INDIA HAS THE BEST EVER 15 YEARS AHEAD

Summary

This Forum of Free Enterprise booklet reproduces an expanded version of R. Gopalakrishnan’s Economic Times article of 2 March 2010, written at the time of that year’s Union Budget. Gopalakrishnan — then Executive Director of Tata Sons — argues that India is poised for its best ever fifteen-year stretch of growth, framing the country’s unusual choice to embrace democracy and constitutional liberalism before capitalism as climbing up the ‘down’ escalator: confusing in motion, but unambiguously upward. He marshals macro data (a trillion-dollar economy capable of doubling every seven to eight years, an 8 percent growth rate he calls a ‘slam dunk’, rising per-capita consumption, the cell-phone and two-wheeler revolutions, the doubling of rural non-agricultural employment) to argue that the Hindu rate of growth is now firmly behind India.

He then lays out nine accelerators — scale, consumption depth, global connectedness, demographic dividend, productivity gains, the displacement of older corporate giants by new ones like Bharti, Suzlon and Essar Oil, the maturing of coalition politics, and the country’s broad religious tolerance and entrepreneurial flair. Against this he is candid about fault lines — caste politics, agitation for new states, tribal uprisings — but compares India’s stage to America’s mid-19th-century crises to argue these are growing pains, not collapse.

A section on government insists the state should focus on the four ‘HELP’ priorities — Health, Education, Law (delayed justice) and Pakistan policy — and leave ‘direct’ economic determinants to the private sector. The ‘Entrepreneurs’ and ‘Greater use of intuition’ sections celebrate the transformation of Gurgaon and Sriperumbudur into industrial clusters, invoke David McClelland’s theory of achievement orientation, and argue (via an anecdote about a lost Swiss army unit using a map of the Pyrenees) that an enterprising community trusts intuition where rationalists hesitate. Gopalakrishnan closes with four aphorisms on meaning, action, optimism and self-confidence as the secret of entrepreneurship.

The booklet is sponsored by the Shailesh Kapadia Memorial Trust, and closes with a short biographical tribute to Shailesh Kapadia (1949–1988), a Bombay chartered accountant and past President of the Bombay Chartered Accountants’ Society, alongside the customary Forum of Free Enterprise masthead and an A. D. Shroff epigraph.

Key points

• Frames India as a country that adopted democracy and constitutional liberalism ahead of capitalism — climbing the ‘down’ escalator, but heading up.

• Predicts the next 15 years (to 2025) will be India’s best, with the economy doubling every 7–8 years and 8% annual growth treated as a ‘slam dunk’.

• Declares the ‘Hindu rate of growth’ dead with the passing of Raj Krishna, citing BCG’s Rhodes/Stelter forecast that India, China and Brazil will return to original trend-growth paths.

• Lists nine accelerators (scale, consumption, global connectedness, demographic dividend, productivity, churn among top firms, maturing coalition politics, religious tolerance, social pluralism).

• Distinguishes ‘direct’ economic determinants (industry, energy, infrastructure) from ‘indirect’ ones (HELP: Health, Education, Law, Pakistan policy) and argues government should focus on the latter.

• Celebrates Gurgaon and Sriperumbudur as proof of an entrepreneurial ‘gene’ in Indian society and predicts Sriperumbudur will soon rival Shenzhen in mobile-phone output.

• Invokes David McClelland’s four conditions for achievement motivation and uses a Swiss-army-in-the-Alps parable to argue intuition and optimism are the true engines of enterprise.

• Volume also carries a biographical tribute to Shailesh Kapadia (1949–1988), past President of the Bombay Chartered Accountants’ Society, in whose memory the booklet is sponsored.