"India's Challenge Is To Create 2 Americas In 5 Decades": Amitabh Kant At NDTV World Summit

India's road to becoming a developed country will require immense ambition and a focus on manufacturing, urbanisation and "firing on all cylinders", the country's G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant has said.

In a conversation during the NDTV World Summit on Tuesday, Mr Kant said 500 million people will get into the process of urbanisation in India in the next five decades, which means India will have to create "two Americas" in the same time period.

Responding to a question on India's demographic dividend and the need for reskilling, Mr Kant, who is also a former CEO of the Niti Aayog, said, "India can't grow only on the back of services, it needs to become a manufacturing nation. 17.5% of your GDP comes from manufacturing, you need to take it to 25%. You need to urbanise because 500 million people are going to get into the process of urbanisation in the next five decades, that means India's challenge is to create two Americas in the next five decades."

Mr Kant stressed that there is a need to improve agricultural productivity and bring down the proportion of people involved in agriculture from the nearly 45% it is now. 

"So you need to fire on all cylinders - services, manufacturing, urbanisation, agriculture, all of them. And for manufacturing and urbanisation, you need to provide skills. You need to get them (the workforce) into completely new areas of growth - artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum computing - and that's why India has rolled out these new missions in all these areas, including a mission for semiconductors and a mission for green hydrogen," he said.  

Number Crunching

On the question of 'atmanirbharta' or self-reliance, the former Niti Aayog CEO said it involves India being an integral part of global value chains. 

"You can't grow at rates of 9-10% year after year for three decades or more - that's what you need to do - so when we are talking of a 'viksit' (developed) Bharat or a $30-trillion economy in  2047, growing from 4 trillion to 30 trillion means that your GDP has to grow nine times, your per capita income has to grow 8 times and your manufacturing has to grow 16 times, that's the challenge. And to overcome that challenge, India needs to become a very integral part of global value chains," he said. 

Mr Kant said India needs to export in a big way and that is why there has been a thrust on the production-linked investment scheme. 

 "You need 10,000 large manufacturing companies here to penetrate global markets. You need size and scale of manufacturing, and you need 12 Indian states to grow at 10% plus. So you need ambition and hunger in states to grow rapidly and you need large companies to penetrate global markets," he said.