"India@75: The Peoples' Agenda" unveiled at CII's Annual Meeting

100% literacy, innovation, world-class infrastructure and sustainable development in a corruption-free society are top priorities for Indians, says the report

CII, Yi, and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) today announced the launch of India@75: The Peoples’ Agenda with an objective to spark a transformation of India by the year 2022. The first step towards transforming India into an economically vital, technologically innovative, socially & ethically vibrant leader was to create an aligned agenda. The ‘Peoples’ agenda’ was commissioned to involve people across the country in a visioning of how India could be at 75 years of independence.

“India@75 is the most tested and supported idea in India today” said Professor CK Prahalad. He also adds that “India@75 is an election manifest. If our politicians want to know what people want, they should look to what India@75 has unearthed.”  Professor Prahalad is the inspiration behind India@75.  At the India@60 celebrations, he posed the idea of looking ahead and engaging the populace of India to envision and act for an India@75.  He then helped structure and guide the exercise over the past year.

BCG developed an innovative approach that was structured at the grassroots level of the state level, since each state is unique, at its own stage of development, facing its own unique sets of issues. This included hearing & studying 6,000 voices across many different geographies, different socio-economic classes, different age groups, different occupations, different genders and different religions. Unlike any vision document that has come before, this was written by the people of India and every one of their voices is captured in the document.

Mr. Gopal Srinivasan, Chairman of CII India@75 Mission said “Across the country, people had strong aspirations of what they wanted for India@75.

The five aspirations that cut across all geographies and people are:

• Education and skills is a top priority for all the people: 100% literacy; 200 million college graduates and 500 million skilled workforce
• Efficient infrastructure deployment can change the pace of India’s growth dramatically
• Development has to be environmentally sustainable – that is non-negotiable
• Innovation and ‘next practices’ are key to progress: We must find new ways to do things
• Corruption is seen as a major corroding influence eating away the vitality of India: India can become a moral leader in the world”

“In fact India@75 can show us how we can take advantage of this economic situation. Everyone sees India becoming a global leader, and perhaps this crisis is just an opportunity,” said Mr. Chandrajit Bannerjee, Director General of CII.

“India@75 is a rallying cry for the young in our country. We want to create a volunteer corps of young people who will work with institutions across the country at the grassroots level to make the vision a reality,” says Rajan Navani, Co-Chair of India@75 Mission.

James Abraham, Senior Partner & Director, BCG said “Crisis will come and go. Only a shared aspiration like India@75 can keep us on track and point to the things that we have to get done no matter what.” 

India@75 is an initiative which goes beyond the realms of just visioning. It seeks to create a movement where everyone can get involved into realizing the dreams of our country. The report has been structured around the ten broad themes that are Education & Skill Development, Technology & Innovation, Agriculture, Businesses, Infrastructure & Urbanization, Health, Environment, Arts, Sports & Literature, Governance & Public Administration and Moral Leadership.

India@75 website: www.indiaat75.in