Strengthening of free enterprise in India - Dr Raghuram G Rajan – Governor RBI

Nani A Palkhiwala memorial lecture


by


Dr Raghuram G Rajan – Governor RBI


on


Strengthening of free enterprise in India



The date of 4th February 2016 shall be a memorable one in my life when I was accidentally invited to attend the above lecture to be delivered by none other than the luminary of the class of RBI Governor!


Mr. Raghuram G Rajan, as we find his name printed in our currency notes is an astute gentleman, stoic and enigmatic! This is when again I choose to shake hand with him after the National Anthem in the end of the program. Confident, fluent, articulate in his deliberation, the talk that he delivered had substance and integrity, I firmly believed. He is super intelligent and can respond instantly, this became evident when the opening remark made by Mr. Y H Malegam Chairman Board of Trustees, said on the context of the current roar by fringe elements of the society,


“When a small man cast a long shadow, then it is known that Sunset is imminent”


but was equally sweetly modified by Dr. Rajan and he said, “I understand when a small man cast a long shadow then it is known that Sunset is imminent but then the Sun rises in India every day” – this was just amazing display of high IQ.


On the subject of Strengthening of Free Enterprise in India, he deliberated that Government has taken multiple initiatives to loosen the bureaucratic control and abolishing red-tap-ism, but lot more initiatives required from the entrepreneurs. He would recommend start ups of many small and medium sized companies but those companies need not necessarily remain small but should grow and become big. Examples cited were Infosys, Mindtree etc., that is how economies in the west have grown. Thus we need many small companies but with huge potential to grow big.

He mentioned the current state of socialism is transferring wealth from rich to dishonest rich, this could be prevented by Direct Benefit transfers to the actual needy and palpably poor people. In this context I would like to add that our Honorable PMs Jan Dhan Yojona or account opening by poor and financial inclusion of masses will certainly aide this cause and move us towards true socialism and welfare country. There needs to exist Bankruptcy code bill which is pending in the Parliament shall address the liquidity issues of the country and not allow scarce and costly capital to get diverted into wrong ventures, this would also help strengthening of free enterprise.


More than this I could not understand as everything else he said like a Adam Smith and all were bouncers to me.


Thus finally, if Enterprises are allowed to run freely it will obviously generate employment opportunities and grow exponentially and that is why it is all the more important to strengthen free enterprise in India.