Rising expectations resulting in faster decision-making: Jaitley

Indians' expectations of increasingly higher economic growth is putting pressure on the political class, resulting in easier, expeditious decision-making at both the central and state levels, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday

"Indians are increasingly becoming restless and expect higher growth rates and higher levels of activity to happen," Jaitley said, releasing the Niti Aayog's "Three Year Action Agenda 2017-20."

"The impact of this on those in governance is that decision making has become much easier for the entire political system...because of the pressure this (expectation) builds up on decision makers.

"Nowadays, there are not too many decisions that one will find stuck in the pipeline because it is not comfortable or politically expedient to take that decision," he added.

Jaitley said that the expectations of India's "aspirational class" was equally putting pressure on state governments.

"Across the country, states are positioning themselves as to who can better the others in ease of doing business...they are competing to attract investment," he said.

In this connection, the Finance Minister said that the Niti Aayog's Action Agenda recommending policy changes and action programmes for the next three years "has the potential to be a good text book for those in governance."

--IANS

bc/vd