The captains of industry who converged in Chennai for the National Council Meeting of CII were literally rendered speechless when Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa ended her well-prepared address in a style that befits an articulate administrator. The speech, with quotes from well-known personalities and surveys, drew rap attention from India Inc. Dwelling upon the need to have a correct mindset, she said, ?The famous British economist Lord Nicholas Kaldor once said that the success of any economic system depends ultimately on the mindset of the people who make the crucial decisions of a nation?s life. All those who have accomplished great things have had a great aim, have fixed their gaze on a goal which was high, one which sometimes seemed impossible to achieve.?
Masterminding the skill to link the wise-wordings of yesteryear leaders, she called up on industrialists and said, ?This applies equally to successful industrialists like you, who have achieved great accomplishments in your own fields as well as to persons like us who head governments with the people?s mandate. Together, we need to strive to improve the life of the common man and make our great nation an economic powerhouse.?
The chief minister, to draw parallels from global economy, took the help of Jim O?Neill of Goldman Sachs, who propounded the famous BRIC thesis in 2001. ?Goldman Sachs argues that the economic potential of BRIC nations, namely, Brazil, Russia, India and China, is such that they could become the four most dominant economies by the year 2050. She said the BRIC thesis, defended in the paper Dreaming with BRICs, was: ?The Path to 2050, recognises China and India, respectively, as becoming the dominant global suppliers of manufactured goods and services while Brazil and Russia would become dominant as suppliers of raw materials.?
According to her, the report predicts a massive rise in the size of the middle class in these nations. In 2025, it is calculated that the number of people in BRIC nations earning over $15,000 per capita may reach over 200 million. According to Goldman Sachs, if India continues to maintain the growth rate of over 8.5%, the country?s GDP is set to surpass Canada?s by 2015, Italy?s and France?s by 2020, UK?s and Germany?s by 2025 and Japan?s by 2030. By 2030, India is set to become the third largest economic powerhouse and, by 2050, India?s GDP will be very close to that of the US. India is set to claim its rightful place in the global economic arena, the CM cheered. To sum up, the medium- and long-term prospects of India appear very encouraging, she added.
Lauding the UN for its adoption of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to be achieved by 2015, she said, ?In 2001, when my government assumed office, I adopted these MDGs as our charter and initiated a number of policy reforms. I announced a 15-point programme to alleviate and eradicate poverty, which was my dream development.?
Her focus on aam aadmi was not lost in the speech either, though she was addressing the ?capitalists?. Extensively quoting from a study by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative published in 2010, she said Tamil Nadu made significant progress in poverty reduction and was ranked ahead of states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, etc. ?My dream is to totally eradicate poverty and unemployment in Tamil Nadu. These goals are more ambitious than even the MDGs. We are confident of achieving MDG targets before 2015. Growth and good governance are essential to realise this vision,? she said.
Taking the help of Sir Winston Churchill to prove a brownie point on the steadfast approach, she adapted from a speech he delivered at Harvard University in 1943: ?The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. When my government took over, I had set for ourselves a goal of making Tamil Nadu the numero uno among Indian states. I hold this vision very dear to me and I am confident that my government will achieve poverty eradication,? she said.
To highlight her policy on attracting investments into the state, the chief minister had Lord Keynes for help. Lord Keynes famously observed that and I quote: ?Investment is an act of faith,? she said. On the need for reforms to cement growth, her take was somewhat philosophical. ?If we don?t change, we don?t grow. If we don?t grow, we aren?t really living, said Gail Sheehy, and our government strongly believes in this axiom. My government was one of the open-minded state governments which initiated the reform process in the early nineties.?
And finally, she unveiled her dream, that too in a poetic manner. ?The city produces practically everything that moves?from bicycles to battle tanks and everything in between, including motorcycles, cars, tractors, earth-moving equipment, trucks and even rail road coaches. Chennai is set to emerge as one among the top five global auto clusters. My vision is to make Chennai the world?s largest auto cluster.?