What is the single big idea of economic reforms? One idea that can be implemented despite the inertia of politics and government?

The answers differed but they were linked by a common strand: lack of economic governance and the need to improve delivery mechanisms so that those untouched by reforms could benefit from India’s growth story.

This emerged as the central idea of the panel discussion initiated by Finance Minister P Chidambaram. Answering the question were former disinvestment minister Arun Shourie, KV Kamath, managing director and CEO, ICICI Bank; Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries; Prannoy Roy of NDTV and Shekhar Gupta of The Indian Express. And, of course, the guest who was the pivot of it all: former bureaucrat and The Indian Express columnist N K Singh, whose book The Politics of Change: A Ringside View (a collection of his columns in The Indian Express) was launched here this evening.

So if Shourie called for giving states more incentives for pushing reform, Roy urged the Government to “thing big” rather than tinker with minor details. Kamath called for rural India to be linked to the market, Ambani for education reform and Gupta called for shrinking of the government.

The Finance Minister regretted the slow pace of reforms and said a growth rate of 10 per cent is achievable — it’s just that we will have to “seize the opportunity” to take the process ahead in a scenario where we have complex politics and widespread views. He also raised a question as to why reforms take place in a halting fashion, and answered it himself: “The opportunity in India is not smooth, we have to change the process of reform and will have to go faster.”

... contd.