The Chairman of GE speaks out
Yesterday, NDTV aired an interesting interview with the Chairman and CEO of GE Global Jeff Immelt .The central theme of the interview was his view on India and its development process and how he sees GE contribute to the country in the long term. In this post I capture salient points of the interview which I believe would be of great interest to my readers
The development trajectory
Immelt believed that in the last twenty years the very nature of our democracy has changed . In the first forty years post independence the voters would tend to vote incumbents back to power 80% of the time , there was a premium for incumbency…..however in the last twenty years the trend has reversed when 80% of the incumbents get voted out in every Lok Sabha elections . This according to him is a distinct evidence of the growing maturity of the democracy. Additionally the head honcho of GE opined that our development agenda was based on the development at the Lowest Common Denominator, he believes that this paradigm is changing but would like to see it change faster. According to the GE boss while there has been growth and development in the last few years, its important for politicians to recognize that that infrastructure is the most important element of our development. The current state of our infrastructure is far from world class and according to him a greater degree of focus should be given to augmenting infrastructure across the length and breadth of the nation. Immelt believes that infrastructure is the key to our development and urged the decision makers of the country should spend a portion of its forex reserves to build infrastructure in the next 5-10 years. He was of the opinion that if the UPA government did nothing else but concentrate on infrastructure, it would have set a pace of development that would be a matter of envy for the western world.
India vs China
Immelt’s India visit was immediately preceded by his GE China and in that context he outlined the differences between the two nations
a) China operates as a centrally planned economy where 5 years plans are driven with rigor across the country , we are much more democratic and as a result at times , it far more difficult to implement a national agenda …a price that a democracy has to pay
The development trajectory
Immelt believed that in the last twenty years the very nature of our democracy has changed . In the first forty years post independence the voters would tend to vote incumbents back to power 80% of the time , there was a premium for incumbency…..however in the last twenty years the trend has reversed when 80% of the incumbents get voted out in every Lok Sabha elections . This according to him is a distinct evidence of the growing maturity of the democracy. Additionally the head honcho of GE opined that our development agenda was based on the development at the Lowest Common Denominator, he believes that this paradigm is changing but would like to see it change faster. According to the GE boss while there has been growth and development in the last few years, its important for politicians to recognize that that infrastructure is the most important element of our development. The current state of our infrastructure is far from world class and according to him a greater degree of focus should be given to augmenting infrastructure across the length and breadth of the nation. Immelt believes that infrastructure is the key to our development and urged the decision makers of the country should spend a portion of its forex reserves to build infrastructure in the next 5-10 years. He was of the opinion that if the UPA government did nothing else but concentrate on infrastructure, it would have set a pace of development that would be a matter of envy for the western world.
India vs China
Immelt’s India visit was immediately preceded by his GE China and in that context he outlined the differences between the two nations
a) China operates as a centrally planned economy where 5 years plans are driven with rigor across the country , we are much more democratic and as a result at times , it far more difficult to implement a national agenda …a price that a democracy has to pay
b) China is good in its planning and execution of its economic reforms, while its weaknesses lie in the managerial pool and its financial systems. India on the contrary is just the reverse; it has an inefficient central system, but a great managerial talent pool and a robust financial system. The GE chairman complimented the nation on its ability manage the financial reform process far better than China
c) China has a far superior infrastructure than ours, its investment in infrastructure has been USD 80 billion which has aided its development processes.
GE and its plans in India
Immelt believes that GE is going is here for the long term and would participate in its development process as it has done in the last 100 years. He sees GE play a significant role in the infrastructure sector as and when the government wants to fast forward its plans there . GE would be particularly interested in participating in financing large projects. GE has a role to play in aviation and the engineering sectors as well and easily expects fresh investments of USD 2 billion within the next five years
In conclusion
Jeffery Immelt believes that our development story is incomplete and unsustainable without a more concentrated effort of infrastructure. In this interview, he harped on the theme of infrastructure almost throughout of the interview. If the CEO of GE feels so strongly about infrastructure I am sure that the PM and his team must consider putting it into the national priority list , and it would help if we stopped diverting our energy into issues like reservations and take a harder look at our infrastructure issues….Mr Singh are you listening !!
3 comments:
Time and again our industry leaders have also been voicing their oncern on the issue of infrastructure & how we are lagging behind in the same and how it is going to be a serious bottleneck to the India growth story, unless it's acted upon quickly.
I felt under the previous NDA rule, infrastructure development was identified as an important agenda which led to start of many massive projects like golden quadrilateral, new ports, etc. But it is sa to see that after the UPA Govt came into power, many such projects which were started earlier have been put into back burner as one can see from their tardy progress.
It is time for Government to wake up to this reality and put all infrastructure projects on fast track. There are huge social benefits as these projects will generate large scale employmnet opportunities for all sections of our society and that way "Bharat" for which the Prime Minister is so much concerned about, can stand up to the rising "India".
I couldn't agree more.
Thought-provoking, to say the least. Thanks for sharing. I'm passing this link to my son also :)
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