Focus must be on growth, self reliance amid global turbulence: Vaishnaw

We must embrace the things which are produced in India, Made-in-India, in a very big way, he said

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday underlined the need to maintain steadfast focus on the nation's goals and economic growth, advocating an approach of self-reliance and a firm resolve to navigate the global turbulence.

Speaking at the 12th Annual Public Affairs Forum of India (PAFI) event, Vaishnaw, Minister for IT, Railways and I&B, said an important question on the mind of every policymaker today is how to effectively deal with rapid changes unfolding globally at the moment.

"So yes, these are very interesting times. We must keep our focus very clear on what we want to achieve in our country. How do we want to grow our economy, strengthen ourselves, so that the storm which is there in the world...we should be strong enough to absorb those and pass our ship through those big storms," he said.

The Prime Minister has articulated a strong focus on growth supported by an approach of 'atmanirbharta' or self-reliance, the minister said during an interactive chat that followed.

"We must embrace the things which are produced in India, Made-in-India, in a very big way. And we must make sure that our industries are able to get that strength which makes them resilient enough to withstand any turbulence that is happening in the world," he said.

Addressing the event, Vaishnaw emphasised on consistent focus on developing talent.

"In telecom, we had set up 100 5G labs. In semiconductor, we took a target of 100 universities where the world's latest tools would be used by students for training and we achieved 278 universities where the students are actually using world's latest EDA tools, Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens, they are using this and the first set of 20 chips designed by students taped out, validated, tested...student-designed chips were presented to PM during the Semicon conference," he said.

The number of chips designed by students now stands at 28, he added.

"Nowhere in the world will you find an ecosystem or a talent development program on as big a scale and as deep in capabilities as our semicon mission is currently taking up," he said.

Vaishnaw urged the audiences to mull over the next round of reforms in Income Tax.

"Give your inputs to the Finance Ministry, because we wanted to take the first round as complete simplification of the way the Act is written, so that gives you a good baseline and then the next rounds of simplification can continue to happen," he said.

The Prime Minister announced from the Red Fort that the next set of big reforms are in offing and that will cover every sector, the minister said exhorting people in the hall to brainstorm and share their thoughts on driving the next-generation reforms.

"In every sector, we are going to have reforms. So in whichever sector you are working, please give your ideas, share your thoughts, give your inputs to the concerned ministry so that they can start working, or you can send it to NITI or the Prime Minister's Office directly. We have got two groups of ministers set up for examining the reform ideas which come ," Vaishnaw said.

The Minister further nudged young professionals present at the PAFI event to look at various laws enacted after 1947, examine their relevance from users' perspective and give feedback on whether they need to be amended, or scrapped in case it has outlived its relevance in the current times.