PM Modi: India shed 'ABC' mind; to be 10-T USD economy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose current tenure is coming to an end in less than 100 days, on Saturday said that he wanted to make India a $10 trillion economy, the third largest in the world, virtually seeking a second tenure for himself at a largest gathering of corporate India.

India currently is a $2.5 trillion economy and the sixth largest in the world.

Addressing investors at the Economic Times' 'Global Business Summit' in the national capital, the prime minister compared and contrasted his government with that of the UPA and said that the BJP-led NDA was the only government in the post- liberalisation era which proved that pro-growth and pro-poor policies can go hand-in-hand.

Modi is under severe attack for leading a regime of high economic growth but where businesses have been throttled due to a tight leash on banks which refuse to lend them. He is also under attack for jobless economic growth and agrarian distress.

"During 2014-19, the country would register an average economic growth of 7.4% and the average inflation of less than 4.5%. Post-liberalisation of the Indian economy, this will be the highest rate of average growth and lowest rate of average inflation witnessed during the period of any government," he said.

In one of the worst attack on the UPA government, he said that before 2014, there was a competition on who could do maximum corruption, there was competition on who could do the fastest corruption and there was competition on where more money could be made— in coal allocation or spectrum allocation, in commonwealth games or in defence deals”.

“But, now we have a competition at whether India will get 100% sanitation first or 100% electrification first,” Modi said.

Modi said that a number of economic reforms during the BJP-led NDA government were possible because they were able to shed the 'ABC' mentality of the past, where A stood for 'avoiding', B for 'burying' and C for confusing people'.

Assuaging the startups, who have been worst hit under his regime due to accesses of income tax department, Modi said, “we look forward to making India a ten-trillion-dollar economy, we look forward to making India the third largest economy, we want to make an India of countless startups”.

“Since we have formed the government, we have replaced hesitations by hope, obstacle by optimism and issues by initiatives. India has made significant improvement in almost all international rankings,” the prime minister said, bolstered by a handsome jump to 77th rank from 142 in the World Bank ease of doing business ranking in just about four years.