The three questions for BJP!
Here, Rajesh Jain asks 3 questions whose answers would help the BJP charter a future course. I have provided my inputs on his blog and am now replicating those in this blog post.
1. What are the 2-3 big issues that will present the most challenges and opportunities for India?
(a) Scaling up infrastructure in the areas of Health, Education, Power sector and mass transportation would present a huge challenge in India.
(b) The large number of people working in unorganized sectors would hamper reforms in the labour sector and rationalizing taxes. India also needs to address the imbalances in its workforce. For example 50% people working in agriculture account for only 17% of the GDP while 34% of workforce working the services sector account for a much larger 60% of the GDP. This issue has to be addressed while keeping the supply side in agriculture sector strong ensuring self sufficiency and lower food prices.
(c) India’s foreign policy needs to be far more assertive specially vis-a-vis Asia. It is time India asserted itself as a regional superpower by having far more meaningful relations with Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and other South East Asian countries which are culturally closer to India. Japan and South Korea would also be natural partners. They could manufacture their goods in India which could be shipped to South East Asia. This would also keep China on its toes.
Which ideas/issues would resonate most with the youth in this decade — those issues which will fire them up to actively work towards their own and India’s development?
(a) Establish numerous tie-ups with reputed educational institutions overseas to offer quality courses across different areas (Engineering, arts, medicine, economics) in India with emphasis on R&D. This should make the issue of reservations in Education irrelevant. Also this would ensure Indian talent stays on shore. Promoting entrepreneurship would enable the youth to be more aspirational and help in nation building by offering indigenous solutions.
(b) High quality Government services which are hassle free and devoid of red-tapism and corruption. This could also be debated in the context of privatization and disinvestment.
Which matters should we focus on in the next 10 years? These should be achievable and must be important for India’s development?
(a) Promoting an aspirational society while promoting the values of nationalism, liberty and kindness. Putting it in the other way, the discourse has to be turned away from the concepts of “Aam Aadmi” and “masses” to “Khaas Aadmi” meaning individuals in society can have a dream and work towards scaling it unrestricted.
(b) Social sector schemes/cons like loan waivers and NREGA have to repackaged to add economic value to the system. This would give a lever to tackle inflation as well because we are not pumping money into a project which adds nothing making the money worthless.
