SPECIAL SESSION - THEME ADDRESS PERSPECTIVE PLANNING OF INDIAN INDUSTRY

摘要

It is time for me to shift here from pure technology issues to the issues about industrial development in the country. In a sense, my task is much easier because, as we speak, the Indian industrial economy is booming and, as somebody said, there is the feel good factor. What I would really like to do is not to put a damper on the enthusiasm that one sees around us, but to bring a touch of reality, because I think what we have been through over the last ten years is something which is really quite new to India, and I am not very sure that the Indian industrialists have really understood the implications of what happened. Let me then go to the previous boom period in the Indian economy, which really began in 1994 and lasted up to 1998. I think it was a period, which led to dramatic impact on the minds of most Indians. It raised the bar in terms of what we expected the Indian economy to do. There used to be a time when if the Indian economy grew at 4-1/2 to 5 per cent, we were utterly delighted. But once we went through this three-year period of 7 per cent plus growth, the bar has been raised and anything less than 6-1/2 per cent tends to push us into depression.