The former RBI governor and economist Rohit Lamba talk about the choices India needs to make to achieve the economic growth it has envisioned. Their new book, Breaking the Mould, releases today
Raghuram Rajan and Rohit Lamba believe that India’s best days are still ahead. In their new book Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India’s Economic Future, which releases today, they talk about the various facets of change that the country needs to implement for economic growth.
In a conversation with Forbes India, Rajan, former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor, and Lamba, an economist at Pennsylvania State University, talk about why ideas, creativity and human capital should be at the centre of India’s vision for growth and development; how, instead of being a “faux China”, as they write in the book, the country can embrace its strength, including its diversity, culture and demographic dividend, while moving forward. They also weigh in on why India needs to reprioritise how its resources are utilised to keep the focus on basics like education and health care, whether we are on our way to becoming a product nation, and how we can tackle social and economic inequalities. India’s democracy, they say, is one of our biggest strengths, and we “shouldn’t lose it by any stretch of imagination”.
Edited excerpts:
Q. There’s a line in your book where you say that if India wants to realise the economic growth that it has envisioned, we have choices to make on where we want to devote our resources–“in people or on things”. Why can’t it be both?
Rohit Lamba: Obviously, it can be both. What we're trying to say is that there is a certain level of focus that has gone into things, which is legitimate given the poor infrastructure we have come from, and we were used to. But it's becoming increasingly clear that in the economic path of the future that India is going to be on, our binding constraint is not going to be infrastructure. It's going to be our human capital.