Event reports
Mr L Ramkumar, President, MMA and Chairman, Shanthi Gears Ltd., welcomed the distinguished guest speakers and delegates. He said, while robust reforms and major initiatives taken by the Government of India provide adequate impetus towards double digit growth trajectory, yet India is facing enormous challenges from within the country and outside globally.
In his Introductory Remarks, Mr Peter Rimmele, Resident Representative to India, Konrad- Adenauer-Stiftung said that he was privileged to be the part of the Conclave that has illustrious gathering of Policy- makers, Business analysts, Economists, Management Gurus and scholars. He said that the Conclave would seek to examine the future of the nation’s political economy. He also said, political compulsions do not necessarily result in good economics and economic compulsions do not necessarily result in good politics. According to him, there was an innate relationship between politics and economics everywhere as the policies of the governments do permeate the fiscal space of the country. To him, it seemed possible that politics and economics remained in two different water-tight compartments. The challenge then was to make these work together in the best interest of the nation and not for the political parties or groups or individuals.
Special Session: “An Overview – Politics of Economics”
Dr T V Somanathan, IAS, Additional Chief Secretary to Government, Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Department, Government of Tamil Nadu said, being an economist himself, economists are the followers of scientific methods and hence Economics is considered as a Social Science. Matters of pure science do not attract much political disputations. But Economics on the other hand very frequently become the subject of politics. His focus was mainly on identifying why economics was so political. He spoke about the kind of statements being made by the Economists when it comes to economic policies and classified them as “positive statements” and “normative statements”. He quoted couple of such statements and dwelt upon them through different illustrations such as free trade, Brexit, increase in interest rates and so on.
Special Session: “GDP as sole guiding factor for Political Economy”.
Mr M R Venkatesh, Author and Analyst (Political Economy) shared his views on “GDP as sole guiding factor for Political Economy”. He spoke elaborately what a budget is, what goes into the budget and where the people are. He said that the Receipt Budget is more or less like a balance sheet of the Union Government of India. He quoted alarming numbers in the budget. He spoke about the Union Budget, in which it is estimated that the Government of India will have more debt on 31.3.2019. He expressed his anguish on the liabilities without being represented by assets. He also spoke about the state budget, taking Tamil Nadu as an example. He said, taxes are never a price for civilisation in this country. He said, GDP is not the sole indicator or guiding factor for political economy. To him, reforms must actually touch the common man and we cannot talking of reforms in rhetoric.
Special Session: “Economics of Functional Governance”
Mr Gopal Krishna Agarwal, National Spokesperson, Economic Affairs, Bharatiya Janata Party elaborated on the initiatives taken by Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi in the past four and a half years towards establishing social reforms. He quoted our Constitution which says that we have to achieve a political democracy and an economic democracy. He categorically said that without economic democracy, political democracy has no significance. He quoted several economic and political initiatives of the Government such as Jan Dhan Account, financial inclusion, implementation of GST, Income disclosure schemes, demonetisation, and ease of doing business, digital transactions and so on.
Special Session: “Politics of Economics and its impact on equitable growth”
Professor M V Rajeev Gowda, Hon’ble Member of Parliament from Indian National Congress, Rajya Sabha spoke about the Politics of Economics and its impact on equitable growth. To him, inequality manifests in different dimensions and he highlighted on some major inequalities such as social inequality, economic inequality, gender inequality and regional inequality. He spoke as to how a government responds to all these inequalities. He also spoke on issues like how the political systems address social inequalities, abolition of untouchability and reservation policies for the disadvantaged class. He quoted Dr.Ambedkar who advocated migrating from villages to anonymous cities and urbanisation would be a solution to remove social inequality. He also spoke about several initiatives such as Adhaar, direct benefit transfer etc. that reduce corruption. His views about empowering women and feminisation of agriculture due to rural- urban migration were thought-provoking.
Special Session: “Grassroot Level – Economic Decision Making”
Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss, Hon’ble Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha spoke on grassroots level economic decision making. He says, politics and economics are directly proportional to each other and successfully interwoven politics and economics will lead to development. He proudly claimed that successful states in the country today are southern states that includes Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. He also claimed that all these states have imbibed social justice into their economics unlike the northern states like Bihar or UP. He insisted on balance between economics and politics which is very crucial today. If “Urbanisation” means growth, to him, it means negative growth. It means no jobs in rural area and dwindling of the agricultural sector. He insisted on larger investments on education, irrigation and agricultural sectors that would lead to growth in its real sense. He suggested setting up of special agro economic zones that would lead to overall agricultural development.
Special Session: “Center-State Economic Relations of the Future”
Mr. K Pandiarajan, Hon’ble Minister for Tamil Language Culture, Government of Tamil Nadu started his talk saying that he was not going to speak about State Politics. He said, while politics were about identity, economics were more about ideas. He divided the entire gamut of politics as world politics, national politics and state politics and similarly world economics, national economics and state economics.
He quoted the great Management Guru Dr C K Prahlad who said politics is about leaders and identities while economics is about structures and institutions. He also elaborated on C K Prahlad’s manifestation of the current era as the “Era of GIVE” in which G is for Governance, I for Innovation, V for Value and E for Entrepreneurship. Dr Prahlad was of the view that governance was the key aspect. He also spoke elaborately about the three major architectures as classified by Dr Prahlad which were Global Financial Architecture, Global HR Architecture and Global Resources (Natural resources) Architecture. He was sure that these architectures were hugely playing a huge role in Centre-State relationships, State-State relationships. He also believes that the whole idea of centre periphery relationship in the world politics and in the world economics is a million dollar question. He highlighted on several initiatives taken by his Government towards bringing about social and economic reforms in Tamil Nadu which are being emulated by other States of India.
The Conclave concluded with Q&A from the delegates which was moderated by Mr. N. Sathiyamoorthy, Director, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter.
The concluding remarks & a formal vote of thanks was delivered by Gp Capt R Vijayakumar (Retd) VSM, the Executive Director, Madras Management Association. He conveyed his sincere thanks on behalf of KAS & MMA to the distinguished speakers who spared their valuable time to address the delegates during the Conclave. He thanked the partners for the Conclave and the large number of delegates for their gracious presence which made the Conclave a grand success.