Youth Should Stay In India And Contribute To Growth: Deloitte's Romal Shetty

While highlighting the abundant opportunities in the country, Romal Shetty, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Deloitte South Asia has said that there is a need for the younger generation to stay in India and contribute to its growth.

As the world navigates through dynamic economic landscapes, the S&P Global Credit Outlook for 2024 placed a spotlight on India's pivotal role in shaping the global economy. It stated that the country's gross domestic Product (GDP) will grow to 6.4 per cent by 2024, 6.9 per cent by 2025 and 7.0 per cent by 2026.

While speaking at the ninth pan Indian Institue Of Management (IIM) world management conference (WMC) at IIM Sambalpur, Shetty emphasised the importance of innovation in various aspects of India's growth by focusing on collaboration, sustainability and digital governance. 

Shetty emphasised the need for a holistic approach to innovation, highlighting examples such as Chandrayan, Malcolm McLean's containerisation and Indian companies like Ceat revolutionising the logistics industry. 

He said, "Innovation is a fairly large topic, including growth, governance and sustainability." 

Shetty underscored the Apple Watch as an example of far-sightedness planning for sustainability and the remarkable success of India's FASTag and goods and services tax (GST) implementation in reducing waiting times, saving fuel and curbing corruption. 

Notably, India's GST collection increased by 12 per cent year on year from April to December 2023, reaching Rs 14.97 lakh crore when compared to the previous year’s collection of Rs 13.40 lakh crore during the same period.

The average monthly gross GST collection for the first nine months of this year was Rs 1.66 lakh crore, representing a 12 per cent increase compared to the average of Rs 1.49 lakh crore recorded during the same period in financial year 2022-23 (FY23).

Talking about youth who are all set to enter the professional world, Shetty urged students to learn to look at problems from different perspectives to innovate for multiple solutions.  

During the conference, S N Tripathi, Director General (DG), Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA), New Delhi highlighted the scope of IIM's role in the country and the imperative need for a mindset shift in the numerous departments and organisations within Indian ministries and the basic structure of the government.  

While citing an example, he said, “30 million people are governing this country and there are three crore bureaucrats right from linemen to chairman, who are part of the government and changing their mindset with 21 IIMs is not an easy task.”  

To develop the people of India, the country needs more insights than just data, Tripathi mentioned.