Innovating India - Road Map 2014-19

Summary

Innovating India – Road Map 2014-19 is a Forum of Free Enterprise booklet that reproduces substantial portions of a policy document of the same name prepared by the Pune International Centre (PIC) and timed to the 2014 general election. Editor Sunil S. Bhandare frames the reproduction as a non-partisan attempt to push PIC’s recommendations into wider public debate before the new government takes office. Forum President Minoo R. Shroff’s foreword and the introduction signed jointly by R. A. Mashelkar and Vijay Kelkar position the report as a ‘Big Ideas’ roadmap whose proposed reforms aim to combine rapid growth, equity and quality of life while explicitly eschewing ‘competitive populism’ and a diminished role for the state.

Section 1, signed by Dileep Padgaonkar on behalf of PIC’s Programme Committee, sets out an agenda for development built around eight tectonic shifts the authors see reshaping India — from the state to the market, from government to civil society, from Delhi to the states and panchayats, from upper-caste dominance to the assertiveness of those lower in the order, from older to younger generations, from male-centric to more gender-balanced power, from a techno-phobic to a techno-philic country, and from non-alignment to multi-alignment. The argument then works through macro-economic stability, redirecting growth toward the lagging North and East, industry and services, energy transition, the urban challenge, a structured social security system anchored in Aadhaar, environmental management, reform of public administration, and the deeper question of whether a fragmented parliamentary polity can deliver the political transformation a rapidly urbanising economy demands.

Section 2, introduced by Nitin Desai, translates these diagnoses into sector-wise policy recommendations through which the rendered pages run: fiscal consolidation (GST, return to 20% tax-to-GDP, sub-national fiscal autonomy, control of populist transfers), an aggressive privatisation and disinvestment programme, efficient subsidy management built around Aadhaar, rejuvenation of manufacturing through FDI commitments, NIMZ-style clusters and labour-law reform (decentralising labour to the State List, flexibility on retrenchment along Chinese and Gujarat lines, contract-worker hiring, exempting small firms from the Factories Act), and a new agriculture agenda covering irrigation, dryland farming, land leasing, subsidy review, GM technology and trade reform.

The booklet’s argumentative centre is a classical-liberal critique of crony capitalism, license-permit residues and ‘competitive populism’, paired with a constructive case for a regulatory state that polices markets rather than substitutes for them, and a decentralised governance architecture that empowers municipalities, panchayats and state governments to deliver public goods.

Key points

• The booklet is the Forum of Free Enterprise’s free-distribution reprint of a Pune International Centre policy report led by Raghunath Mashelkar and Vijay Kelkar, edited by Sunil S. Bhandare and timed to the 2014 general election.

• Section 1, signed by Dileep Padgaonkar, organises India’s recent trajectory around eight ‘tectonic shifts’ — including state-to-market, Centre-to-States/panchayats, upper-caste to lower-rung assertiveness, and non-aligned to multi-aligned foreign posture.

• Macro-economic chapter warns that ‘competitive populism’ between parties is producing fiscal profligacy and large hand-outs that threaten the 6–8% growth required to absorb a 100-million person rural-to-urban shift.

• Recommendations call for rebalancing growth toward the North and East, professionalising corporate management to curb crony capitalism, and using public-private partnership and disinvestment to restructure public sector monoliths.

• Energy section treats India as ‘not a fossil fuel rich country’ and argues for an open-access, decentralised electricity model built on renewables, smart grids and electric/fuel-cell mobility.

• Urban chapter targets corrupt politician-bureaucrat-developer nexus around urban land and proposes empowered, fiscally autonomous local governments and reform of building and planning codes.

• A unified social-security architecture anchored in Aadhaar is proposed to deliver universal health insurance, pensions and unemployment protection, replacing fragmented group-targeted schemes.

• Section 2 specifies concrete fiscal-policy moves — GST, single-rate excise/service tax integration, PAN/UID-linked transactions, a Directorate of Risk Management — alongside aggressive disinvestment, FDI fast-tracking, NIMZ/Common Facilities Centres for manufacturing, and labour-law decentralisation plus retrenchment and contract-worker flexibility.