Mumbai, 11th June 2015: Focus on innovations, inventions and fresh thinking in the areas like education, health, food and housing can help India become $20 trillion economy from the current around $2 trillion, Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi said at the 40th Skoch Summit here Thursday.
The government subsidies must be directed at providing "permanent solution" to the country's most pressing problem of poverty by creating productive assets, Union Minister of Minority Affairs Najma Heptulla said at the Skoch Summit here.
India needs a new measure to indicate its poverty that reflects the progress, or the lack of it, in the provision of basic necessities like health, education and sanitation for the citizens, Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor S S Mundra said. Speaking at the first day of the two-day 39th Skoch Summit here, Mundra, who oversees banking supervision, currency management, financial stability and rural credit at the central bank, said such an index will make delivery of the government welfare schemes and services more meaningful and outcome-oriented.
It has been 10 years after P V Narasimha Rao, the country's Prime Minister from 1991 to 1996, died. India's history would have been different had Rao led the Congress to re-election in the 1996 general elections. Had it won, the Congress might have had the real chance to break loose of the Nehru-Gandhi family's vice-like grip. However, what followed a few years after the 1996 elections was political theatre. Within months, Rao had to quit as president of party, but his downfall was not complete until the representative of the first family, Sonia Gandhi, was anointed party chief in 1998.
As Narendra Modi government is rolling out various initiatives to accelerate growth and ameliorate the standard of living of the 1.2 billion people, Sameer Kochhar's new book titled Defeating Poverty: Jan Dhan and Beyond should be an eye-opener for policymakers of yesteryears as well as those at the helm right now. While poverty eradication has been a national priority since the day India attained Independence, the country still has about 300 million people surviving on subsistence income.
Emphasising on the need for more clarity on the programme, Sameer Kochhar, Chairman, Skoch Group, said: "We don't find any clarity on how Digital India is different from the NeGP I & II. While Modiji has made a clarion call for transformation through Digital India, the plan needs to get in sync with these transformational objectives."
