NEP's a brilliant policy to aid entrepreneurship, investment: Aditya Berlia

Asserting that the new National Education Policy is the kind of wholesale reform that needs to come up in other sectors as well to encourage entrepreneurship and investment, Aditya Berlia, Co-Promoter, Apeejay Stya and Svran Group said the government needs to bring in new reforms now and not wait for five or 10 years. His remarks came during a conversation on Reform India to boost entrepreneurship and investment with Prabhu Chawla, Editorial Director, The New Indian Express, on TNIE’s Expressions, a series of live webcasts with people who matter.Aditya Berlia said, “NEP is a brilliant policy. I have full faith in the NEP. The new NEP is the kind of wholesale reform — although it’s just a policy we have to still wait for the actual law — that needs to come into the industry as well. That is the new deal for India because the current deal is not working, Covid-19 has really pointed out a lot of holes in this old deal. Now is a great time to come up with something new and say ‘look we had the courage to do demonetisation, to come up with a new NEP,’ so we have the courage to do a complete renovation for our ecosystem to encourage entrepreneurship and investment. That is what I am hoping for,” said Aditya.Responding to what reforms he would like to see in the next ten years, Aditya said, “I would love to see them in the next six months, 10 years is too long. First, I would say there are two philosophical changes that have to happen. Ease of doing business is the wrong term, it should be ease of transaction. Transaction also means getting a subsidy from the government, not just profit-making transactions but everything else. When people talk about growth, it means millions of transactions done at a specific speed and how fast or easily you can do it. Secondly, India competes globally now and not just with a few countries. Anything that we do has to be globally benchmarked and on a certain level.”Speaking about reform, Prabhu Chawla added that it should be in the pattern of equitable distribution of wealth. “What has happened during Covid, all the service sectors have broken down, they were all closed. We don’t have enough people getting enough money in their hands to sustain the service sector.You want people to fly more, buy more but imagine how many cars will the middle class ultimately buy? People who don’t have a car, or scooter or a one-bedroom house how will they buy more to sustain the development of the service sector? Then what is the reform here? Reform means you have to go back to the demand-led model rather than a supply model.Basically, reform should be in the pattern of distribution of wealth — equitable distribution of wealth.” Aditya said he would like to see reforms in land and real estate development, “India needs a broader civil service. Reform is needed there, India right now is so understaffed in key policy positions, you can’t build a four trillion economy like that. My plea to the government is that they come up with newer and bolder reforms.”

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