Pushing Reforms

With the successful sale of Air India, the Centre is hopeful about the post-pandemic period, with several big-ticket disinvestments in the offing. However, the economy remains precariously poised, with consumption and investment still in a slump. India’s principal economic advisor Sanjeev Sanyal talked about the prospects of the economy and the progress the government has made in its reform agenda

SANJEEV SANYAL Principal Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance

“Our approach was not to revive the economy through demand management. You can use demand management for a safety net...you need to make sure that people don’t starve, that you don’t get cascades of defaults through the financial system and so on. So, we provided the support for that. But reviving the economy has to be a supply-side reform” “Capitalism is not [just] about personal profit, it is [also] about creative destruction. New companies are born, old companies die, and if this happens as a result of the natural course of business shocks and so on, then it should be allowed to happen”

“This government has been quite unapologetic about privatisation. We have removed the old euphemism, ‘disinvestment’, and used the word ‘privatisation’. We have also gone further and said we will monetise a lot of under-utilised assets” “Let me put the record straight on this: much of what we are attempting to privatise was actually built by the private sector. Air India, in 1953, was simply taken away from the private sector and nationalised. In 1969, [several] banks were simply taken away and nationalised”