India Needs a Tad More Ambition and Resolve to Boost GDP Growth

We must focus on long-term fixes rather than near-term uncertainties for fast economic expansion

- SACHCHIDANAND SHUKLA

Planet Earth completed a revolution around the sun and we all celebrated it with gusto, calling it a New Year. As the planet embarks on its next revolution around the sun with about 8.2 billion human inhabitants, let us go ahead with the annual ritual of crystal-ball gazing into what lies ahead during the next 12 months.

There is no dearth of gloom-and-doom views of the future, with geopolitical accidents or scares. There is much discussion around 'known unknowns' or 'unknown unknowns' of a world awash in debt and beset with rising interest burdens and global trade patterns having taken a geopolitical turn, with portents of trade and currency wars, perhaps even new wars.

Yet, by any measure, these are relatively good times for the India story and the world has probably never looked at the country with greater interest. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has called it a 'bright spot' in an otherwise gloomy global economy, with the likes of China, Japan and the EU faced with structural headwinds. The IMF also forecasts that no economy of comparable size is likely to grow faster than India in 2025 and over the next few years.

Indeed, even with annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth of about 6.5%, India will stand out, as its growth rate will be more than twice that of the rest of the world.