'Growth is a Result of Risk-Taking Behaviour'

Sanjeev Sanyal, member, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister tells Parth Singh that there is hope as many young people are moving away from the beaten track when it comes to jobs

- Parth Singh

What should we do to make India a nation that innovates with new products and embraces newage industries?

Economics and politics are ultimately downstream of culture. When a society has a culture of risk-taking, aspiration and chasing excellence, the economics and politics of that society will begin to reflect certain kinds of behaviours.

It is sometimes easier to understand our own society by drawing analogies from another. Let's look at the European Renaissance. After the decline of the Roman Empire, Europe remained a backwater for about a thousand years. Then, suddenly, in the 15th and 16th centuries, a large number of extraordinary innovators emerged [Leonardo] da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo, Vasco da Gama and Columbus. Even Shakespeare wrote his plays during this time. Within just a few generations, you witness a surge of risk-taking across diverse fields. This shift in culture led to five hundred years of European dominance.

The same phenomenon has happened in Bengal. For a century, from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, Bengal produced a large number of remarkable individuals like Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Netaji Subhas Bose, AJC Bose, Mohini Mohan Chakravarti and Rabindranath Tagore. These individuals excelled in diverse fields.