PC: Double-digit growth by decade-end

NEW DELHI: It was hard to miss the irony. Even as the Manmohan Singh cabinet, in its meeting on Wednesday, is slated to cut down on the current 10th Plan ambition of 8.1% growth to less than 7%, a diverse group of stakeholders including captains of industry, policy planners, ministers, young leaders and private citizens got down to brainstorm on India's prospects to secure "double-digit" growth like China has done for years.The cabinet will on Wednesday endorse the mid-term review of 10th Plan ahead of placing before the National Development Council the depressing news that India has once again fallen behind its economic goals. Even if the Indian economy grows fast in the remaining two years of 10th Plan, it wouldn't deliver growth anywhere near 8.1%. In sharp contrast, the gathering at the CII annual session on Tuesday exhibited so much confidence and optimism about India achieving double-digit growth as has perhaps not been seen ever before. FM P Chidambaram enumerated a long list of hurdles or "deficits", but concluded nevertheless with an optimistic note: "By the end of this decade, we would have achieved double-digit and inclusive growth." Reports after reports - from Mckinsy's "Made in India-The Next Big Manufacturing Story" to Goldman Sachs' 2004 "BRICs" study - were brandished to predict a bright future for India. Yet, there were no signs that India had even started looking for answers to the problems that supposedly hinder the explosive growth. By the end of the first day of the deliberations, the list of challenges had bloated manifold from the five "deficits" - namely those of fiscal, trade, investment, policy and governance - that PC had listed at the inaugural. Problems of infrastructure, employment, low farm sector growth, delivery mechanism and project management, lack of a common market and the challenge of becoming an "inclusive" nation had been added. The FM promised to take up the unfinished agenda of financial sector reforms as his first priority and complete policy-making and legislative backing for the new policies in first half of fiscal.