‘I am happy that Modiji is back as PM,’ Sridhar Vembu

We had criticism of the dictatorship, particularly some motivated, and external observers making these kinds of observations should eat a humble pie. The successful election shows how vibrant the Indian democracy is when compared to any other country, including the one where we are sitting today, that lectures on us. Our elections are more free and fair than their elections. We should be proud of that.

I am happy that Modiji is back as Prime Minister for the third term. It would have been nice if the BJP had got a majority on its own. However, the party will form the government with two strong partners. TDP’s Chandrababu Naidu is a great economic visionary. I admire him and I am glad that he is part of the government now. I expect great things for both Andhra Pradesh and all of India, as he will be part of the government.

In the last ten years, there has been immense progress on so many fronts. The Make in India and Aatmanirbhar programmes have started to bear fruits and they will continue.

In a democracy there is always a challenge in implementing reforms. Even with a full majority, there were challenges in passing some of the Bills. The political pressure never goes away. However within that India is progressing well. We are making progress on several fronts and that will continue. I am an optimist in all these fronts.

We have to accelerate the Make in India and Aatmanirbhar programmes. We need to create a lot more jobs for rural youth. A large number of rural youth are migrating to cities, which are already bursting, in search of jobs. Can Bengaluru or Mumbai need more people? We need to create local jobs in rural areas. For this, we need to bring manufacturing, not only on a large scale but on a distributed way across India. This requires a policy orientation.

For example, India’s import bill with China. We can adopt a policy where over the next three years, every month, the import duty on goods, starting with my favourite product, the nail cutter, will increase by 1 per cent every month. In 4-5 years, it will be 40-50 per cent higher. This in turn should invite Indian entrepreneurs to set up manufacturing facilities in such products. Rural production can be exempted from all taxes for a period of 3-5 years but you have to keep the factory in the rural areas. So, the import duty goes up in a graduated way while exempting rural production from taxes. When companies invest in talent creation schemes, the government can partner with them in that. There can be an apprenticeship programme in which 50 per cent of the fees should be picked up by the government. These are things that we can do to create rural jobs and that is also very wise.

In Tenkasi, we are setting up a unit for Karuvi - tools like power drills. We hope to start the production in a month or two. Medical instruments that we manufacture will move to Tenkasi as well. Looking at the success, we may look at setting up such units in other rural areas.

The capital has been earmarked and the application is under process. Until the government makes a decision on this, we don’t really have anything to announce. Our intent is that we want to have a fab. However, it will be later as it is quite advanced. I need to separate that. We need high power technology and also a lot of ordinary ones. Also, manufacturing chips is capital intensive.

It may be in a couple of years. We will have some announcements. We are making progress steadily. However, the growth rate has come down to around 20 per cent from 30 per cent a year back.