The Hindu Business Line : Chidambaram identifies four ‘building blocks’

Building India: The Union Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, and the SIDBI Deputy Managing Director, Mr Rakesh Rewari, at the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit 2007 in the Capital on Thursday. —

Our Bureau

New Delhi, Dec. 13 The Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, on Thursday made a case for paying more focused attention on building human resources, entrepreneurship, infrastructure and an inclusive society, stating that these were four important “building blocks” for building India in the coming years.

Noting that the state of the country’s education system was quite appalling, Mr Chidambaram said that building human resources was the first main challenge for building India.

“In the Eleventh Plan period, roughly 19 per cent of the total Plan outlay would be reserved for education. We need to build world class universities. We have none in the top 50. We have only one in the top 100. We also need to get world class teachers for our universities and we need to pay them what the world pays,” Mr Chidambaram said at ‘TiE Entrepreneurial Summit’ 2007 here on Thursday.

New towns, cities

After human resources, he identified infrastructure as the major challenge. “We need to provide basic infrastructure to all of India. We have ambitious programmes like Bharat Nirman and Jawaharlal Nehru urban renewal mission. The long-term answer is to build new towns and cities. My preference is to have at least 100-200 small towns with population of 10-20 lakh each,” Mr Chidambaram said.

On entrepreneurship, he underscored the need to build entrepreneurship in the States that have fallen behind. “We must find ways to motivate young men and women in those parts of India that have fallen behind to start small and medium enterprises,” he said.

On an inclusive society, he said that this country will hold together only if we give every one in India a stake in the future of India.

Beating biases

“We cannot build India unless we build an inclusive society and we cannot build an inclusive society unless every institutions of governance consciously shed their biases and prejudices and work for every section. Even the Supreme Court, Parliament, Ministers, Government departments and NGOs must shed biases and prejudices and work for every section of society,” he said.