India Taking Purposeful Strides Towards The Vision of Amrit Kaal – Sanjiv Puri
India is taking purposeful strides towards the vision of Amrit Kaal. The country is buoyed by optimism and deeply engaged in realising that promise, striding on the pathways of clearly enunciated goals and policies. What is remarkable is that such an outlook pervades at a time when the world is grappling with serious issues affecting growth across all major economies. In this environment of poly-crisis and uncertainty, India has emerged as a beacon of growth and will remain the fastest growing major economy in the world this year.
India’s resilient growth is a testament to the slew of policy measures unleashed by our inspirational Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji. Some major policy initiatives include: tripling of public capex, best-in-class public digital infrastructure, the PLI scheme to attract private investment in focus sectors, establishing strong Farmer Producer Organisations supported by a multi-stakeholder integrated Agri-Stack to empower farmers, targeted welfare spending leading to impactful delivery of grassroot benefits; and many more. Aligned with the Prime Minister’s overarching vision, the Hon’ble Finance Minister unveiled path-breaking Budgets recently with substantial outlays towards each of the policy measures to usher in green and inclusive growth.
Prudent fiscal and monetary policies extensive reforms of the financial sector, together with stronger corporate balance sheets and better capacity utilisations augur well for higher levels of investment required to raise the growth trajectory. As the Government celebrates its 9th anniversary, the remarkable transformation of the economy across multiple dimensions has fuelled unbounded aspirations, hope and optimism for the future.
The progressive policy environment together with favourable demographics and India’s growing stature on the world stage, have led to heightened interest in leveraging India as a global hub for manufacturing, services and exports. Indeed, it is being widely acknowledged that this is India’s Moment. India’s large and growing consuming market is expected to fuel higher growth, and estimates suggest that India’s middle class would cross 1 billion people by 2047, accounting for 61% of our population, up from about 31% today.
While the potential is almost limitless, we are not immune to the adverse impact of several global crises including climate emergency, persisting inflation, supply chain disruptions, muted demand conditions in some major economies and the impact of geo-political dynamics. The climate crisis represents an existential threat and in the short term, the impact of El Nino remains a key monitorable. Further, despite moderating inflation, key commodity prices remain elevated and volatile, adding to the magnitude of external risks. In such an uncertain environment, the Indian economy demonstrated resilience, reporting robust growth while simultaneously unshackling its latent potential towards realising the vision of Amrit Kaal.
ITC’s Responsible Competitiveness
Corporates have both an economic and a social purpose. Hence, the path to future progress necessitates business strategies that not only address such uncertainties but also the underlying fault-lines of social inequity and environmental threats. This realisation led ITC to embrace a paradigm of Responsible Competitiveness, that combines agile competitiveness with environmental sustainability and livelihood generation.
In today’s context it is evident that any strategy, which is devoid of addressing the growing societal challenges will be outdated, irrelevant and bound to be short-lived. It is for this reason that ITC has made sustainable and inclusive growth the bedrock of its corporate strategy, crafting innovative business models that work towards building economic, environmental and social capital as a unified approach.
