Brand Building Is The Essence Of Corporate Success: Aaker

Rahul Bajaj, industrialist and CII president, has stressed on the need for the government to work in tandem with the industry in shaping the country's future.

Bajaj, who was here to attend the IIT convocation ceremony said: "Instead of a level playing field we should have asked for a tilted field, and one that is tilted in our favour. This is because all countries in the world, their Prime Ministers and decision-makers are always concerned about their own companies and try to promote them. But this is not so in our country. "

Bajad added: " We do not want to be spoon fed, neither do we want to be protected. We want to compete. For that, we should liberalise, but be careful while we liberalise."

According to Bajaj, there are some achievements that we can be proud of, particularly the preservation of democracy; but we should see where we stand so far as the per capita income of people is concerned.

Although in the purchasing power parity yardstick India is fifth in the world, this was mainly due to the large population, he said.

Bajaj said the industry had no other option but to compete with each other and with outside forces. There was only one guru and that was not Michael Porter or anyone else but competition. Only the inefficient and weak were scared of competition.

Globalisation, Bajaj said, offered both opportunities and challenges.The government has to back industry if the latter is to take advantage of the opportunities thrown open by globalisation.

He noted the contradictory directions in which economy and polity were moving at present While there was more economic unity then there ever was before, politically people were moving away from each other.

Bajaj underlined that to be able to compete in the world, the stress should be on fiscal discipline, development of infrastructure and labour sector reforms.

Fiscal deficits should be around 3 per cent rather than the current 6 or 6.5 per cent. Infrastructure needed investments from the public sector, foreign institutions and private sector, he said.

Bajaj added that labour sector reforms were needed badly. He said the formation of a new labour commission was a step in the right direction.

Privatisation, he said, did not mean divesting 26 per cent government equity in the industrial undertakings, but means full disinvestment if necessary as was done in the UK.