India Inc says collaboration the key to development

ET Bureau Nov 14, 2013, 08.01PM IST

MUMBAI: Corporate India, amidst the current gloom and doom of crippling economic growth, acknowledged that that more collaboration is required amongst the key stakeholders in the country to achieve inclusive and sustainable development going forward.

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) publicly launched its India@ 75 programme on Thursday to make India a developed nation in its 75th year of independence. It hopes to achieve this through skill development, urbanization and environmental sustainability, philanthropy and volunteerism.

"We are so weighed down by current issues that we forget about the future. We have to make the future happen," said Rahul Bajaj, chairman of Bajaj Auto. He also added that he was disappointed with the current Congress-led government.

After a honeymoon period with the economy last decade, when India witnessed fast economic growth every year, the country today is facing tough challenges of persistent price rise despite crippling growth.

World Bank has cut India's economic outlook for the year to 4.7% from 6.1% forecast earlier, citing sharp slowdown in manufacturing and business confidence. International Monetary Fund has a more depressed forecast of 3.8%.

While some quarters of corporate India have blamed slow clearances by the government in implementing new projects, there have been concerns about impact of fast urbanization and industrialization on environment and local communities.

"Every major problem that faces society seems to have conflicting constituencies and conflicting objectives,' said S Gopalakrishnan, executive vice chairman at Infosys. "It is necessary to create tools and techniques which will allow us to come to a win-win solution."

India@75 was initially a vision of Professor CK Prahalad, who wrote the book 'Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.'