On one hand we have seen tremendous growth, of course, in digitisation and the way people have been communicating; on the other hand, on the business side there has been a loss of reasonability in the telecom industry. How do you see things evolving going forward?
My industry is one of the favourite subjects of this government and also the prime minister. As an industry leader, we can talk about numbers and figures that matter and those count but we will always be looking forward to the government to stand up and say that wealth creators will be respected. Industry making profits is a good thing because that is how jobs are created.
From the industry point of view, the prime minister gave a great endorsement on the floor of the House. Having said that, we have seen how people have been working from home. People have been locked in. The entire telecom and digitisation programme of over the last 20 years has really held this country in a very good stead.
I believe that while this industry has gone through many avatars, this has been the time where I think India has been connected really from one end to the other and I have live experiences where people have used technology for healthcare. We have seen education and how people have been taught at home and, of course, banking. This has been the bridge to all that we have gone through and I am hoping that this pandemic must end. It is not about the industry. It is about people and I am hoping that the second wave does not happen.
People need to be vaccinated far more quickly than what we are doing. We are a large country with a large population and we have to be careful. The global indices are down. It is going to reflect on us. While we can say the FDI is coming in, I really need to figure out between FDI and FPI money coming in as and hopefully with all the Atmanirbhar ideas and all the PLIs and we have to keep the geopolitics in mind. It is a great opportunity for India to raise the manufacturing bar. Manufacturing in India is at about 16-17% of GDP. Any economy must have about 25% plus on manufacturing, about 50% on industry and then agriculture. That is the mix that we would like to see.
