Watch Keynote Address by Shri Piyush Goyal, Honourable Minister of Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs & Food & Public Distribution and Textiles, Government of India at the #LeadingEdge2018
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00:00 Ladies and gentlemen, at the outset I wish all of you and your families a great 2019.
00:09 We've just celebrated Makar Sankranti in Maharashtra and in different parts of the
00:16 country in different forms the new year has been ushered in, whether it's Pongal in Tamil
00:23 Nadu or Lodi in Delhi and Punjab and it's this oneness across the length and breadth
00:31 of the country that binds us together, the oneness of different cultures, the oneness
00:38 of different streams of thought merging into that spirit which we find when it comes to
00:55 working for India, when it comes to wishing a better future for this country.
01:02 And in all these efforts I think magazines and media houses play a very important role
01:09 in connecting the dots across the country, putting down on paper different viewpoints,
01:18 different inputs from all over and certainly help us policymakers in our work, in whatever
01:27 we are setting out to do and I wish all of you participate in today's deliberations and
01:35 I do wish the editors will send us what comes out, what's the juice, what's the meat that
01:41 comes out of today's deliberations which can be of good use to us in our job in government.
01:49 Thank you for your very good kind comments about the work that's happened and about the
01:54 way forward. I don't know whether you've pressed the right number when you're talking about
02:00 changes in the tax structure and making it more progressive but I couldn't disagree with
02:08 you. I think it makes eminent sense, the Honorable Finance Minister has introduced a new tax
02:15 structure for the smaller companies with a turnover up to 250 crores, initially I think
02:21 at 25% and the directional aim of this government is to look at bringing down all taxes, whether
02:30 direct or indirect, as the tax collections improve, as there's more buoyancy on the tax
02:37 front and as more and more of the Indian economy becomes formal, engages with the tax authorities
02:46 and the integrity levels that we are trying to introduce in government percolate down
02:52 to even lower levels in government and also in the business world.
02:58 Why I mentioned I wished I could attend your session, Dr. Stewart, is that way back in
03:05 1988, '88 or '89, '89 actually to be precise, I had been admitted at the Wharton Business
03:17 School where you did your MBA to pursue a PhD program on strategy. At that point of
03:24 time we had some issues in our business, some labor trouble had cropped up and I was not
03:30 able to join the program. I don't know if Dr. Harbir Singh is still teaching there.
03:37 He had, he was to be my guide and professor, he had admitted me and I took a gap year and
03:44 I don't know whether that was the worst decision that I took in my life because after that
03:49 gap year I never went back to school.
03:55 And then I had another mishap, not exactly with the UPenn but an unfortunate incident
04:01 where couple of months ago I reached the university to receive an award from the Kleinman Center
04:13 on Energy Policy. It was on Dasara and I had a festival that we celebrate in India and
04:23 I barely reached there in the morning hours and I had a packed day of eight or ten programs
04:29 when the unfortunate mishap where some people were trespassing on the railways, were standing
04:37 on the rail tracks and watching the Dasara celebrations were run down in a very unfortunate
04:43 tragic incident. And therefore I had to rush back from Philadelphia without even accepting
04:52 that award. And therefore I'm very, very scared whenever I brush shoulders with the University
05:01 of Pennsylvania.
05:05 Something like a Hindi movie that you would not be aware of but some of us in this room
05:09 would know where I think Rani Mukherjee and who was the actor? The guy who's married to
05:18 Karina probably, Saif. Saif and Rani Mukherjee, we had these two in a movie where every time
05:25 they bump into each other, something is going to go wrong. And I think it's called Humlok.
05:33 Humthum, Humthum, sorry, Humthum. So I was just, as I was hearing you speak, I was wondering
05:41 what the rest of the day holds for me today.
05:48 But if one was to look at this five-year period of this government, in its first term it has
05:58 focused its energies on the building blocks, on setting up the agenda of creating that
06:05 framework which I think was necessary to prepare India for a sustained period of growth, which
06:18 was necessary to prepare India and its acceptability in the whole wide world, which was necessary
06:27 to bring instilled confidence in our people that India can aspire for leadership in the
06:34 world, can aspire for a better future for the people of India. After all, the $5 trillion
06:40 economy that Mr. Vaidyanathan just talked about is possible in two ways. One can hugely
06:54 build up debt on the country's balance sheet and the company's balance sheets, all the
07:00 business balance sheets. One can hugely build up fiscal deficits and set the country in
07:10 a path of weak financials and certainly show growth in the short run. But to sustain that
07:20 in the long run, one will have to have very strong macro fundamentals in place. One will
07:28 have to have strong leadership in place. One will have to ensure the sustainability of
07:36 both the economy and the environment. And one will also have to ensure that we are recognized
07:47 in the world as an honest country, as a country where business can be done with equal opportunity
07:55 for everybody, where business is respected and where business is encouraged to integrate
08:06 with a corruption-free environment. And I think that has been the hallmark of this government
08:14 in its first term, focusing on building that framework along with ensuring that every effort
08:24 of the government should be to also lift the quality of life, improve the quality of life
08:31 of the teeming millions who have in some sense remained left behind. And I think all of this
08:38 calls for a lot of negotiation. You are continuously negotiating within government. You are continuously
08:46 negotiating with the different stakeholders in the country, the people of India, the political
08:52 establishment, the judiciary, the media houses or the media groups. And you are negotiating
09:01 to figure out what's that best path which will be acceptable to all these different
09:07 streams or at least finding the common minimum common denominator and working your way through
09:15 to get more acceptability. Take the GST, for example, which Mr. Vaidyanathan just talked
09:21 about. Now, very clearly, it's something which was pending since the last 15 years. The first
09:28 time the concept was thrown open was in 2003. But earlier governments could not negotiate
09:37 and successfully implement GST because the negotiation didn't come from a position of
09:44 strength. The negotiation didn't come with credibility and commitment that is required
09:51 in any negotiation to be successful. And possibly the negotiation didn't come from a clean heart
09:58 where you have a track record of fulfilling past commitments and are trusted for the commitments
10:06 that you make when you're trying to do a game-changing reform like GST. And why I took that example
10:15 from Mr. Vaidyanathan's talk was that I believe Prime Minister Modi has given that leading
10:24 edge to India that we had required for a very, very long time. In one sense, if you want
10:33 to win a race, you don't have to start first always, but you've got to end first. You've
10:39 got to reach your end goals first. Very often, it's not the person who kick-started and took
10:48 up the race first, but it's somebody who plans well, somebody who prepares well, who has
10:56 a roadmap, who has a vision, who has the qualities to take the race forward, who wins, particularly
11:05 a marathon. And I can list out a series of measures that this government has taken and
11:14 a series of outcomes because of those measures that have been the differentiating factor
11:22 between erstwhile governments and the last five years that we have been in office. In
11:28 fact, speed, skill and scale was a mantra that Prime Minister Modi used to talk about
11:35 when he was in government in Gujarat. We've tried to bring that to the working of the
11:40 government in India, and I think to good effect. There were a number of projects that used
11:47 to take years and years, languish for years, but never get completed, never get implemented,
11:55 causing huge cost overruns, causing delays in their ability to serve the people of India,
12:02 causing dissatisfaction, particularly in rural India, eastern parts of India, or in the hill
12:08 states or the sensitive northeastern states or the state of Jammu Kashmir. There were
12:15 so many issues that over the years we had tended to just delay and allow them to fester
12:26 on with this government, took up on a mission mode and completed in a time-bound manner.
12:34 I remember we had the commitment, which has been pending for probably 43 years, to bring
12:41 one rank, one pension to all those who serve in the armed forces as a mark of respect and
12:50 a commitment of the people of India for a better future, for a better social security,
12:57 for the people in uniform who have honorably protected the boundaries of India. It took
13:04 43 years for this nation and a Modi government to come in to actually implement it and start
13:12 dispersing pensions on the one rank, one pension principle for the last now four years and
13:19 continuing. It was a large cost on the exchequer, but a cost which I think they deserved, which
13:27 I think was a commitment of the people of India. And like that we saw so many different
13:33 projects in the railways, for example. There are a thousand plus projects which had remained
13:40 pending. We just completed the Bogibeel Bridge. It's the longest road cum rail bridge, I think
13:49 in all of Asia, which we completed in December. On the 25th of December it was dedicated to
13:56 the nation. It had started somewhere in 1996. The funding for it was finally provided by
14:06 Mr. Vajpayee when he was prime minister some 15, 18 years ago. But very little work had
14:13 happened on the ground when we came into office in 2014. But an aggressive push helped us
14:21 complete that project and it has a game-changing dimension for the people of Assam, for the
14:27 people of Arunachal Pradesh, for the Northeast and for the armed forces who need to reach
14:33 the border very quickly in the times of emergency, in the times of distress. And fortunately
14:43 we have Mr. Prabhu here who was handling the railway portfolio very â in a very outstanding
14:49 fashion, who really gave a thrust to this Bogibeel project and provided the funds, provided
14:56 the leadership required to complete a project in time. And we were able to actually implement
15:03 it. Similarly, the Train 18 project which he initiated when he was railway minister,
15:08 we were able to complete in a time-bound manner. And for the first time in 50 years, the Indian
15:16 Railways has developed a train set which is completely indigenous, designed in India,
15:23 made in India and made in a record time of 18 months and truly will be the defining feature
15:31 of the changing way Indian Railways will serve the passengers. And we have a pretty big share
15:38 of passengers travelling in the rail through the year. We have about eight billion passengers
15:44 going through the rail network every year. And I can keep reading out a number of steps,
15:51 whether it's in the finance world, the Benami Act, Benami Properties Act for example, passed
15:57 some 18 odd years ago but never implemented or 28 years ago, but we had to only notify
16:06 the rules which were not done. And we notified them and implemented it and we are seeing
16:13 people with Benami Properties being actually prosecuted, being actually brought to book.
16:20 I remember the Western Expressway which is on the periphery of Delhi, which had been
16:31 pending for about 15 years, which Mr. Nathin Gadkari completed, will have a⊠will completely
16:38 change the travel dynamics of New Delhi, the national capital, but took us 15 years. And
16:47 that ladies and gentlemen has been an effort of this government to change the way projects
16:54 are conceptualized, finalized, planned and then implemented. In some sense, learning
17:00 from the Japanese example, where I think they take more time in the planning and structuring
17:08 of the design of the project, possibly than in actual implementation on the ground. And
17:16 this, I think, you would observe in any of the projects that this government took up.
17:24 If I can highlight a few initiatives, you just mentioned about the LED bulb program.
17:30 Now, the LED bulb on the face of it looks like a simple bulb giving⊠emitting illumination
17:39 for the room or for the country. But when I put it in the right perspective, we launched
17:45 this project in January 2015, 5th of January 2015. We set before us a target to distribute
17:57 770 million LED bulbs in the country in four years and we had estimated that will by and
18:04 large replace all the incandescent bulbs which we have been using for donkey's years. And
18:11 therefore save electricities, reduce the energy bills of the people and reduce pollution,
18:18 reduce the impact on environment because of higher consumption of electricity. Most people
18:25 either ridiculed it or were in a state of disbelief that this is at all possible.
18:32 I am happy to report to you, ladies and gentlemen, we gave out the first bulb on 1st May 2015.
18:41 We have not even completed four years of that project. And the country today has already
18:51 seen the sale or distribution of 1.3 billion LED bulbs in less than four years, almost
19:01 twice the original number we started off with. And I think by the time we complete the four
19:06 years, it will be twice what we had originally envisaged, thereby saving nearly 40,000 crores,
19:18 that's about 6 billion US dollars of electricity bills every year which the consumers of India
19:27 are paying, reducing carbon emissions by about 80 million tons every year because of reduced
19:38 requirement for electricity and has saved the nation about 20 billion dollars of additional
19:49 investment which would otherwise be required to provide that kind of energy every year.
19:54 Of course, I can go into much more detail about the peak loads being reduced which and
20:02 since Mr. Prabhu and I both also shared the power portfolio, he was the original reformer
20:08 in the power sector in the Vajpayee government who really brought in the first wave of reform
20:16 in the power sector. It was truly a privilege for me that I could learn from his experiences
20:24 and bring in these kind of projects into the country. But the scale, ladies and gentlemen,
20:30 helped us to bring down the cost of LED lighting by about 87%. So a bulb which used to cost
20:39 to the government of India when we bought it about 310 Indian rupees, the government
20:45 would finally purchase it at about 40, 45 rupees. And this reduction in pricing not
20:53 only helped the people of India to use LED bulbs in a big way but has now become a project
20:59 which the world is embracing. So everywhere in the world that I go, if I'm engaging
21:05 with the power ministers in my earlier role, one comment was for sure that India led the
21:11 world in making LEDs a household feature. India led the world to bring down prices of
21:20 LEDs. India led the world in making the world a better place to live in, thereby reducing
21:28 carbon emissions, reducing the energy needs of almost every country in the world. And
21:36 this price reduction was possible only because we implemented to scale, implemented fast
21:41 in a time-bound manner, and of course implemented honestly.
21:49 Another project that has â may not have much resonance with many of you here, would
21:56 not have faced the ignominy of living in â living without electricity, living without a toilet,
22:05 not having clean cooking facilities at home. It's something which many of us in this
22:11 room may never have experienced. Madam Mahalakshmi asked me to step onto the hills over there
22:22 outside the room and make a wish. Many people are superstitious of sharing their wish, but
22:30 I don't â I have no hesitation in telling you that I only wish that as we dream of a
22:40 new India, as we aspire for a better India for every citizen of this country, as we wish
22:47 that every citizen has a roof, has shelter over his head, has electricity 24/7, has a
22:56 toilet in his home, clean drinking water, good healthcare facilities, quality education,
23:02 digital connectivity. I think if we can all collectively work to meet that goal â and
23:12 we've set an aggressive timeline of 15th August 2022 when India turns 75 â if we
23:20 can achieve that in this defined time frame, I think there can be no better aspiration,
23:26 there can be no better future to look forward to, no better dream to have as I did over
23:34 there than to see that developed India, an India where every citizen has at least the
23:42 basic amenities taken care of. And that's the India that we have been trying to work
23:48 on. That's the India where every rupee of tax that all of you are paying is being spent
23:54 for. That's the India which funds Sobhagya program, under which we've ensured that every
24:02 willing consumer in this country is guaranteed and has been given an electricity connection.
24:09 We have the last couple of million or so left where also we are actually reaching out to
24:16 people. We are not sitting in the office and asking people to come and take an electricity
24:20 connection. Our teams are fanning out into the villages to make sure that every willing
24:27 consumer at least fills in just a short half a page as an application and we can guarantee
24:36 him an electricity connection and give it to him. That's the effort that has been put
24:42 in over the last four years under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan to ensure that sanitation standards
24:48 in India go up. And I'm happy to report to you that as against one out of three women
24:57 having the facility of a toilet in India, we had only 34% sanitation coverage in India
25:05 in 2014. Today it is 95%. We've built nearly 9.5 crore, 95 million toilets have been built
25:19 in the last four years to give our sisters, our mothers a life of dignity. It is a matter
25:28 of shame for all of us collectively as Indians that it took us 70 years to achieve that.
25:39 Most women in this country, particularly in rural India and also in many of our slum areas
25:45 in the cities used to cook using coal, using wood, fig leaves. Some reports suggest that
25:57 nearly 400 cigarettes worth of smoke were being pumped into a woman's body and the family's
26:06 body living in their home. After all, the smoke would be in the atmosphere. The country
26:16 had only about 130 million families who had LPG connections in 2014. I'm happy to share
26:24 with you we've added another 120 million homes who have today got a cooking gas LPG connection.
26:35 We added more LPG connections in four and a half years than were probably given out
26:40 in the last 40 or 50 years. And I think in the next six to eight months, there'll be
26:48 no home in this country which will be deprived of clean cooking facility using an LPG cylinder
26:58 and our next step is to make sure that we can provide that through pipe gas so that
27:04 ultimately all our homes can be connected through pipe gas like it would be in any part
27:10 of the developed world.
27:15 And I can go on and on about it. We've built about 12 and a half million homes in the last
27:24 four years, four and a half years, as against a typical two and a half million homes built
27:29 in the five years before that for the poor of India. In addition to that, we've come
27:36 up with a program where for the common man, the middle class, six and a half percent interest
27:44 subvention, a subsidy amounting to six and a half percent on a loan up to six lakh rupees
27:52 is provided and a typical small home for a common middle class person may not be in Mumbai
27:58 but most parts of India would not cost more than nine lakhs, ten lakh rupees.
28:06 We're trying to empower our middle class to become homeowners and ensure that in the next
28:11 three to four years we'll have everybody having a shelter over his head. And this is what
28:20 we believe is the aspiration of India. This is what we believe is essential for businesses
28:26 to prosper because a happy population, a population whose basic needs are met, will provide us
28:37 that happy workforce, will provide us skilled manpower, will provide us people who are educated,
28:48 will provide us people who are healthy. The health care program is going to cover 500
28:55 million people with free health care and many of us here may be aware that many families
29:05 would go into distress for lack of ability to pay for health care. Many middle class
29:12 families would get into penury because they couldn't afford health care. And I think that's
29:19 the challenge, that's the commitment with which we have set out, very often making very
29:26 ambitious programs, very ambitious goals. Many times it seems impossible whether we'll
29:31 be able to achieve that. But I think it's important and that's the leading edge that
29:38 I think we all desire to see in business and politics and government in every walk of life.
29:46 The desire to dream big, the desire to aspire for big goals, the desire to have very audacious
29:55 ambitions, very large targets, because unless we dream and unless we dare to dream big,
30:06 we certainly are not going to be able to see a new India. We are certainly not going to
30:11 be able to meet the aspirations of a new India, of a youthful India, an India which is connected
30:20 to the global world, an India which is integrating with the world, particularly through the advent
30:26 of digital technologies. And I'm sure with the collective effort of all sections of society,
30:35 with the effort of business, with the effort of government, with the effort of media, with
30:39 the effort of collective effort of all of us in this room, there is no dream that we
30:45 cannot fulfil. There is no promise that needs to remain unkept. Let us go for an India where
30:56 every citizen gets the basic needs of life, where every Indian knows that he has an equal
31:04 opportunity, where every Indian knows that the country and the people of the country
31:12 care for a united, for a strong India whose boundaries are secure, whose people live with
31:23 the highest degree of social security, physical security, whose entire life should be focused
31:33 on a better future for those who possibly could not board the train. I think most of
31:40 us in this room also may have sometime or the other had humble backgrounds, may have
31:45 come from some village, may have come from some smaller past. My own father, for instance,
31:55 studied under streetlights to secure his engineering degree. I often used to joke that maybe Mr.
32:03 Modi made me the power minister knowing that background, since they were colleagues, and
32:10 gave me the job to ensure that every citizen of this country gets electricity. No child
32:15 has to study under a streetlight ever again. No woman has to be embarrassed and cannot
32:22 use the toilet between sunrise and sunset in this country ever again. No child is deprived
32:29 of quality education or no elderly is ever missing out on good health care in this country.
32:37 And I'm sure that dream is something that we can all agree upon, and that's something
32:45 which will take this country to those heights of development that Mr. Vaidyanathan talked
32:50 of. I don't think economic development can ever be the only single goal of any country.
32:58 A harmonious social environment, a harmonious human environment in the country is a prerequisite
33:07 to make India one of the greatest countries in the world, to bring not that $5 trillion
33:14 economy to India, but to aspire to be the world's largest economy, to overtake all the
33:21 other economies in the world. And I think we as Indians should collectively be aspiring
33:27 to once again make India that sonne ki chidiya, that golden bird that we at once upon a time
33:34 are proud to have inherited. I think we are lucky, we are very fortunate to have a rich
33:42 legacy, a rich heritage behind us. Let's bring back that glory to India. Let's collectively
33:51 work to make India a superpower, as they say in the Onida ad, "Neighbors envy, but owners
34:00 pride." Thank you.