The Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Sunday celebrated its 178th ‘Chamber Day’ in the city. The chief guest for the occassion was L Lakshman, the Chairman of Rane Holdings.
Lakshman, in his speech titled ‘Immobilised India’ lamented about the stagnation of growth in India and explained ways to counter this. He said, “The problems India faces are mostly self inflicted and are extremely unlike that of Greece or Spain. Vested interests, incompetence, vote bank politics and policy paralysis are some of the reasons for the slowdown.”
Expressing disappointment over the education sector in the country, he said “there are no higher institutes from India that feature in the top 200 in the world. Even our IITs don’t feature in the top 220. This coming from a country that produced Takshila and Nalanda is dissappointing”. Lakshman, who was also the president of the Chamber in 1994, expressed his happiness over his return to the organisation and said that the problems that haunt India now are very similar to the problems during his tenure.
Earlier during the function, Rajan Ekambaram from The Madras Chamber gave an outline on the situation of the economy of Tamil Nadu. During his presentation, Rajan said, “Chennai has seen growth in healthcare sector. But the lack of proper infrastructure is keeping a leash on it. The contribution of Tamil Nadu to India’s GDP has somewhat stagnated or in some cases lowered.” Explaining the state of different sectors, he said “while the state has seen growth, the services sector still dominates over the industry sector. This has to be balanced for holistic growth”.
During the event, the MCCI also launched their official directory which carries the list of members of the Chamber.