Naushad Forbes’ blueprint for progress

Sandeep Dikshit

NAUSHAD FORBES has had a very different trajectory as an entrepreneur. His time spent at Stanford University became a life-long association, unlike the then practice of sending scions of businessmen and politicians abroad to buy paper degrees.

Anchored on decades of interaction with the government, academia and business, Forbes asks critical questions about India’s progress and sets out a blueprint for its achievement. In the process, many of his ideas run contrary to the hypothesis peddled by the current government. For instance, on External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s pet theme about India getting a short shrift in its FTAs, Forbes, on the basis of copious data, says that overall India’s FTAs actually had little effect on trade flows.

He writes passionately about promoting diversity at a time when the ruling dispensation black tars anyone who opposes their bid to drape India in a one-size-fits-all ideology. On the farm laws, he rues that as was the case with industrial delicensing, if the government had followed a step-by-step approach, such as building alternate mandis in Punjab, things could have worked out differently.

There are a few awkward questions about the pet schemes of the Modi government to step up industrialisation and job creation — Atmanirbhar Bharat and Productivity Linked Insurance on which the government is set to splurge $50 billion. Any such period of protection should be certain and temporary, he insists. More importantly, it should be connected to exports. Recalling the feedback received by the CII over signing an FTA with the ASEAN-plus block, Forbes puts the finger on the mindset of the Indian industrialists — they gave copious inputs on defensive interests but none on offensive interests! Instead of howling about imports, India should howl about anything — cost of power, delays at ports, falling rupee — that comes in the way of the country becoming a major exporter, he counsels.

Forbes has the interest of the country front, right and centre. In the process, he does challenge some prevalent notions. But such is the force of statistics that support his arguments that none can charge him with ill-will or prejudice.