A multi-pronged effort to make processes simpler, infrastructure more robust and approach more in tune with the global times was already underway, iterated Atul Chaturvedi, Joint Secretary, DIPP. He detailed how the government was proactively addressing key lacunae by working on removing bottlenecks. Excerpts of his speech:
‘Make in India’ was conceived when the government realised that how complex and complicated we had made India with reference to doing business and making any investment into India.
Therefore, 25 focus sectors were thought off and, among those 25 sectors, tourism and wellness were also two sectors. Whatever is being done with the help of all the sectoral ministries and departments, with the help of state governments and private industry, is towards the tourism, wellness and the hospitality sectors.
On making processes simpler
‘Make in India’ is basically a pillar of a new and resurgent India and there are several new things that we are looking at. At the top of the agenda is obviously new processes. We are looking at processes that are coming in the way to making any investment, and how do we do away with those hurdles. Therefore, the whole aspect of ease of doing business becomes very important.
FDI and re-writing of the FDI policies is a key part of the ‘Make in India’ initiative. That is why world over, whether it is a UN body, World Bank or any other international organisation, they have been talking about India being one of the most open economies of the world.
A new approach
We are looking at several other things, other than Make in India. The PM is talking about Digital India, Skill India and how these things go together to make the right kind of investment to motivate investors, who come and make in India. These national initiatives are an important aspect of a new approach to make in India.
Infrastructure
There are a number of things that are happening on this front. There are 21 new cities, six industrial corridors, and top of that corridor is the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor, in the offing. All these are being planned to ensure that we provide plug-and-play kind of a facility to the investor. Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor is the biggest infrastructure project happening anywhere in the world. It is a 110 billion US dollars’ investment opportunity. The SMART cities projects, which consists of around 100 cities, has also being launched simultaneously.
