IDFC Institute hosted a private Conversation with Dr. V. Anantha Nageswaran, faculty at Singapore Management University, and Mr. Gulzar Natarajan, IAS ('99), for a discussion on "Can India Grow?".
The discussion was based on their latest co-authored book titled, "Can India Grow?". The speakers highlighted the tendency of the economy to overheat whenever India attained a brief spurt of high GDP growth. They ennumerated the various structural impediments that preclude sustained high growth rates. These include, among other things, low quality of education and healthcare, lack of size and scale in manufacturing firms with a largely informal labour force, and poor state capacity. The speakers also put forth policy recommendations to address the challenges facing the Indian economy.
Watch Dr. Nageswaran's video interview with IDFC Institute's Junior Fellow Kshitij Batra, below.
Dr. V. Anantha Nageswaran teaches courses on international economics, exchange rates, and financial markets to graduate students at the Singapore Management University and at the Indian Institutes of Management in Bangalore and Indore in India.
Mr. Gulzar Natarajan joined the Indian Administrative Service, the elite tier of the Indian bureaucracy, in 1999 and was, until very recently, working as a director in the Office of the Prime Minister of India.