NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved an action plan to create an enabling environment to do business in India and boost domestic manufacturing in 25 sectors at the end of a day of deliberations on how best to take forward the government’s Make in India campaign.
The plan details what each sector will achieve in the short and medium term or one to three year.
“During the day-long effort, responsibilities have been fixed, road map has been prepared, required changes in policies have been decided… Now I don’t think there is any requirement for paperwork. Now, things will be implemented automatically,” Prime Minister Modi said on Monday. He had unveiled the initiative during his Independence Day address in August.
“I want to change the ABCD culture–avoid, bypass, confuse, delay–to the ROAD to success–responsibility, ownership, accountability, discipline,” he said at the end of the session at Vigyan Bhawan.
As many as 23 secretaries made presentations on their performance in the last six months and what they aimed to achieve in the next one to three years.
Modi called for a globally recognized Brand India that would be renowned for “zero defect, zero effect”, or free from manufacturing defects and having no adverse impact on the environment.
“We want maximum movement of men, money, machinery, materials and minerals across the country,” he said, coining another acronym.
The PM said in three months, government machinery had geared up. “If we have to change laws, we are ready. If we have to change rules, we are ready. If we have to change the system, we are ready,” he said on a day the government approved ordinances to ease parts of the land acquisition law and another to speed up arbitration. He also stressed on the need for development of human resources that would be required over the next 30-40 years, calling on universities, institutions and industry to work together to make India a country of skilled people.
“Unless we go to the world with innovation and research… like in the IT sector we have shown our prowess 25 years back but we didn’t create a Google, our talents have gone abroad,” he lamented.
Revenue secretary Shaktikanta Das assured industry of predictability and transparency in the tax regime. “He said that the government will aim to make the taxation regime friendly and fearless,” said a government official citing him.
In a separate session with state chief secretaries and principal industry secretaries on improving ease of doing business, states agreed to adopt best practices of others to create a uniform regime.