IIM Calcutta Hosting Annual International Business Festival 'Intaglio'

IIM Calcutta Hosting Annual International Business Festival 'Intaglio'
Highlights of Intaglio Day 2

Puri started off with winning over the audience, which consisted of a majority of students from IIM Calcutta, by mentioning that the city has a special place in his heart. Having grown up here, before moving on to Oxford and Cambridge for his higher education, coming back to the city is like visiting home.

The first part of Puri's speech dealt with the tremendous growth story that all of us have witnessed in the last two decades or so, and the reasons behind it. Expressing delight at the fact that India's volatility of growth has come down even as the mean has risen, which means that this growth is not temporary, Puri said that it bodes well that it is driven by domestic consumption.

Another heartening development has been the commitment shown by successive governments to progressive reform, and states like West Bengal and Orissa catching up with the rest of the country with innovations like power reforms and development of agro-processing industries. At the international level, India's stature has grown phenomenally and strategic agreements like the recent nuclear deal with the US have as much economic overtones as political or military.

Things should only improve for the country as China's growth tapers off by 2012 while India continues uniformly well beyond that. Puri reasoned out why he thinks India is poised at the same inflection point as China was in the 80s by citing the reforms in taxation, labor laws, interest rates, infrastructure and FDI. He did appear slightly skeptical of the SEZ route for development and spoke about it in detail later in his answer to a student's question.

Talking about the "demographic dividend" that India should look forward to from its growing working age population coupled with the growing household incomes, Puri indicated in no subtle terms that India's growth story should only get rosier. Taking a shot at doomsayers, he also said, "India being a closed economy is a huge bogey," and gave the examples of firms like Bharti and Coca Cola, Intaglio's sponsors, to prove how well both Indian and foreign firms are doing in the country.

Moving on to the second part of his speech, Puri pointed out the gradual improvements in higher education, skill-intensive manufacturing and removal of infrastructure bottlenecks as the main opportunities we need to exploit fully to keep the momentum going.

On the other hand, the key risks, according to him, that India faces are the economic divide, external factors like rising oil prices and conflicts with India's neighbors. But more than these, the greatest hindrance to India's growth could be internal political complexities arising out of ambiguous ideologies and regional agendas overshadowing the greater good of the country.

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Contributed by -
Vishal Krishnan,
Class of 2007,
IIM Calcutta.

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