The change of mood at Moody’s towards positioning India on a seven per cent growth path from 2014 as the worst is over is a tribute to the earnestness of finance minister P. Chidambaram to control fiscal deficit. The agency has, however, predicated its growth assumption on a number of factors, like a good monsoon, the global economy and quality of expenditure reductions, among others.
There is no doubt that the country can achieve over seven per cent growth, but Mr Chidambaram will have to burn the midnight oil monitoring all the goal posts he has set post-September 2012.
There are already efforts to scuttle the AirAsia-Tata aviation deal with inspired stories of hurdles leaked to some media by a section of the bureaucracy. Mr Chidambaram will have to guard against such backstabbing. The AirAsia-Tata deal is a test of the government’s commitment to reforms in the aviation sector. Vested interests have for long succeeded in sabotaging such deals for fear of competition, as Mr Ratan Tata had experienced earlier.
India has the skills and entrepreneurial spirit to make manufacturing a major contributor to GDP. The Qutub Minar is a magnificent symbol of India’s intrinsic engineering skills. Perhaps Mr Chidambaram needs to reach out to bodies like the Engineering Export Promotion Council to get his vision for growth translated into reality with a sense of immediacy, and not restrict himself to meeting trade and business bodies who have their own agenda.