways, and I am sure at some point even 100% electrification of the railways in the very near future, coupled with our plans to increase the renewable energy capacities that we procure from going forward, we believe that Indian railways by 2030 will also become a net zero emitter of carbon pollution damaging the world.

Obviously, our first step of bringing down our diesel consumption has huge economic benefits for the country and for the railways. We will be saving huge amounts of money, at least a couple of billion dollars of annual savings on diesel alone, hugely reducing the carbon emissions and pollutants that the railways directly or indirectly gives out. But also, simultaneously, seeing how we can use the large tracts of land that we have to set up solar systems.

In fact, I often tell friends from business and industry that every square inch that you have you must try and set up a renewable energy module, maybe a solar plant or a wind plant, if not for any other joy. Of course, with today’s prices which the sagacious leadership of Mr Narendra Modi through a very transparent and efficient bidding mechanism has been brought down to below thermal coal power levels, probably for the first time in history.

It makes very good economic sense to be generating renewable power. But, more importantly, you will actually save your land from encroachment, and the railways is suffering huge amounts of land that we have lost to encroachment. So I have been persuading and I think the same would go for BHEL and all our PSUs, if for no other reason, irrespective of our savings in both electricity bills and our emissions, we will actually be protecting the government property and our lands and so can you. And whenever you require that piece of land you can shift your equipment at a very nominal cost and very comfortably and easily. And the transmission line that you would have set up to evacuate the power can be used to actually receive the power into your manufacturing or into the new use of land that you will now introduce.

So, it really makes a lot of economic sense, and nobody may have any misunderstanding that we have some fetish for renewable energy or some fetish for trying to save our planet. We are really doing it for the children of tomorrow. I am sure none of these children want to inherit a country like the one we inherited on this dais or many of us in our age group. I am sure we would like to leave behind a better planet than the one we got, and I am sure all of us engage with the railways also understand what kind of a legacy we received in 2014 when it came to the railways.

And I do hope Ghanshyamji, you, your team and I are never accused of leaving behind in a similar way in a very lousy legacy for the next team whenever in the future they come up. Certainly, I do hope not in a very near future, not in a hurry. And the people of India are smart, they know what is good for them. They appreciate the game changing reform, the huge amount of effort to impact the lives of 1.3 billion people that have gone in over the last few years, the effort to make India an honest country, the effort to bring about change in the way we work, the change we do business.

But if one looks at the legacy that we inherited, we were battling lack of investments. I think even the last year 2013-14, before we came in, the total investment in the capital infrastructure of railways was slated to be about 46,000 crores. This year, we are looking at 1,41,000 crores. That’s the scale, the massive growth that we have seen over the last five years.

The capacity constraints – I don’t know how many of you are aware of the statistics, and I was seeing the CII background paper. I would urge you to correct the statistics. The reality is that in the last 64 years, freight loading has increased by 1344% on the Indian railways. Passenger travel, in terms of passenger kilometres travel has increased by 1642%.

That’s the scale of demand over the last ….. that we have seen growing – 13 times in freight, 16 times in passenger traffic and what has been the capacity growth? If you look at route kilometres, we only added 23% route kilometres in 64 years. There have been some efforts to double or triple lines, but I feel ashamed to share with you that up until 2014 there was not even an effort or a plan to ensure that the golden quadrilateral or the laterals, the main carrying areas, the ABC routes as we call them were also not having double lines or lines going up and down across the Indian railways.

Actually, to this date, connections to South India are still not completely having a double line. I think we have fast tracked the doubling at least of all these lines and, hopefully, the very-very near future the last 200 odd kilometres will be done and you will actually after 70 years of independence have a situation that between Mumbai and Chennai, or Mumbai and Hyderabad or Bangalore, you will be able to go up and down on different tracks. And when you double a line, you don’t just double the capacity, mathematically if anybody can work out, but it would be at least 4 times plus when you look at the maths of two lines instead of one.

We had huge technology issues. There was very little effort to truly engage with modern technology. चलता है! आखिर रोज़ 22,000 गाड़ियाँ चलती हैं तो सिस्टम तो चल ही रहा होगा, इसलिए चलते रहने दो|

But I don’t think there was any effort to see what transformation can happen if we engage with technology. There was very little effort to see how we can improve the security and safety of our passengers using technology. There was very little effort to see what technology can do on electrification, on signaling. In fact, we were not even ready to engage with modern technology.

And you saw that when we launched the bullet train, how some political opponents were willing to even discard modern technology coming to this country to serve the passengers and their interests of better and safer and comfortable travel. It’s almost like the rehash of the 1969 story when the Rajdhani was first introduced in India, and I am given to understand the very chairman of the railway board opposed the introduction of Rajdhani.

And that has continued, I mean after the Rajdhani, I dare say we have hardly had any significant technological fast tracking of new technologies of faster rail travel. I mean we did bring in a Duronto or two, or a few trains, but not any significant jump in technology levels. What we are bringing in in terms of the bullet train, the Shinkansen, is also something that was introduced in the year of my birth in Japan. And I am no young person anymore.

Of course, we don’t have the privilege which some political leaders have of being called a young leader all through their life, even when they are close to 50.

And this huge amount of congestion in the system, low speeds. I mean, the passenger trains today across the country are still at, what? 43-44 km per hour speed at an average! Freight trains even worse – 23-24 km per hour at an average! Very miniscule investment by the private sector because you were never sure what will happen tomorrow, whether you will really get consistent business or no.

And, somehow over the years, the railway budget became a tool to make a political statement. So, you had hundreds of new projects being announced, new lines being announced, new trains being announced, irrespective of the fact that there was no money to back it up, irrespective of the fact that there was very little chance of getting the land to set up these lines, many of these lines. And today we are saddled with a situation that there are projects which started in 1975, which have not even probably crossed 30 or 40% execution – 43 years later.

And all of this means these projects are going to get costlier and costlier with mounting cost over runs and time over runs, just to keep each project live we are giving small allocations of money to 450 projects. So, you are in a way wasting your money. The speed at which you invest is never going to catch up with the cost over runs, making almost all of these projects unviable, adding to the stress on the system. Overloading the available capacity, and in that process making the entire railway story unviable and then complaining about high operating ratio and complaining about the fact that passenger travel is very uncomfortable, overloaded trains, lack of adequate infrastructure, not enough capital to invest.

And I must confess, I very seriously believe that it is that political – for ensuring that I don’t use a very harsh word – I will just call it a misdemeanor. But it was that narrow political vision that caused the distress that many sections of the Indian railways today is suffering. After all, a good sensible business manager sees what is in his pocket, prioritizes what is important, and focuses on implementing what is important, what will give faster payback, what will be efficient spending of scarce resources. And we all know that India has always had scarcity of adequate capital or low-cost capital to create the huge demand of infrastructure in the country.

And this government has had the decisive leadership to not only do away with a populist measure like the railway budget, but also not announce populist projects, but focus on what is truly essential and what can give you the fastest payback for every rupee that you spend.

The CAPEX over the last five years – four years and the current year – would be almost two and a half times of the corresponding previous period. In terms of statistics, the line commissioning will be 59% higher in this period, rail renewal nearly 50% higher. In fact, from a usual 200 to 225 kilometers being done every month, when we move the needle to make up for the huge backlog that we had inherited, I am happy to share with you that come November-December, 2017, we had been able to ramp it up to 476 kilometers of rail renewal, track renewal every month.

I think in January, it went up to some 576 kilometers, in February it even went up further to 640 odd kilometers – from 220-225 regularly. We were almost at 3 times in a span of, we took that decision in September, so we are talking of 4 or 5 months from taking that decision to speed up rail renewal and make travel safer for all of you by almost three times. That’s the capacity that we have in the railways. The bottleneck is not of our ability to perform, the bottleneck is our self-confidence and our willingness to take on bigger and bolder challenges.

And we ended the year doing some 4400 odd kilometers of track renewal in the last 12 months, largely coming out of the last 5-6 months of focused effort to make this happen. Look at electrification, led by Mr Ghanshyam Singh, whereas we have done some 608 or 618 kilometers in 2013-14 of electrification, last year we moved the needle and we only did 4,087 kilometers, not much, 7 times more. I do hope this year will be even better than that.

And it’s all doable. It’s all possible. You all know what economies of scale does to our business. I believe we have already been able to reduce this cost of electrification per kilometer somewhat and he mentioned, Mr Ghanshyam Singh has mentioned a very ambitious target. Of course, speaking of ambitious targets today, I was reading about the UDAY programme that was started in November 2015, when I was the Power Minister. It’s only two years since then and it was a voluntary programme, so it took us some effort to get all the states on board, so I remember it took almost a year and a half to get all the states on board.

So, many states have had the benefit of two years of UDAY, some have had one and half years, some have had only one year, and by March 2018, the losses of the distribution of the distribution companies came down from over 60,000 crores a year to now 17,000 crores. That’s been the game changing difference, thanks to the UDAY programme – something which almost every media house,  the regulators, I will not name the regulators for who they were but most people would remember and know the amount of criticism that programme had. And even today, while writing about this success, there is so much pain to acknowledge that there has been a 75%-60%-70% deduction in the losses that the person writing the article will still add ‘but they failed to meet the very stringent targets on AT&C losses’. Obviously, they were stringent targets, I just never give simple targets to anybody.

After all,  when we picked up the 100 GW of solar energy target by 2022 we were at 2500 GW or 2500 MW – 2.5 GW. Our ambition was not small, it was 40 times growth in 7 years. But unless you aim for the moon, you are not even going to get half way there. So unless I keep aggressive targets, I don’t think we would have achieved 4000 kilometers of electrification or 4400 kilometers of rail renewal. But I would rather keep a very-very ambitious and bold target and underperform a little bit, than keep a target of 2%-5% growth and then go to the public and say, look we have crossed our target. That’s the typical PSU culture or the typical way governments in the past used to be. Mr Modi doesn’t accept that. He wants you to be bold. He wants you to work for it.

And I do hope our railway officials are feeling the pain of working 24/7. And Mr Modi never tells you to work, even though Amit Tandon may, or who? Ganguly or somebody may make a video or a comedy show out of it. He first works himself and he assures you that if you will work 20 hours a day, I will work 21 hours. But I will not let this country down. And that is what truly inspirational leadership is all about.

In fact, there is always a feedback or two which excites you, which gives you a little bit of satisfaction. We embarked on a mission to – I am giving a simple example just to reflect that how small things add up to the big picture – we started this drive that we will not allow anybody to take tips or overcharge our consumers, when you are buying any cutlets or omelette on the train. And, by the way, we are working to improve that quality, give us a little more time.

So, I have a Facebook post of a gentleman called Sumit Vajpayee yesterday, where he was travelling on the Gwalior-Bhopal Shatabdi. And after the meal, and fortunately, he has not criticized the meal, somebody came carrying a tray soliciting tips, and we have completely banned it. In fact, everybody has on their uniform, ‘no tips please.’ Probably, many people give tips out of embarrassment, rich people or the relatively well-off sections of the society feel ki if somebody else is giving. And, you know, people who are used to raising funds knows or a person who does an auction knows that very often you have to have 2-3 people in the crowd who will first give the first two or three donations to embarrass the rest of the people to make sure they also contribute. Or in an auction, you need that one or two people to start that auction so that others feel there must be something in it, this painting must be good even though I don’t understand what it shows.

So, everybody started giving tips.  This gentleman tweeted about it. And I am Sumit Vajpayee that “I tweeted about this, within moments the issue was escalated and a supervisor came and asked the staff to return all those tips.” It gives me a lot of satisfaction. Maybe a small thing, but it reflects the changing way we are dealing with customers, we are dealing with problems on hand, and the success mantra for the public centre or for the private sector is the same.

I have always believed and not after I became a Minister, well before that, that a success or a failure of an organisation is not related to its ownership, doesn’t matter who owns the shares or the ownership of that company or organisation or institution. It’s only vision and leadership that will determine the fate of any organisation or success and failure of any effort that one puts in. And I think that is the change that Prime Minister Modi’s leadership has brought to the nation and that is the change we are trying to bring into all our institutions, both in the government and in some sense, also in the private sector in terms of how we work, how all of us can help to make India a better place to do business in, a honest place to do business in.

After all, we can’t achieve success unless you all participate in this story. If Sumit Vajpayee hadn’t tweeted about it, I would never know that there was a problem on that train and unless I know there is a problem, you will appreciate we can’t solve it. It’s something like punctuality, I don’t know if you are aware, over so many years, the data of a train arriving or leaving at a station was manually entered at each point. Do I need to say anymore about it?

And every time I would see on the one hand we have customers who are screaming mad about delayed trains, but every time I talk to my people in the railways, the statistics show a different picture – 85%-90%. Punctuality if it’s 90%, then why the hell is every train 8 hours late? I don’t mean every train, somebody will pick up on that point and that’s headline news. Good news is never exciting. It’s only bad news which gives you a sensation.

So, we got down to doing a root cause analysis which has been our typical effort to resolve problem, and we found it’s somewhat like when you go to a doctor, and you hide your illness, he’s never going to be able to cure you. So as a first step, we decided that we will block all the false data and at every interchange point got a data logger to give the accurate data. And lo and behold, you straightaway saw a 15% drop overnight.

So, 31^st March and 1^st April, the data, and not an April  Fool’s day, but the reality coming out a drop of 15%, because all that fake data got out of the system and now we know what the damn problem is. Last nine days, I have reviewed 8 zones personally on punctuality, on cleanliness and on catering – only these 3 issues. All my technical reviews and safety and all have already happened much earlier. We have of course discussed these issues earlier, but in the changed context of real data, the pressure on the system has now come in to perform. And to the extent that I get a message yesterday that I had done a review in Chennai of the Southern Railway last Thursday, and within two days the punctuality in that Southern zone increased by 10%, that’s the south zone, Southern Railway – which was the one I did in Chennai, Southern Railway. South Central I did in Secunderabad on Friday, and then I did three zones on Saturday, and I did one zone yesterday and I am doing one zone as soon as I go from here.

I mean some people may find it’s so silly. I must be a free man. I have no work to do that I am sitting with each zone and discussing traffic blocks, speed restrictions, temporary speed restrictions, permanent speed restrictions, infra projects, delays because of signal failure, asset failure. My god, at the end of the day, I will forget my chartered accountancy, probably, land up trying to get an engineering degree. But do I have a choice? Does my customer – and we are going to celebrate Gandhiji’s 150^th birth anniversary soon, 2^nd October onwards – does my customer not deserve better?

And I think if we all collectively work in that spirit, Umesh if you don’t mind, I have met with all your wagon manufacturers. You all assured me that there will be a significant push in production. I need 100,000 wagons in the next 5 years – 100,000, I said it to all of you. What do I get? December – 486 wagons! Pardon me for this, but I am saying this because I want all of you to gear up. December – 486 wagons, January – 534 wagons, February – 455 wagons, of course, if you were a PSU, you would  have told me it’s 28 days working, not 31, so it justifies. March – 452, even less than February.

I have yet to see any organisations which in March underperform over February. I am sure BHEL will be doing much better than that. April, and you will be shocked – 334 wagons being supplied, May – 440, and lo and behold, when I ask them what are they doing to increase. They say, don’t worry, in June you will get thousand, July 1200 and August 1300, and if you don’t deliver, what should be my option now? We always talk Indian manufacturers should get protection. There is not enough business. What do I do, I need a 100,000 wagons to meet the needs of India. We have a dedicated freight corridor coming in which is going to give me a 30% additional capacity on freight. I am looking at electrification. I am looking at modern signaling and adding another 40-50% capacity through efficiency through all of these benefits.

But has Indian industry geared up to meet those challenges? I want to bid out 22,000 wagons, I am holding back because I have 18,000 wagons yet to be delivered. I am just taking this as an example, please do not mind. Take it in the same spirit as I take the tips and the overcharging. We have got to do something about it. Or would you rather, and I am opening this up for private sector now. I have already done that. You will have private sector importing these wagons. Then don’t come running to me in my temporary role as a Finance Minister that now increase the import duty on wagons.

We will have to, all of us, also gear up to see what and how we can do better. I am giving LC payments, Letter of Credits. I doubt very much if any of you have ever imagined you would get a Letter of Credit for your supplies. I am willing to give Letter of Credits for supplies. I am willing to give larger composite contracts, either turnkey contracts, like we are doing in electrification. I am willing to give assured supply for three or five years.

You ask, we are open to ideas. Tell us what are your difficulties, we will resolve them. If there is corruption anywhere in the system, escalate it straight at my office. If I am the source of that problem, go to my Prime Minister. But we need to change the way things were working. And I appeal to all of you, you are all stakeholders of the Indian railways, and in fact, beyond that you are all citizens of this great motherland of ours. Does this country, does the youth of this country, do the poor of this country deserve any better? Is increasing railway fares the solution to the problem or improving efficiency the solution?

You will have editorials written that this government did not increase fares for two years or whatever. Very easy for a person to write that railways should recover the cost of passenger fare and increase passenger fares. How can I increase passenger fares for the inefficiency which I am working on? Let me give you a good experience, let me give you a delightful journey, I am sure the passengers will be willing to pay for it. I introduced the air conditioned coaches in Mumbai Suburban, nobody complained when they had to pay 30-40% more. It was a comfortable journey.  But when you pack us in like.. and I have travelled 8 years in that same situation in Mumbai Suburban Railway, then obviously people are going to get agitated if you increase the fares.

So all of us have to collectively see what we can do to improve efficiencies, to improve the working of the railways. I have tried that RDSO improves, their timelines have reduced from30 months to 6 months. I have put every item in the public domain. If any RDSO issue is there, I have said immediately escalate it. I believe transparency can do wonders in our own efficiency. But if there are issues, I want you to escalate it, I want you to raise your voice.

And actually, contractors, suppliers gave us suggestions, on which many-many policy decisions are now being taken in the railways.

India is changing. The mood of the nation is changing. The working of the railways is changing. I would invite all of you to be a part of this change. Reflect on what each one of us can do to make the railways better, give us your idea, share your ideas. Tell us have you overdesigned a coupler, are our springs the best that we can have, could be use better paint on our rail lines so that they don’t get corroded? What are the new technological innovations, even for a simple things like housekeeping may be? How can we do CCTV cameras better in every coach, on every station? What are the constraints that you face in your working with the railways?

Like this station development programme was tottering, we had stakeholder consultations, two rounds with all of them in as big a packed room as this and we realised four issues. We have set out to solve all four of them. They said a 45-year lease is adequate. They said fine, we will make it a 99-year lease. They pointed out that mortgage of the property is not permitted, so we can’t get cash flow. We are going to allow mortgage, even sub-mortgage if somebody buys from you. Sub-leasing is going to be allowed.

They said we are very worried to work on the railway side of it, on the station side. We are happy to work outside the station. We said fine, we will give out EPC contracts on the railway side and do the work and monitor it ourselves, so we will give you a clear title and easy to work without being worried about what’s happening on the railway station side.

There is a solution to almost everything. I was asking Sobtiji, so he said July-August they will roll out their electric locomotive. I am willing to give you a 10-year order. You make as many as you can, tell us what you can do, do it efficiently, do it in a cost-effective manner. I was in fact telling Ghanshyam Singh ji to talk to you, can you roll out your electric engines faster? I am happy to look at faster engines, certainly do give me a benefit on the pricing with increased scale and speed.

So we had an opportunity where truly, we can transform the way we work in the railways. We can make this one of the best railways in the world. We can improve the quality standards of the products that we make, of the products that we use, of the services that we give.

I invite all of you to be a part of this change, to be a part of this humble effort to at least leave behind in the footprints of time a better legacy than the one we inherited 4 years ago.

Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen.

Tarun Das, Mr Lamba, a lot of familiar faces here, my apologies for being late, but I am trying to juggle too many engagements simultaneously. And I am sorry that you had to wait for me.

I have been at the Ananta engagements earlier and I have always found them very engaging, very enlightening. And I come to the Ananta Centre programmes more to learn, more to hear from you and get some feedback, get some ideas which we in government can take forward. So, I will try to be as brief as I can, which is not necessarily a very good indicator, because I do tend to go long.

It was Fathers’ Day yesterday, and actually, a day when I was reflecting what kind of a legacy are we going to leave behind for our children. Are we going to really leave behind a country that is bold, confident, looking for a brighter future for 1.2 billion people, a country that holds its head high in the comity of nations, a country that has respected both my friend and foe, and a country that is looked upon as a leader of the world economy in the years to come.

And as the honourable Prime Minister at the engagement with all the states yesterday in Niti Aayog mentioned, we believe the country is now poised to have ambitious targets and goals to look at a double digit growth in the future. And very clearly, The Growth Net very rightly points out that the country cannot progress unless there is growth, whether it is working opportunities, whether it is a better quality of life – all of them are centred around the country moving forward.

We will have to focus on stability in the country. We will have to look at the structure of growth going forward. We will have to look at the strength of governance and institutions in the country. And for that, the first basic element was the change in mindset. Until some years ago, I remember the mood of the nation would be one of despair, one of weakness. I remember not very long ago when compulsions of coalition politics were being cited as a reason why we can’t even attack corruption in the country.

I think that fundamental break from the old mindset has been one of the biggest challenges that this country had, and on which significant – in the language of all of you from the management world – management bandwidth has gone or government bandwidth has gone to address the changing mindset. Amongst various organisations, my own experience in the Indian railways has possibly been the most challenging where you are trying to change the mindset of a 160-year old legacy, issues which are today where they were 100 years ago.

And, the country is evolving, country is moving beyond what many of us in this room will remember as the earliest slogans of the 70s when the issue used to be ‘Roti, Kapda and Makaan’, – food, clothing and a home. We remember Hindi movies made around this theme of ‘Roti, Kapda and Makaan’. From there, and in some sense, of course, probably Roti and Kapda are two issues we have been able to address, albeit not in an organised fashion, otherwise, we would not have the kind of malnutrition, the kind of challenges that we are facing in tribal areas in the aspirational districts of the country.

But housing 70 years after independence still is a challenge. I would dare say we still haven’t been able to meet the aspiration of all our people to own their home, or at least have a reasonable good quality of home. From ‘Roti, Kapda, Makaan’, the country moved to Bijli, Sadak, Pani – good roads, electricity, basic amenity for any country to move forward, to progress, to develop. And water, an issue which I believe the Ananta Centre has really focused on over many years – water, efficient utilization of water, conservation of water. They seek good quality drinking water.

And look at the dichotomy, we have a country still living in the 70s slogan where the home is still not sorted out. We have a country aspiring for good roads, electricity in their home, clean drinking water, and at the same time we have another third imperative, which I believe is the challenge before all of us today is the imperative of engaging with, probably internet, engaging with the modern technological evolutions – Robotics, Internet of Things, new ways of 3D manufacturing or artificial intelligence.

So we are living in three worlds simultaneously, addressing challenges before the country in each one of the three worlds, trying to meet the aspirations of a billion people, many of whom for three generations, if not more, have been deprived even a basic sustenance living.

While we can say that we are better off than many other parts of the world, personally, I don’t see any satisfaction in that. It does not give me any joy to compare myself with somebody who is worse off. I would rather benchmark to the best in the world. And, therefore, when this government looked at growth, looked at what needs to be done to address these challenges, we looked at all the three segments, addressing the issue of housing, which is a priority issue before the country, ensuring connectivity across the country. And, connectivity would not only mean better lives, better lifestyles, it would mean more business, growth, engagement with the world for our exports. And, connectivity would obviously mean connectivity of roads, railways, airlines, seaways, airways.

We worked through the last four years to ensure we can strengthen our power sector, and every element of the value chain of the power sector, addressing things not as they came, addressing things not in …. to address what is the immediate problem at hand, but addressing it in a systematic manner from the base, prioritizing what needs to be done. Unless we have fuel we can’t run our power plants, unless we generate enough power we won’t have anything to transmit. But have we got a good enough sustainable grid, so sort out the grid issues, create transmission infrastructure.

Doing all of that, ensure that we also keep the environmental balance, address concerns of climate change, focus on renewables, then the mesh between renewables and traditional forms of power so that our transmission system can actually take on increased renewable energy generation. And when all of this is done, if we are going to have a weak distribution system, in any case you can’t reach the power to the last mile.

But we didn’t shirk away from the responsibility. We didn’t give out an excuse why this cannot be done. While many of you may have heard even me talking many times about the legacy that we inherited, a legacy where we had almost 300 million plus people without electricity. I literally was welcomed into the Power Ministry on 27^th May, 2014 with a thunderstorm that happened on 29^th or 30^th May and I think my good friend Vinayak Chatterjee had called it ‘baptism by outage’. But he addressed each of those various elements of the value chain.

And I am just giving this as an example of the thinking of this government. We focused to increase coal production and we have seen nearly a 100 million tonnes more coal production in the last 4 years, which has brought down imports, brought down our reliance on very expensive coal – currently commodity prices are very high. We ensured that all the generating capacity which is efficient is encouraged to produce more and various steps were taken. We allowed people to exchange, rationalize coal linkages, to use coal linkages in the most efficient manner, instead of a plant-by-plant allocation of coal and various other steps. So, the generation capacity was never a challenge.

The ambitious renewable energy programme where we were looking at taking our solar energy alone from 2.5 GW to a 100 GW in 7 years is now evident. You see the huge strides we have made almost increased it by 5 or 6 times in the first three years itself – actually more than 6 times, by now it’s about 8 times from what it was in 2014. Simultaneously, bringing down the prices of renewables through efficiency, through economies of scale and through honest transparent bidding and auctions to the extent that today renewable energy is cheaper, costs less than thermal coal based power plants or power generated or polluting power.

We ensured that the national transmission grid is strengthened and we have one nation today with one grid, where we can seamlessly move power wherever it needs to meet the growing needs of this country, or address any problems like we had last year where hydro generation fell, three plants in coastal Gujarat got affected because of a Supreme Court order.

But despite that, the country could face the power needs across India. And then we realise that the last mile connectivity is ultimately going to happen through the DISCOMs. We brought in UDAY, the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana, often criticized by some of the naysayers. But I was just reading this morning, we have actually been able to bring down the losses of our distribution companies from roughly 11 or 12 billion dollars annually to about 2.5 billion dollars last year.

I think a fair measure of success in a short period of – I think the first states came on board end of ’15 and most states came on board in ‘16-17, so we are still about 15 to 24 months into that programme. But it has rejuvenated the entire distribution sector to the extent that you would find that in the five years of this government we will ensure that not a single willing consumer in the entire country who aspires or who desires to have a electricity connection will be deprived of that – the Saubhagya Yojana that we have launched – 100% household electrification in five years, something which the world has planned to do by 2030 in the Sustainable Development Goals. India would have the distinct privilege of achieving it 12 years ahead of schedule, by end of 2018 and maybe a little spill over a month or two.

Many times we set very ambitious targets. And in a recent press engagement I was pointing out to some friends from the media that sadly, we are always looking to pick the small holes. We are not looking at the big picture. So, you will be very interested to go and put the mike in front of somebody’s home and find five homes who have not got electricity without even checking whether they applied, they were refused, why they don’t have electricity, are there unpaid bills? But you look at five people who can speak on camera and say, ‘but I don’t have electricity, so Mr Modi has lied. The country doesn’t have electricity in every home.’

They will lose the big picture that 300 million people who didn’t have electricity until 5 years ago would by and large all have got electricity – no, but there are five families which don’t have electricity and you can actually run a whole 30-minute show on that and get more TRPs than the Growth Net Summit will get.

But I think it’s been a journey where we are engaging with the world. We are getting the best of ideas of the world to come and work in India, but calibrating it to the Indian context, we are not cloning it blindly or cloning it irresponsibly, trying to really drive growth with a mindset of honesty, with a mindset where bringing in transparency has as much importance as the other outcomes or physical outcomes.

And in some sense, if I can summarize before I conclude, there are three basic elements on which this government has focused. One is, of course, stability, as I mentioned earlier – political stability, social stability, macro-economic stability. Of course, there will be challenges. There will be issues happening at different places. There will be incidents about which we are extremely concerned and we wish and desire that there should not be a single incident that impacts the social fabric of the country.

But the choice before us is do we become naysayers, do we become demoralized, dejected on one or two or more instances or we look at the 1.2 billion people as our focus and what impact we can have on the lives of everybody, how we can take the entire country along and bring about change in the lives of the people. What we can do for the economy, how can we ensure that from a situation in 2014, the growth had come down to under 5% where fiscal deficits were high, inflation was in many years at double digits, interest rates were high, current account deficit was breaching all reasonable norms.

Can we change the needle, move the needle from there? And, yes, we today have $413 billion of foreign exchange reserves giving us strength to manage the economy well; fiscal deficit this year will be down to 3.3%. And I can assure you ladies and gentlemen, we are monitoring and working to ensure that fiscal deficit will be maintained at 3.3%, despite this being an election here, despite this being a year where traditionally – and I would urge you to look at history – be it 2013-14, be it 2007-08, 2008-09 period, where fiscal deficits, macroeconomic stability, good governance, all were thrown to the wind for political exigencies.

You have a government today which is willing to say we will meet the aspirations of the people of India. We will meet our objectives of good governance. We will meet our objectives for society to reach the benefits of growth to the poorest of the poor. But we will also strengthen the Indian economy. We will ensure that we don’t bring in structural weaknesses which in our next term – and I am not being presumptuous. Every politician has to aspire for his next term.

And we are confident that the people of India will support good governance, and we will relentlessly pursue this path, because we believe that’s good for the country. We believe that’s good for the nation, for the people of India.

Of course, when you are building such a superstructure or a framework of good governance which will hold the country in good stead for many years, you have to consistently reform, your performance has to be monitored, you have to hold people accountable, you have to measure the outcomes. And we have ensured that our focus again through a root cause analysis, ensuring that we are taking care of the building blocks of the country and the social-political economy, are taken care of. We ensure that that is in a very orderly manner, in a systematic manner.

And while we don’t make a big song and dance, we don’t call the work that we have done as big bang reforms, but you look at the amount of things that have happened under Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Mr Arun Jaitley’s charge. How many of us in this room had ever imagined to bring about 29 States and Union Territories altogether on one page to introduce GST? Albeit with a few teething troubles, but a game-changing reform of this dimension in a country as large as diverse as India being done with unanimous approval. Every political ideology coming on board, decisions taken over several meetings, more than 20 meetings, deciding procedures, deciding rates, deciding the entire legal framework, subsuming 40 taxes and cesses, and doing it seamlessly, doing it smoothly.

It’s a continuous evolving and learning process. We keep simplifying it. We keep addressing concerns of specific sectors. We keep ensuring that we can keep lowering the rates whenever we get an opportunity while keeping the revenues intact. RERA – to bring about an orderly growth in the real estate sector. The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, so that finally, borrowers become responsible to repay loans to the banks, rather than the other way round where banks are now stuck having given a loan to a borrower, it’s the bank’s responsibility to recover that money.

Agricultural sector reforms – the eNAM, about which we discussed yesterday, a marketplace where the whole country becomes one, something which all of us have deliberated and debated for years to smoothen the impact of or the vagaries of nature or the impact of different sowing patterns or different output of agriculture across the country. Ensuring fertilizer and basic seeds and credit is never a problem for our farmers who provide us food security.

Bringing in transparency and institutionalizing allocation of government resources, where I cannot favour anybody now. No governments in the future, hopefully, will be able to favour anybody given the strong framework we have created for giving out the natural resources of this country, which is our national wealth. Supporting human capital, giving pride to our workmen through a 42% increase in minimum wages across sectors at one time – something which had never happened for so many years. There used to be piecemeal and very nominal increases, doubling the gratuity that our employees can get, putting in 30-40 years of service, should they not get a respectable severance or retirement benefit?

Returning provident fund money paid by people, by contract labours over many years, but with no traceability of the person, just lying in the accounts, not only have we tried to bring in a universal number, but also ensured that the money that was collected over many years, let’s try and locate those people and give it back to those poor people whose money it rightfully was.

The JAM – Jan Dhan, Aadhar, Mobile Phone trinity that we are promoting to ensure financial inclusion, every person in this country has a right for financial engagement with the banking sector, an identity by which we can ensure leakages in the system can be controlled.

Direct Benefit Transfer – many of you will recall there was a former Prime Minister who had literally given up and said that if I give one dollar or a 100 rupees from Delhi, from the central government’s kitty for social welfare, barely 15% reaches the common man, the true beneficiary. We have brought 481 schemes of the government of India under the Direct Benefit Transfer, transferred nearly $60 billion – Rs 3,65,000 crores – directly into the bank account of the beneficiaries.

If I would extrapolate that from the old thinking, if a Rs 100 was to really effectively reach to the extent of Rs 15, then I think this $60 billion is effectively a transfer of probably $400 billion to the common man. It would need $400 billion of money leaving the government kitty so that $60 billion could reach effectively to the beneficiaries.

I mean that’s the kind of change in the country that I believe Prime Minister Modi’s leadership has successfully brought in. We have taken some strong decisions. It has been a decisive government. We have had some strong performance across different sectors. It’s been a government that has focused on bringing about a change, impacting the lives, not of a particular section of society, not just looking for good credit ratings from a section of society or good editorials written about what impacts only a miniscule population in this country. But it has been a government which has worked to impact each and every one of the 1.2 billion Indians across the length and breadth of the country.

I believe we are working for the country’s prestige. We are looking to make this country a country where every individual’s basic aspirations are met. And I believe the ambition of this government that by 15^th August, 2022, when India turns 75 – 75 years of independence – our desire is to see every citizen of this country having a home of his own, a home in which there is a good toilet, there is 24/7 electricity, there is clean drinking water, a good road leading up to his village, to his home, quality healthcare, quality education for his children.

And to achieve that goal, we believe that the changed mindset of the nation today coupled with greater engagement with technology, coupled with greater engagement with the best practices and ideas that we can get from around the world, India today is poised to actually and significantly impact our brothers and sisters, rich or poor, living in remote parts of India, in the villages of India and in the cities of India, equally bringing about a difference to the lives of our brothers and sisters.

Thank you very much.

 

Panel interaction

Thank you honourable Minister. That was really a very-very comprehensive address about the various achievements of the government. I won’t keep you away for too long. I have two very eminent panellists here – Jamshed Bhai and Mr Klod. So would you like to make some intervention or ask some questions to the honourable Minster?

Q: Mr Goyal, you have very ably laid out how this government has made a very large difference in both domestic economic situation and from a global prospective, I think one of the problems that we are likely to face now as we go forward is the much higher oil prices. I think the country had the benefit of lower oil prices in these last 3-4 years and that is going to be somewhat of a challenge.

And since you are also holding the Finance portfolio currently, do you believe that this is something that is surmountable with some difficulty or, for instance, I believe that in a way we have to pass on. We believe in a market that we have to pass on costs as we incur them, so how you expect that to sort of roll out over time? I think the related question to that is that the petroleum products and certain other items were kept out of GST and whether this is something an appropriate time to consider that we should include these items in GST. I will come back later on with some more questions after Klod.

A: Well, I think at the outset you will appreciate that as a responsible government, we are monitoring these issues all the time – the prices of petroleum products, changes in different situations around the world, what’s happening with the US Fed, what’s happening in the US economy or the European economy, what’s happening with Russia, with Iran, Saudi Arabia, that’s the job of government.

And I can assure you; this government is completely on top of things. This government is monitoring the situation on a real-time basis and it is with the responsible knowledge of what is happening in the world, how prices have moved up that I made this statement that I am very confident that this government will ensure stability of the economy and achieving all the targets that we have set before ourselves, including the fiscal deficit at 3.3%.

As regards petroleum products, may I take this opportunity to highlight one very important fact that somewhere seems to have got lost in the debate around petroleum prices.

You will all remember that diesel was still a regulated price until before this government came in. So there was an artificial price of diesel kept low which is now often used to berate the current diesel price. So let me clarify that this government brought in a system by which all prices became market-driven, and therefore, we righted a wrong of many years. And, what had we inherited apart from that?

We had inherited nearly $20 billion – 1,30,000 crores of oil bonds, unpaid bills of the oil companies over 2009 to 2014 period. We inherited large amounts of subsidies which were not paid up, for kerosene, for LPG, for fertilizer, for food security. We inherited central sales tax reimbursement to the states, which were not done for several years.

And I can read out a plethora of unpaid bills, as we would call it in the corporate world, which came to our government’s kitty. We didn’t cry about that. We didn’t refuse to honour the commitments of the government. We believe in a continuing responsibility of government. We didn’t come out with white papers to tell the world that look, oh, we are gone, we are finished, we have got $50 billion of liability on our head for which we are not responsible.

We didn’t cry for the fact that the stress in the banking system is nearly $200 billion inherited from 2014 and before that, but shoved under the carpet, hidden under restructuring, knowing full well that that money or most of it was already lost and was never going to come back to the banking system.

We started addressing all these issues. We pay the interest. We paid 40,000 crores only as interest on these oil bonds, that’s about $6 billion gone. We repaid some 30-odd thousand crores, $5 billion of these old oil bonds. All our subsidy payments we brought on up to date, on par. We provide for all the subsidies as they come, not push it to the future.

Responsible business management of the economy is what this government has brought to India after many-many-many years. And I think if at all anybody has the impression that the government got some windfall out of this lower prices, let me clarify to the august gathering here, the increased excise duty that the government would have got over 4 years, if you remove what was originally there and what would have been a trendline of growth in the normal course would not be more than some $30 billion or maybe at best $35 billion. A lot of the money goes back to the states. So when the collection of excise happens, a lot of that goes back to the states.

So we have used this money efficiently to, or this lower price, efficiently to clear the unpaid bills of the previous government and we have used it to good effect to invest in the railways, to invest in the road sector. After all, this huge massive highway programme that you see all across the country, billions of dollars being spent on the programmes to connect India through roadways, through airways, through railways. That’s where we put in every single rupee that was collected, apart from paying the old bill.

So I think this government has been very responsible both in the management of the economy and in management of prices and yet brought good governance, good policies to the table. To my mind, we have factored in what would be the increased oil price, some of it was factored before the budget, some of it we have now replanned, and looked at alternate sources of resources, so that without a cut in expenditure we will be able to manage the fiscal deficit.

Q: You want to see whether GST…

A: Well, that’s really a decision that the GST Council has to take, because end of the day, I am not or the government is not alone in that and we have maintained the dignity of the GST Council to have unanimous decisions taken. And the good part is that the federal structure, even though it has different political ideologies running different states, they have all worked together to ensure the success of GST. Maybe at the next meeting there could be a discussion on this, I believe in the past they have discussed this issue. Since a consensus did not come up, it has not yet come under the GST. But by and large, what the states get and what the centre gets is even now almost equal out of the taxes on petroleum products.

Q: Mr Minister, I was very interested and impressed by your description of the achievements of this government and I think there is no underestimating these achievements. They are for instance reflected in the fact that in the last ranking of the World Bank about the Ease of Doing Business, India has gained 30 places. However, I was thinking listening to you about what Sheikh Mohammed in Dubai keeps saying to almost his visitors or his advisors, and at some stage, I was one of these advisors.

And Sheikh Mohammed used to say, it doesn’t matter whether gazelle is running fast, the key question is can the gazelle run faster than the lion. And my point in saying that is that it is clear that India is achieving about 7.3% growth, compared to 6.7 last year. But what is interesting for me is that you are talking about double digit growth and to achieve double digit growth there are quite a few requirements. I will not mention all of them, but I would like to identify three of them. And I would like to know how you look at improving these three requirements. First of all, it means accelerating …. from commodity based production to higher value production, and of course, this is what the government is trying to do with Make in India initiative. But I think the question is how do you move faster on that road?

The second question is digitization of the economy, and it has to be accelerated quite strongly if you want to achieve double digit growth. The government again has a number of initiatives like Digital India, and we know about that but the key question is again, and many people in this room are I guess, like me as an old friend of India, impatient men. They want to see faster things happening, and so the question is how do you accelerate digitization? How do you accelerate moving to a higher value growth? For instance, in a way, accelerating the growth of growth-driver sectors like IT, pharma, biotech, auto components, smart phones, etc.

And the third point, again I would limit myself to 3 points is with respect to what is happening with, and you mentioned it, connectivity, infrastructure. And I would take infrastructure in a larger sense of the term because it is connectivity, material and digital, but it is also as you mentioned it – utilities. India needs a quantum leap in terms of the development of utilities. And in that respect if I look at what is being done today in countries like Indonesia, the Philippines where they have been quite successful in bringing much more private sector involvement in the development of utilities. And we know that utilities have developed a multiplier impact. So my question is what are you planning to do so that we move from 7.3-7.5 which is good, but quite frankly, is not good enough, because when you look at other countries the way they are moving, India needs to go faster. So I would love to hear your views about these ways of sustaining higher growth?

A: Undoubtedly, I cannot but endorse what you have said sir. In fact, I think even on an earlier occasion at the Oberoi at an Ananta event I had talked of double digit growth, probably a year or year and a half ago. But we also recognize that there has to be a capacity in the economy to be able to absorb that double digit growth and to be able to implement that double digit growth.

And for implementing that double digit growth, you need certain imperatives to be in place, which is what this government has focused on. Unless there is a framework of good governance, where there is transparency and honesty, you are not going to be able to get large amounts of capital to come into the country, because they will be perpetually scared.

You will not come into a country where you don’t know that you may get a license for spectrum which will get cancelled after four years. You will not invest in a power plant in a company where you are worried that 5 years-7 years down the road, the coal block, which was the basis of your generating power, it is going to be taken away from you. And you are left with a $2 billion/$3 billion investment but no fuel.

What we have focused on is a series of programmes. I often refer to them as beads in a necklace, all interconnected, to ensure that we are preparing India to absorb this double digit growth. And it’s not as if India would be the first country to do that. I mean look at China, and China has significant advantages of not having to grapple with a democratic system.

While we are very-very proud and we will obviously always desire and wish that we work in this environment, even if it means slower growth, but China had no accountability. But still they spent five years from 1979 to 1984 in building the basic blocks, on the back of which from 1984 to 2014, and pardon me if I am making a mistake Rakesh, but I think in that 30-year period they were able to almost have 2 out of 3 years with double digit growth.

I am hoping those figures are correct, but end of the day, it does seem to be correct from what we can see. But with the opaque nature of the economy, we really don’t know what is the status of their banking system, what is the status of their stress in the banking system, all of that we don’t know. But we focused on Digital India, but can we have Digital India without electricity going to the remotest corners of the country, can we have Digital India without optic fibre or Wi-Fi reaching the length and breadth of the country.

And we believed in doing things on scale, so we said first, as I said in my opening remarks, set the whole power sector right. Simultaneously, take electricity first to the villages, after you have taken it to the villages, take it to the sub-villages – in India they are called majlas,tolas, dhanis, this is not the main village, but remote houses in the vicinity of a village. Take the connection to those places.

And now we have embarked last year on taking it to every home, unless you have electricity, Digital India is going remain the privilege of this room and the people of one section of society. Similarly, when we came into government, the optic fibre laid in the country was 358 kilometres, today it is 300,000 kilometres. What, it’s a scale of how many times, 800 times? 700 times?

700 times in 4 years! But unless we reach that to the remotest corners, we are not going to be able to make Digital India a growth driver, or a technology reaching to the remote corners to help people learn and engage and understand technology.

So, I think this connectivity, and particularly, utilities point that you said is very correct. It has been the focus of this government. Private sector involvement is an issue you raised. In the period 2007-08 to about 2012-13, India expanded capacities on the back of very-very indiscriminate lending by banks to people who never in the first place had the equity to support that kind of lending. And capacities were created in different sectors which were far beyond India’s demand, India’s requirement.

And until recently, when we are seeing capacities getting used up, we actually had a huge capacity unutilized or a overhang of surplus capacity. Obviously, no sensible private sector investor is going to put in more money unless the old capacities get fully used up.

So, sectors where there was a demand – take mobile phone manufacturing, there were two factories making them in India in 2014, there are 120 today. There was a demand. There was no capacity to make them in India. Now people make them. Initially, obviously they will assemble them, then they look at sourcing the products from India, and finally, hopefully, they have a fab set up to make the chip technology.

So it has to be a phased transition. Effort was made about 10 years ago to start with the fab, but it failed. It fell on our face. I think a fab was set up in Chandigarh or somewhere? It just went bust, because it was never planned what that fab will really supply, there was no market for it. So, I think we have looked at it where we have allowed the private sector to take their own decisions. We have ensured that indiscriminate lending and money is not available unless there is a viable, robust plan, which can sustain that model.

Q: If I may just follow up a quick question. Could you give us a kind of date or estimate where in your view India will reach the inflexion point to double digit growth? Will it be 5 years from now, 3 years from now, 7 years from now? What is your bet? What is your plan? What is your hope?

A: My personal vision and I can actually see before my eyes that we can actually see it happening by the fourth quarter of this year.

Q: Double digit?

A: Yes. It is not impossible. There is a demand uptake in the economy. There is a mood in the nation and an aspirational billion is a fantastic marketplace to have. And I think the efforts that this government is doing for making it easier to do business, albeit with a caveat, if I may correct myself, to make it easier to do honest business. And when this country becomes a nation of honest business, I think 10 per cent plus growth is a given for India.

Q: Friends, on this very optimistic note, I am sorry we won’t be able to take questions from the audience because we have the next set of speakers just waiting. So, thank you Piyushji. Thank you very much for you very encouraging address, compliments to you and your government for all the initiatives you have taken. And we will look forward to that 10% growth shortly. Thank you very much.

Thank You