We need 4s & 6s to boost growth, says Amitabh Kant

“India is taking a lot of singles, we need fours and sixes to boost growth,” said Amitabh Kant, NITI Aayog CEO.

Speaking at the IIMBue 2016, the leadership summit organised by IIM Bangalore’s Alumni Association, Kant said: “The country needs innovative policies to enable disruption and enhance per capita income.”

“We need to ease rules and regulations, and even scrap some in bulk. States are growing rapidly; they also need to adopt ease of rules. There should be healthy competition among States. We need to build 12 champion States in India to achieve 9-10 per cent growth, and India will boom,” he declared.

Speaking on ‘Innovative policies to enable disruption’ at the summit, Kant described India as “An oasis of growth” and said the challenge now was to create disruptions in systems of governance.

Lauding the energy and dynamism in start-ups, across sectors, he said India’s ability to achieve frugal engineering deserved special mention.

The NITI Aayog CEO’s talk was followed by a panel comprising Biocon Chairperson and Managing Director Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw; Managing Director, Apollo Group of Hospitals, Preetha Reddy; and Geetha Gopalakrishnan, Honorary Director, Tata Medical Centre, who discussed ‘Creating greater business impact through enhanced CSR’. On whether corporates were expected to perform the job of government, all the panellists opined that corporates need to act as enablers to the government to implement workable policies.

Day 1 of IIMBue ended on a high note with actor Deepika Padukone delighting the audience with her sparkling repartee, where she matched her host for the evening Shekhar Gupta, witticism for witticism, retort for retort – all with that trademark smile. She spoke with candour on topics ranging from gender bias in the Hindi film industry, her successful battle with depression and her definition of success.

“Success to me is being at peace with myself. It’s not about roles in films, or money or material things. It is about feeling happy with myself as a good human being,” said the quintessential Bengaluru girl, who added that eating the “world’s best benne masala dosa at CTR in Malleswaram” sends her happiness index soaring.