Unemployment, Inequality, Policy Failures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFQzHj3eb7c Economists Dr. Pronab Sen, Prof. Arun Kumar, and Prof. Jayati Ghosh Join Kapil Sibal To Discuss India’s Economy
HW News
Yoututbe transcript ( under edit ) the disparity between the rich and the poor has increased over the years now . we are stable yes we have a situation where corporate India is doing well . where non-corporate India continues to struggle but it's been this way now for 8 to nine years.
The question really is what is the objective if your objective is essentially to improve the lot of the
people then it has gone wrong. if your objective is to try and show a reasonable growth rate you've done it right . if your objective was to accelerate the growth rate so that we actually can get to a situation where people are being drawn into the economic processes we have gone badly wrong.
so you know we always used to talk about what should be the growth rate of India um and more or less all of us agreed it
should be somewhere between 7 1/2 and 9% um
we are stuck at a 6 to 6 1/2% range and we're going to be there yes but that is stable next year projections are also
that six and it the medium-term projections will all give you that and
we I don't see any upside on it downsides I can see but upside I'm not
seeing at the but if they had different policy prescriptions I mean have they done enough with policy prescriptions to
change the dynamics of the nature of our econom getting into that in the in the course of the conversation because yes
there is so today just to give you an example of how dire things are
a person borrowing taking a working capital loan for four months is paying
just half a percentage point less interest rate than a corporate which is borrowing 20-year funds just half a
percent right any economist will tell you that is wrong
if as with time uncertainty increases and you demand a higher return but in
India we've kept that com almost equal so what ends up
happening is you are incentivizing capital intensive methods of production
and in a sense leaving the labor behind right and that's a policy failure this
is not something that's happening with the market it's a clear out and out policy let me
ask you how many people pay income tax in this country i mean effective income tax so you know about 9 crores are those
who are either TDS payers or those who file a return out of 140 crores out of
140 crores okay out of this about 6 and a half crores either file nil return or
very little so you effectively have about 2 and a half crores who are in the tax net out of this also as per the
prime minister's 15th August speech only 1.5 cr are effective taxpayers who pay
substantial amount of tax you're one those must be the really rich ones the welloff yes those who are earning above
25 lakhs of rupees you know they are the welloff and if you look look at also the data from the you know east portal where
your unorganized sector people who are supposed to register because the supreme court scolded the government during the pandemic and said how many people are in
the unorganized sector you should know so they set up the east portal now in that as per the prime minister's uh
parliament uh statement 30 crores have registered there okay out of which 90% %
say they are earning less than 10,000 rupees a month okay so that's the state i mean they're close to poverty line you
know so in other words the gap between the organized sector and the unorganized sector is huge those who are in the
organized sector getting all the benefits and it is that growth that you see and 80 to 90% are in the unorganized
sector so as per the Rajya Sabha question 2017 94% are in the unorganized
sector okay so 94% are working in the unorganized sector 6% are working in the organized sector and the growth that you
see is of the 6% and the gap between the 6% and the 94% that's what is increasing
and that's why you see massive unemployment in the unorganized sector you know so when we talk about unemployment it's women's unemployment
it is the educated youth between the age group of 15 to 29 who don't have jobs who are looking for jobs you know so
there's massive unemployment in the economy and unemployment is also of different kind one is you're looking for
job not finding it other is you're undermployed you stand in the market for 12 hours you get two hours of work so
you're underemployed then there's disguised unemployment in agriculture and in trade you know the whole family
sits at the shop but only one person is needed or the whole family goes to the farm but only one person is needed so
there's disguised unemployment and then there are those who have given up looking for work so the labor force
participation rate in India is very low compared to other big countries you know so that means that that mean less people
working so therefore the family has to have more people being supported by the person earning so this gap between the
unorganized organized is huge and that is what is creating the problem and that's why my argument is the GDP data
is incorrect because you see the unorganized sector data comes with a time lag for the quarterly data that
comes you assume that the unorganized sector is growing roughly at the same rate as the organized sector now that
may have been true before the demonetization but demonetization affected the unorganized sector next
year you again had a shock of GST and third year you had the NBFC uh shock and
then finally the 2020 shock was the you know lockdown sudden lockdown so because of these shocks and the methodology is
that you project from the previous year into this year now if you're projecting from the previous year to this year when
the shock is there then obviously your data would be incorrect and then you project further from that then you use
the benchmark estimates benchmarks were created before the uh shocks came so you
needed to correct that so my argument is that the rate of growth is not 6 and a half% but it's more like 2 and a half%
you know because the 6 and 1 half% is the rate of growth that's another controversy yeah the rate of growth of
organized sector is 6 and a half% what you see but the unorganized sector the reality is people at the bottom of the
pyramid are the ones who are suffering and you can see example like say the trade sector which is the second largest employer e-commerce is growing at 20 30%
so the neighborhood stores are going down and neighborhood stores are labor intensive e-commerce is capital
intensive similarly you see that in the FMCG sector you see that in the leather good sector you see that in the pressure
cooker sector so declining sectors proxied by a rising sector so GDP is overestimated now the implication of
that is if the unorganized sector was growing at 6% the unemployment would not have been so large it's actually because
it's declining that's why the unemployment situation is as bad as it is and therefore in a sense Indian
economy is splitting apart inequalities are growing and that's why the demand is short and when demand is short capacity
utilization become short and RBI's data on capacity utilization comes from the organized sector that is showing it's
hovering between 70 75% that's inadequate for investment boost so
private sector investment is low and the finance ministry keeps saying the public sector investment has been raised but
private sector is not coming forward to invest so they're not even the public sector investment is giving some
employment opportunity but that's going into capital intensive sectors when you when you have public big highways big
now see earlier you used to employ a lot of people there now with big cranes big bulldozers you don't have much
employment generation there so where do you get employment generation in rural employment guarantee scheme in education in health in rural development all those
are cut you know true so therefore let me let me move on to you Jia just I mean in a country where I mean after all jobs
are created when the manufacturing sector is doing well and manufacturing sector in India I believe is going is if
you look at the GDP it's only 13 to 15% of the GDP uh as opposed to China which
is uh I believe now 30% and it's going to be about 45% of the total goods
manufactured in the world it's manufacturing about 30% today and it will be 45% I believe this is the kind
data I have you mean China's share of global share of the global manufacturing that's why there's huge employment there
and we our share of manufacturing uh qu the GDP is only 13 to 15% where are
going to people get jobs so you know that's a more complex question about manufacturing I come back to that but I
just want to emphasize what Arun was saying about employment because you know I mean I'm not a big fan of GDP as an
indicator of progress but supposing but supposing you think of other alternatives and there's lots of stuff
going on now in fact in the UN discussions about other measures one of the measures we had suggested and which
is actually being considered is the labor market indicator which is the proportion of people in employment that
is of the working age population so you're not looking at the unemployment rate which has many other issues the
people are of working age who are employed into the median wage that is
the wage half of the distribution is below that the other half is above and
that's actually a better indicator than the average wage data that we throw around because that gets skewed at the
top now if you look at the labor market indicator for India in fact it's really quite interesting per capita GDP has
been going up labor market indicator has been stagnant and falling so you know when you were talking about the bottom
the bottom half of the population has actually been doing worse in this period of 6 to 7% rate of growth so a big issue
in our entire development project is our inability to generate jobs so that's why
I asked you the question on manufacturing so the problem is that manufacturing will no longer generate
jobs i we have to recognize I mean manufacturing is important for many other reasons it it has synergies it's
critical for technological development knowledge etc we cannot avoid manufacturing but we cannot expect
manufacturing to give us jobs because the nature of the global economy has changed and technology and technology
china the by the way the share of workers in manufacturing has been falling for 14 years in China because
they are just getting much more productive they're doing much more skilled but they're getting more skilled
also well it's automation mechanization robotization they're global leaders in all of that but it really means the
manufacturing of the future is not job generating okay so we have to recognize that but therefore think of other ways
of generating employment and good quality employment how do you do that well two obvious things we are among the
worst underproviders of basic public services okay health spending per
population i mean health spending we have um I think what 1% of GDP at the
moment 1.2% the average for middle inome countries is 3.5 for middle income not you know
I'm not talking about the other countries which have higher some is actually 9% is Brazil Brazil it's 11%
that's correct Thailand it's 8% so you know we are way below education similarly and so basically these are all
employment generating activities with very high multiplier effects so that's one way in which you focus employment
generally it's a long-term thing now because by the time you set right your education system by the time you you you
have skill development programs you know it's going to take five seven years what's going to happen no no wait wait
why is it longterm just filling vacancies in central and state governments gives you 15 million jobs
filling people equipped to fill those vacancies yes people are equipped we are not filling the vacancies because we
don't have the money you know we keep saying skill mismatch etc etc i don't buy all of that okay okay we have people
we have educated people they will also learn on the job they're not you know they're not all stupid and so in fact if
we just begin by filling vacancies okay you're already generating I think it's 13 million was the last time I
calculated significant which has again positive multiplier effects however on
manufacturing and I think their governance point is so important you see it's not the crazy thing that has
happened over the last let's say 101 15 years is that it's not just corporate sector but within the corporate sector
there is such concentration so around one study found what 90% of profits
going to the top 100 companies corporate profits now corporate has already got way ahead of all your msmemes right but
then within corporate there is this massive inequality as well so we have to
focus a lot of our you know industrial policy on the MSMES we have really no
proper focus if you look at if you look at the world whether it was Japan or Taiwan it is these MSMES kind of
structures that actually give a boost to the economy and in here we've been languishing we haven't there was a time
when the MSMES were the leaders in our growth that's why I'm saying now the 2000s yes but after the series of shocks
that Ji talked about it all tank Yeah right the question is what are you doing
about it exactly so let's ask MSME MSME has to be divided up between the micro
small and medium you know small and medium are six lakh units roughly and micro six cr units okay and large are
6,000 so there factor of 100 between them and it's the micro units that employ 97.5% of the MSME this thing do
they have access to capital at low interest very low very very little capital very very little access so it's
the micro sector which has to be revived because that's 97.5% of the employment of the MS how would you how would you
give loans to them when there's no collateral no so so so then how does that happen i mean
let me put it to you very bluntly okay it's not going to happen in the banking sector with our banking laws all right
but these people are getting funds and they're getting it from money lenders boy okay now the question is how should
you look at money lenders and we've all grown up with the mindset
that money lenders by definition are bad people blood suckers they are blood suckers yes they are they are but the
point is without the micro sector would not be dead
right you can't duplicate that in the formal system
formal systems will have rules which will effectively prevent it no nobody's running
so the question is how do you look at money like this well Reserve Bank of India for NBFCs controls the rates of
interest right absolutely so you can have a legislation which do that does that no but these are beyond these are
beyond these are outside you have you have legislations in West Bengal and I know where even private sector lending
is controlled so you can do that so in no you you you could but by doing that
are you really achieving the purpose that's I don't know let's let's find out if there's a solution that's in our in
our analysis what we did was we said for the micro sector individually they can't
form groups so say like in bad you have carpets in seal karanji you have textiles in kja you have pottery etc
form their cooperatives and through cooperatives then you get loan and technology is very crucial they have to
upgrade technology that for that government has to provide So the three things marketing technology and finance
if you form cooperatives and there are these clusters that are developing it's in other sectors of the economy we
have that and cooperatives are the way to go they that is really the only way and they have this government has paid
no attention it's the other wor no I know it's it's worse the cooperative
sector and industry has been taken over by our home minister and there's a reason for that so in other words you're
not just ignoring cooperative sector you're actually destroying it okay okay so like Maharashtra cooperatives you
know the sugar cooperative etc we know what happens so So we have to we have to
really you know formalize these cooperatives in such a way that you know there's no concentration i know you know
I don't you know cooperatives are controlled by politicians yeah we all know that Maharashtra the sugar sugar
lobby is all controlled by politicians cooperative all control but but we have to try something if you don't try
something we are not going to get anywhere if you try something you should have a government which looks at people implements policies that are people
oriented this government looks at policies which is industry oriented which you know big conglomerates but but
crony capitalis oriented and that's where the investment climate is getting destroyed because you know out of the 2
lakh 50,000 high net worth individuals you know roughly 50,000 have gone abroad
because they are worried they get taken over you know by the favorites and therefore the investment climate is bad
not only because of demand but also because of the fear so people are going abroad rather FDI this this time the FDI
this year the net FDI Yeah yeah no it's Yeah the net FDI net FDI no but that there's a story in that right so if you
look at gross FDI it's actually gone up but outflow has shot up so the net FDI
has come down 96% the question that somebody should be asking is why has so much FDI simply
upped and left the country i'll tell you ED CBI income tax climate
right retrospective yeah exactly all that why why would people why why would people stay here but this is the
legitimate question so you look at the newspaper reporting net FDI low means
people aren't sending money here the fact of the matter is gross FDI has gone up people are sending but people who
have come here have gone back out right right right and people who are here are also going up yes exactly yeah it's a
different story so this crony capitalism is really killing the investment okay now you know the prime minister talks about make in India program where is the
making India program taken us it's a failure no I mean I don't think there's any question about it that it's a huge
failure yeah manufacturing was the focus and the share of manufacturing GDP has actually dropped yeah 13% now yeah it's
gone down by 3 and a half% correct so then make in India is a failure so the
only thing we make in India are a propaganda yeah we're very good at the only thing we very good at that Vishwa
guru propaganda that's what making India is in this country but but you see if they had instead had a focus on MSMES
and you know category specific sector specific cluster specific you could have actually achieved quite a lot it's not
something impossible but how can you possibly have you know that kind of policy prescription when through
electoral bonds you take money from big people now at some point there has to be a payback so all the all the big
projects well yes and no but remember one of the first things that this government did in 2014 was the mudra and
the mudra loan was not a bad idea designed terribly designed terribly oh I
see just tell tell viewers as to how why it was designed terribly it the way it
was designed the the rules governing the Mudra loans firstly they were forced onto the banks okay kicking and
screaming banks don't like it at all yeah the second the rules were such that
to actually access the mudra loan was extremely difficult
like drops 30,000 I'm on the board of banks okay and one
has seen what has been happening to the these mudra loans the mudra loan has so
what happens is you lent to small industries who are already your customers you'd
have lent to them anyway okay except you tell them please don't take it from my regular working capital window you take
a mudra loon instead so you're you're meeting the targets right but not really
achieving the purpose which is to create new MSMES right um so it was badly designed but at
least the thought was there okay okay second when was it couple of years back
two three years back they guaranteed working capital to MSMES the government
guaranteed it yes guaranteed again not a bad idea here but never worked it has it
worked no you know I So you got a sequence of recognitions
without effectiveness i think we have to split up the MSME into micro separate and small and medium separate because
small and medium takes all the benefits whatever you give for MSME and is not going to the micro sector is the micro
sector and the small sector that you want to revive and GSTs affected the small sector and the micro sector
terribly because they are outside the input credit okay they're not part of GST so they don't get input credit so
their costs have not fallen but the large scale costs have fallen so in competition demand is shifting toward
the organized sector you know so we need to reform GST and make it is a last point tax can be collected simply at the
last point we don't need to collect it at 100 different stages which complicates it or have a refund or have
a refund or have a refund but but even that will require administrative excluded administrative problems will be
there now so so basically if you do a last last point tax it is the last point
tax implemented the last point then free up the small and the micro sector from all this problem of the uh the organized
sector finding its cost decreasing but their cost remaining the same so demand is shifting so we've been arguing that
we need reform of GST we need to separate the micro from the small and medium so that the mic micro can be
targeted specifically and that through the cooperatives you know whatever be the political problems of cooperatives
etc if you are able to do that build you've done it in milk you've done it in some sectors the other so some sectors
have succeeded you can a long time ago yes but but you you can succeed if you have the will you know kutumbashri in
Kerala is focused on micro and it's a federation of self-help groups but they have moved well beyond just managing
credit to production they have association for ko production for for
actually farming and for a whole range of activities and they're successful right well I think this government has
been very lucky the agricultural growth this year was about 4.6% 4.6% 6% which sort of brought that
growth rate to 6.5 but but for that it would have been really agriculture
experts say there's a problem in measuring the agricultur's contribution to GDP also because last year you have
problems with all these statistics yes I have problems with all the statistics but see it's true it's true see in
agriculture last year we said there was a record output right and still we then banned the or we put stockolding limits
prices didn't fall then we banned exports prices still didn't fall so why
only unless the output wasn't what it was you know the prices should have fallen prices didn't fall prices kept
rising so people have been saying from but at the same time some people say that because of 4.6% 6% the consumption
in the rural sector is actually fueling the economy this is what the narrative is today that the consumption
consumption in the rural sector has gone up that's where's the evidence they have said that's what they say so so the
consumption share in GDP has gone up a little bit a little bit but there's there's a catch the the catch is that
you know agriculture share in GDP is about 16% yes 16 to 18% even if it go that goes up by 2% how much is it going
to go 03% okay that's not going to boost consumption very much so agriculture's
contribution to GDP being very low it's not that agriculture is going to give a big boost yes it'll help some right what
you need to do is services services now 55% of GDP that is where you have to services are the creamy layer of this of
this country are are involved services are everywhere unorganized organized you come back to the same question what are you doing about 800 million 900 million
people of this country but then you know again the question is that services are
not a homogeneous group right so again you can broadly classify services into
two categories one are services that you and I directly consume correct right
other are services which are being provided to the production sectors and
the production sectors are usually agriculture and manufacturing and other services right
and if you really look at the breakup of services and you do a rough classification
they're about 50/50 okay right now I can I can see a situation where our
consumption of services will will continue to grow but the point is that
the other half depends upon your production sectors to grow strongly as
well otherwise their growth is not going to happen right so one again needs to be
careful i mean this lumping everything under services i think we are doing a
disservice to ourselves okay so let's and also services are in the unorganized sector and organized sector both you
know you have a dhava and you have a fivestar hotel you have a rualala and you have the trains right so it's both
unorganized and organized it's the unorganized sector that needs to come up that's true you know organized sector
the organized sector 6% will demand and they'll get the organized sector services but it's a it's a chain if the
unorganized sector does well then all the unorganized sectors the services in the unorganized sector and as he's saying very rightly they're consumptive
services and productive services those that you need for production and those that are consumptive this discussion sort of you know disappoints me in the
sense that it seems to me that the poor are not on the radar of this government at all
that's what it seems to me from what what you tell me well look I don't know whether it's on their radar the point is
they don't seem to know what to do about it okay okay they're two different things provide some money
provide some money like before election and things like that so I mean that's not going to improve the lot of the poor
no it's basically employment conditions of employment and viability of small producers i mean these are critical
right and also farming i mean it's true it's only 16% but still about half of our workforce and farmers movement has
made very clear specific and doable demands completely ignored now for a
very long time and in fact corporatizing that like the three farm bills they were going to corporatize the trade in
agriculture would have been disastrous that would have marginalized them further you know you doing away with APMC's we saw what happened in Bihar in
2005 because of the APMC's the farmers in Bihar were getting half of what they were getting in Hana and UP and
therefore they were transporting the traders were transporting from Bihar into UP and West Bengal so this
government has to be sensitive to the unorganized sector sensitive to the people at the bottom and that's not
there and that's visible in the budget every time the fiscal deficit rises they cut the schemes for employment
generation and they provide more the fiscal deficit this year I believe it's 4.7% 4.8% or thereabouts and the what
the objective was to bring it down to 4.3 so that there's a glide path that they have and I think uh support that
that it's going down yeah yeah so with a lot of offbudget stuff continuing let's
not ignore that true the question then is is it going up or down the off budgets have been there for long time
every government every government every so I said every Yes and I don't think
any of us who actually work it we actually sit down and work out what the growth rate of the off budget items are
you know I had done that i had done that a while ago and it had gone up significantly but this was I think I did
it it's already now by 2018 god knows what's happened since then but
it had gone up up to 2018 one more thing is we have to worry about decentralization our states are
suffering and that's where a lot of the programs of employment education health the states are not allowed to borrow
that's another problem well if you're the wrong political party I know that
and also the resource transfer from the centers you know has been writing on that you know it's gone down in between
to 35% of it has gone down to 30 or 30 32% or you know in between 35% so they are
suffering and therefore they are unable to carry forward these programs for the poor people because they are the
directly people then our local bodies you know they are they they lack resources so local bodies also have to
be brought up you know so that's why this division between center state and local bodies very important and our uh
finance commission should look at that you know let's let's move on to something else because I think that we've done a lot of discussion on the
state of our economy but what's going to happen to the economy and the impact on the Indian economy on what's happening
around the world trump China and its impact on India China and ASEAN China in
bricks China and Russia together now wars going on how's it going to impact us can you
give some thought to that well let me put it this way
um we face much less damage from what
is happening in the US what Mr trump is doing unto us
the bigger damage is really a collateral damage between the US China war
because that's going to affect us quite seriously both in terms of our domestic
market as well as in terms of the export markets that we were addressing
and that is deeply worrying at the moment we are not seeing that effect
simply because things are still up in the air paused yeah it's all paused it's all paused yes the Chinese have started
becoming a little more aggressive on their export front but not a whole lot
more yet but that's going to happen if Trump actually uh goes on with his
agenda so our real problem is going to be China
because China will desperately need to keep their economy alive it's already
under serious pressure and uh they have to break out of it if the US is not
going to absorb Chinese products then the rest of the world the US has no choice according to me they'll have to absorb them well through third country
yeah it will come there so that's already started i would say the other way around I think the damage is done even if they come to a deal etc etc the
damage is done globally because globally we're having a significant deceleration of investment who's going to invest in
this period of uncertainty which in then leads to global recession and all of the associated implications now I think what
mukul is saying look China has got a deal with Assean a trade deal with ASEAN
has a trade deal with India so the you know the whole rules of origin business it is very very likely that we will get
some of that surplus but remember you know US is only 13% of China's exports now they've already diversified they did
a lot of it through Vietnam Cambodia but a lot means not that much they have
actually significantly diversified to Africa and Latin America you're right we will get some of that impact but I don't
think that much you know what my bigger fear is my bigger fear is the response of the Indian government to the trade
threat because I mean I don't know which are the people who according to Trump kicked his ass kissed his ass and did
everything said we will do everything but we do know that the Indian government was very anxious to strike a
deal right and my fear is that the kind of deal we we'll strike is not about trade it's about things like Starling
which we've already succumbed to it's about things like further the tightening of intellectual property which will affect our farmer it is about things
like other FDI rules that would ease a lot of our dependence of on defense
equipment from the US so my fear is that this uncertainty is going to cause the
Indian government to give away a lot more than we can afford what about they want their export of agricultural
products all export of agricultural products is definitely on their list i mean I have concerns about how the
government is dealing with this they already cut cut in the budget you know some of the tariffs you know they're
signaling to the US that we are willing to do that and you notice with Trump anybody who signals that they're willing
to do something then he extracts more anybody who stands firm
is bullying so China stood firm so he's reduced by 115% you know Canada stood firm EU standing firm you know so the
point is how much impact does all this have on the US economy because the US economy and how much leverage we have in
the context of See the US with tariffs will have face inflation and there'll be
a decline in demand so there's a possibility of recession first quarter that it declined but if there's a
recession and a you know price rise it's like a stagflationary situation other countries if they get to an agreement
that they don't do dumping on each other and they don't increase tariffs because if everybody does dumping everybody will
increase tariffs and then there'll be a global trade war and there'll be a long-term recession so if everybody agrees China agrees we don't do dumping
but because there's a space because what India was exporting now can be exported to China what China was exporting can be
exported to EU because now the EU is not doing it so if we all agree and they open negotiations with EU they've opened
negotiations with Japan Korea and Southeast Asia and also written to India if we all agree not to raise tariffs and
increase our this thing we will be affected less America would be affected much more and therefore America would be
forced to withdraw well it's unlikely that that's going to happen that but he's a transactional man he might you
might know actually why is it that nobody is saying let's collectively go
back to WTO nobody no no they are they are there's a hu I mean of all people
the Europeans are saying it big time latin Americans are saying it no no there's a lot of stuff going on in fact
Joe Stiglets calls it G minus one yeah exactly that's right so all of us
getting It's multilateral as opposed to bilateral you know yeah it's multilateral this is the time actually
to strengthen except I mean let's also agree that not everything in the WTA was
all wonderful but given the platform on this room multilateral I mean there is a
lot of discussion well I find it very interesting you know the US withdrew from the UN tax negotiations they are
carrying on as if nothing's happened okay it's really fascinating to see that all these countries are there it's just
like okay one person left the room no problem you know the uh financing for development discussion again UN US was a
big player right US is clearly going to either not come or be obstructionist
they're carrying on as if nothing's happened that's good that's good g20 US has declared it will not come i mean the
South Africans are hyperactive on everything with the other members so I have a feeling countries are doing this
it's in their best interest and actually if US withdraws what it's doing that be
good for everybody in the long run okay now including the US for the US
absolutely the last thing we discuss is our situation qu the Chinese because the
kind of uh distortion kind of limited exports we
have and the exports by China into India has got $ 101 billion now right and we
are exporting what 20 20 billion 178 17 18 billion where would you sit down
they're controlling everything but that's because we've been stupid not because they have been manipulative i do
want to emphasize this look we were the world's biggest producer of bulk drugs we gave it up in liberalization we are
now importing 90% of our bulk drugs from China and yet then we're saying oh you
know we'll be all aggressive the stop our pharmaceutical industry tomorrow yes
yes that's what I mean that's the kind of dependence we have created but it's we created that how do we get out of it
by building the B drug production back again they need protection for that
definitely protection for that r&d we are very R&D where it's disaster i mean
they have absolutely that's what is needed government's biggest failure according to me is not bothering about R&D in this case but that's been
longstanding but the point is key without R&D you will not be able to upgrade you'll not be able to compete globally you know and what's happened is
that we are spending 65% of GDP on R&D they're spending 3% and they're five times 50 billion US and $650 billion the
US $500 billion China that's what's being spent on R&D where are we going to
go so we have to have a strategy actually we don't have a strategy your strategy is to win an election that's
your only strategy come v what may tell the people halftruths less than truth
win an election go on have another 5-year turn not bother about the real people of this country who need the
benevolent hand of the benevolent hand of the government forget the people
think of our politics think of winning elections that's what it is