NEW DELHI: Former CEO NITI Aayog Amitabh Kant emphasized the nation’s transformative journey from being one of the “fragile five” economies to emerging as a global leader in infrastructure development.
Addressing a gathering of intellectuals and public figures, Kant highlighted India’s achievements over the past decade, drawing attention to key statistics that reflect the scale of transformation.
A gathering of retired judges, veterans of the armed forces, former civil servants, intellectuals and public figures and Union ministers including Hardeep Singh Puri, Rajeev Chandrashekhar and other leaders held an interactive session in Delhi on India’s remarkable journey towards being Viksit Bharat under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Addressing the gathering, Amitabh Kant said, “I have seen this journey of India moving from fragile 5 to the top 5 in this decade. In the last decade, 40 million houses for poor people have been built, which is like making a complete Australia in India. India built 120 million toilets for its citizens, which is like providing a toilet to every citizen of Germany. Pipe water connection has been provided to 253 million Indians, which is more than the population of Brazil. That’s the size and scale of what India has done in terms of infrastructure,” Kant said.
“India has provided electricity to over 30 million households, every single Indian household today has electricity, and it has built over 80,000 km of roads which is four times the diameter of the entire India roads. The GDP of India has grown from 1 percent, close to four percent,” he added.
Kant attributed these remarkable achievements to structural reforms implemented by the Indian government, including the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the Real Estate Regulation Act.
“Big structural reforms have been, the goods and services tax, it has brought in insolvency and bankruptcy code which never existed, the real estate regulation act, brought down the corporate tax, all this will make India technologically leapfrog in a very big way. This decade is not only India’s decade. This is India’s century,” he said.
