‘Indian economy will double in 10 years’ 

Addressing the 50th National Management Convention organised by All India Management Association (AIMA), he said that if India can build capacity in new economic areas, its GDP will double in a decade. According to Mukundan, policies will play a key role in driving Indian economy, as AI, digital rights, and land acquisition will be central to growth. “India needs to anticipate the new areas of growth and build capabilities there,” Mukundan said, as he listed scale, skills, and standards as India’s most urgent requirements. On the India’s chances of becoming a manufacturing country and having a large piece of the global supply chains, Mukundan said that India must focus on scale in everything. India must build for the next 30 years and not for the next five. Scale, he said, builds cost competitiveness, gets inputs, and makes the market. “India has to imagine producing for 1.4 billion people here and more,” he said. Bimlendra Jha, Managing Director, Jindal Steel & Power Ltd, said that it is not possible to make policies predictable in a world full of complexity and uncertainty. He said that policies have to evolve. He pointed to land acquisition as an obvious bottleneck to India’s industrial growth. “Reforms are needed to allow blockchains to determine the land owner,” he said. However, Jha added that policies are over-rated because opportunities are created by people. “Policies do not stop the juggernaut. Instead, policies follow. Political will has to be subordinate to people’s will,” he said. Omkar Goswami, Founder and Chairperson, CERG Advisory Pvt Ltd, predicted that Indian economy will grow at an average rate of 6-6.2 per cent over the next five years. However, he said that India’s demographic dividend could turn into a demographic nightmare because India’s growing mass of young people is largely unequipped to be employed. “Outside cities, young people can see how the better off people live and they notice that they are not getting the benefit of growth,” he said.