Q&A: Sushant P Rao, World Economic Forum

'We will now alternate the Summit each year between Delhi and another state'

India’s economic growth rate is expected to surpass 9 per cent over the next three years, despite the challenge of rising inflation, regulatory hurdles and inadequate infrastructure. With one of the youngest demographics in the world, robust domestic consumption and a growing middle class, India provides considerable opportunities as a consumer market and a global manufacturing hub.

At the same time, critical governance reforms and innovative public-private partnerships must be pushed forward to deliver rapid and inclusive growth and an enabling environment for upgrading infrastructure in India. Moreover, India's states are playing an increasingly critical role in the successful implementation of local and national reforms, and therefore in shaping India’s future growth.

Sushant P Rao, Senior Director and Head of Asia at WEF, reveals in an e-mail interview with Rajiv Shirali that all this and more will be discussed at the Summit.

Why is the Summit taking place in Mumbai for the first time?
For 26 years, the India Economic Summit has taken place in India’s capital, New Delhi, which was a meaningful place to bring together top domestic and international decision-makers to set priorities and put forward recommendations for India’s economic growth. Over these two decades, there was a growing sense of the need to take the deliberations of our Summit closer to where those recommendations need to be implemented. Therefore, we are simply changing the background scenery of our Summit by moving from one city to another, but much more symbolically moving from the Centre to the states to highlight the critical role which states play in shaping the success of the national economic agenda. As one of the most economically important states in India, coming to Maharashtra and India’s commercial capital of Mumbai was a logical decision. From here onward, we will now alternate the Summit each year between New Delhi and another state in India.

What is the significance of this year’s theme, ‘Linking Leadership with Livelihood’?
For the past decade, India has placed particular emphasis on its inclusive growth agenda, but creating equitable growth is inextricably linked to good governance and transparency. This has been the issue which has gripped national debate this year. Therefore, Linking Leadership with Livelihood is meant to express the importance of critical governance reforms and innovative public-private partnerships that must be pushed forward to deliver rapid and inclusive growth and an enabling environment for upgrading infrastructure in India. Through better governance, improved delivery systems, transparency and stronger implementation, leaders from government, industry and civil society can collaborate to improve the education system, invest in much-needed infrastructure, increase agricultural productivity and ensure an equitable distribution of opportunities.

What new elements have you added to the Summit this year?
We are pleased that for the first time our six co-chairs for the Summit are not exclusively from industry. With Huguette Labelle, the Chair of Transparency International, we have the voice of the leading NGO dedicated to the fight against corruption. Secondly, the participants of this year’s Summit will for the first time include our community Global Shapers, who are young extraordinary individuals with great potential for future leadership roles in society. They are between 20 and 30 years of age and representing all walks of life and are highly committed to developing their leadership potential towards serving society. When one consider how young India’s demographic is, it is so important to offer youth a voice in the discussions taking place in the activities of the Forum. This highlights our commitment to bring the most important policy makers, industry leaders together with civil society leaders across generations to collaborate on resolving the pressing challenges India faces today.

How has the Summit changed over the years in terms of both the profile of delegates and the profile of participating companies?
In the past, many of the participants from outside India came from the mature and developed industrialised economies who were the primary investors in the Indian economy. Over the past years, there is marked increase in participation from emerging economies in Africa and Asia which reflects the growing role of south-south trade as well as the growing footprint of Indian companies themselves in those markets. Last year, for example, the Prime Minister of Kenya attended the summit, and this year we have again several senior African government leaders including the President of Mozambique and the Minister of Trade of Tanzania.

What kind of an evolutionary path do you foresee for the Summit over the next several years?
As I mentioned before, from now onward the Summit will alternate each year between New Delhi and another state in India, and that means we will be more deeply engaged not just with the Central government, but also more deeply in the states of India. Already this year, we have four Chief Ministers attending the summit as well as provincial leaders from other G20 economies such as the Premier of New South Wales from Australia and the Premier of British Columbia from Canada. By engaging more levels of policy makers across the nation as well as internationally from other emeriging economies, we are developing a more comprehensive platform which addresses both the national implementation priorities as well as India’s increasingly important role in international and regional affairs.