Reviving India's Golden Era

Inspired by the country’s rich tradition of ethical wealth creation, India has designed policies that can give a fillip to economic growth

- BY KRISHNAMURTHY SUBRAMANIAN

India@100 can be a wealthy economy only by pursuing ethical wealth creation as its economic mantra. A recent change in India’s political economy provides the confidence that India indeed can pursue economic policies that enable ethical wealth creation.

On February 10, 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi underlined the importance of “wealth creation” and the role of the private sector in his speech at the Budget Session of Parliament. Acknowledging this pivotal moment that represented a seminal turn in India’s economic history, The Hindu Business Line titled its lead editorial on February 11, 2021, “Watershed Moment” and wrote: “On the floor of the Lok Sabha, [the PM] made two major points: One, the country needs wealth creators or producers in the first place for that wealth to be distributed, and that they should not be unfairly attacked; and, two, the idea of the government running public enterprises has outlived its time and that the bureaucracy, in any case, should not be running them. Scarcely ever has any senior politician, let alone a prime minister, spoken with such candour in Parliament.”

The change towards embracing wealth creation is a durable one because our policy now recognises that ethical wealth creation has been part of India’s DNA for millennia. The idea of ethical wealth creation as a noble human pursuit is rooted in India’s old and rich tradition ranging from Kautilya’s Arthashastra in the North to Thiruvalluvar’s