In reiterating her contention at virtually every event that she has spoken at, Meera Shankar, Indian Ambassador to the US, asserted that the election results in May -- where the Congress Party was returned to power with a strong mandate -- had ensured stability in India and hence would be a boon for economic reforms.
Speaking to members of The Indus Entrepreneurs, Washington DC chapter, Shankar predicted that India "is poised at a very significant juncture because we just had election in India and the election results have been a vote for stability and continuity, as well as good governance."
"And this makes a positive transition from some of the political trends, which we witnessed earlier, where there was a tendency to focus on identity policies," she said.
"As somebody said, for the first time we have seen that the Indian voter has gone beyond the issue of identity politics, perhaps beyond the politics of grievance, to the politics of governance and aspiration. And, I think that is a very welcome phenomenon and bodes well for the future of the country," she added.
Shankar said that the Manmohan Singh government was today "in a better position to govern because it was returned to power with a stronger mandate and the results, which have not been so fragmented, will put India in a good position to follow policies that will lead to the achievement of our objective for getting back on the high growth path and for combining this with issues of inclusive growth."
Elaborating she said this inclusive growth was imperative because "it is not just enough to have growth, which of course is necessary as a first principle, but that this growth has to benefit all sections of our people."
Shankar said that the agreements signed during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to India, particularly since they were focussed on science and technology, would be of interest to TiE members, the majority of whom own and operate companies that are heavily involved in these sectors.
"As you know, for India technology is the key to leapfrog some of the problems that it has been facing," she said, and cited as an example the telecom sector that has developed by leaps and bounds in recent years because of cutting-edge and revolutionary technology."
"As a result of the economy opening up in the 1990s and the introduction of greater competition in the mobile telephony sector, India has overcome some of the technology challenges that we faced in the telephone sector and today we are adding almost 15 million new mobile telephone lines a month from a situation where we had a waiting list of over two million lines."
Shankar said that besides a "huge change in connectivity in the remotest rural areas," it had also catalysed the "productivity of individuals at the lowest rung of the spectrum."
"If you are an independent carpenter, if you are an independent plumber, you can organise your life," she said.
But the envoy acknowledged that "there are other infrastructure sectors which pose tremendous challenges where enormous amount of work needed to happen", and added that in the power sector, while India has made some progress, "there is still a lot of ground to cover."
Shankar said that there are, "Some assessments which say that India loses anywhere from 1 to 2 per cent of GDP growth as a result of infrastructure constraints and if we are able to overcome these then our growth trajectory could be much higher."
