Power Talk: Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia addresses Great Lakes students

[Great_Laker]

Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia gave a power talk and addressed Great Lakes students at the IIT Madras campus on the 8th of January. The session began with the inaugural address from Dr. Bala.

Dr. Bala Balachandran, Founder and Honorary Dean, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai

Dr. Bala began by welcoming one and all. He said “We started the MDI Gurgaon program in co-ordination with Montek who was the secretary to the finance minister Manmohan Singh in 1991 to develop management education in India”. After being involved with ISB, he felt he had to contribute to the state of Tamilnadu and the Great Lakes dream was born.

Dr. T.N Seshan, Former Chief Election Commissioner and Permanent Faculty at Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai

Dr. T.N Seshan began by hinting that “There is every possibility Montek is going to be the next finance minister of this country”. He also said that “If India is able to sustain 7% in spite of a global meltdown; Montek has a major role to play. All that we have learnt in higher management is that we need to learn to live in times of change. What is important is to provide leadership. That is what we can imbibe from Montek. I hope you will take the full benefit of Montek’s presence”.

Montek, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission

He stressed that thrust should be given to infrastructure development to over come the current crisis. He said that the infrastructure development had gathered momentum, thanks to the Public- private partnership model put in place, especially for road development.

In his talk Dr. Ahluwalia said "This year has been very different from a year where we focused on long-term issues, we had a wonderful 4-year growth path so far which got interrupted by the global crisis. Many things were going very well but many things were going wrong. . Prior to the global crisis, our record was a mixed bag and it is reflected in the international assessment of India and it prospects. In the 4 years up to the current year, we had an average growth rate of 8.8%. This transition from a low growth scenario when India grew at 3.5% in 70's, but the changes made in the 80s resulted in a 5.6% growth. In the early 90s, economic reforms raised the growth rate and this was followed by the East Asian crisis, which brought down the growth rate to 5.8% in the 90s. The global economy also turned downwards in the 90s.

Dr. Ahluwalia also spoke about the banking system today, which has a surplus liquidity, and the banks have parked about Rs 60,000 crore with the RBI under reverse repo. The RBI has sought to discourage this by reducing the reverse repo rate, effectively making it less attractive to the Banks. He added that the government and RBI telling the banks to lend more. Government is also trying to create demand by stepping up investments in infrastructure.

Dr. Ahluwalia said, the government is confident of achieving its target of 78,000mw of capacity in the 11th five-year plan. "While 61,000MW of capacity is virtually certain to be put up in the 11th plan period, we are pushing to get another 9,000mw capacity by that time. While 70,000mw is sure to be available 78,000mw is not an impossibility,"