S’pore dy PM’s advice to Modi: Don’t run singles

NEW DELHI: Pushing economic reforms may not be a game but it is all about setting the right pace as in cricket, Singapore’s deputy prime minister told the Indian government on Friday.

“You are on a good batting wicket but you can’t continue this process of scoring singles. You got to score fours and sixes every over and a century in every other innings,” Tharman Shanmugaratnam told a packed house of Union ministers and senior bureaucrats during a lecture on “Transforming India”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seated among the guests instead of his designated place on the dais, listened attentively as the Sri Lankan-origin Shanmugaratnam gave a masterclass on the Indian reforms, its slow pace and the unfinished agenda.

He said India has to focus on exports to boost the economy and pointed out that though the country had 18% of the world’s population, it only accounted for 2% of world exports.

“In every field you have to spread the culture of leading players to the rest of the industries. The culture of learning by doing, and surely you’ll then have many more PV Sindhus and Sakshi Maliks in many Olympics,” said the leader of the city-state, one of the top economies in the AsiaPacific.

Inaugurating the lecture series, Modi said his gover nment will seek inputs from “eminent persons who made their nations a better place in the planet” to rewrite the India growth story.

You are on a good batting wicket but you can’t continue this process of scoring singles

AFP PM Narendra Modi with deputy Prime Minister of Singapore Tharman on Friday.