Top industrialist Mukesh Ambani on Sunday urged the government to “move faster” on decision-making, and called for a “dramatic shift” in the governance model for a better partnership between the government and the private sector.
Addressing the India Economic Summit, organised jointly by the World Economic Forum and CII and held in Mumbai for the first time, Mr Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries and India’s richest individual, said the corporate sector wanted both the Centre and state governments to “align and move a lot faster”, remove the mismatch in their approaches, and speed up decision-making.
The private sector, he added, had now become a “driver”, not just a “facilitator”, of India’s economic growth.
“I think there is a mismatch. We are both heading in the same direction
and sometimes, like you have seen in the United States and Europe, that’s the price of democracy,” he said.
Mr Ambani said a “dramatic shift” was needed to meet the expectations of citizens “in the path from the 20th century mindset to a 21st century delivery model”. He said: “In today’s world of aspirations, people want instant gratification, everything is instantaneous, everything needs to happen now.”
Commerce minister Anand Sharma said the key challenge was to “reconcile the contradictions and differences” among various constituents in a large and diverse democracy.