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Quick Summary: Yours truly was featured today in Indian daily Hindustan Times’ full page story on Young India Forum panel discussion on the Indian Budget 2008.
Yesterday, I was part of a Hindustan Times Young India Forum panel discussion on the Indian Budget 2008. The Young India Forum is an initiative by Hindustan Times to “drive change and reach more people more directly”.
Hindustan Times had put together an interesting panel consisting of young film-makers, entrepreneurs, and corporate fast-trackers and I had a great time at the panel discussion –
Finely tailored suits, chic skirts and fancy designations — a perfect picture of corporate India, but without the grey hair. On Friday, young MDs, VPs and filmmakers, representatives of the changing face of corporate India, got together to take part in the Hindustan Times Young India Forum. To discuss, naturally, the Budget presented by Finance Minister P Chidambaram.
As the FM read out the fiscal Budget — his fifth in a row — clad in a pristine white dhoti, these designer-clad corporate honchos chuckled, sighed, laughed and gave their perspective on one of the biggest events of the year in India.
As some of you know, I don’t read the newspaper or watch TV, so I was quite clueless on what to expect from the budget (tweet). I mean, I understand enough Macro Economics to know what a good budget should focus on — basically initiatives (related to fiscal stability, education, infrastructure etc.) that have multiplier effects across sectors — but I hadn’t bothered to follow all the speculation in the build-up to the budget. An hour on Google, however, gave me enough background to talk about the budget intelligently (tweet).
I also wanted to include a crowd-sourcing angle in the panel discussion by talking about what early adopter Indians on Twitter expect from the budget (tweet1, tweet2, tweet3, tweet4, tweet5), but didn’t get enough responses.
My take on the budget is that it’s the classic pre-election feel-good populist budget that will please a lot of people, leave many feeling neutral and displease very few. Mr. Chidambaram is a master at packaging budgets, and that’s true for all his budgets, not only this one. The one highlight of the budget for me is the Rs. 15000 cr. corpus for “skill development”. But the big question I’m still asking myself is this — where will the money to fund Mr. Chidambaram’s generous budgetary allocations, including the Rs. 50000 cr. debt relief for farmers, come from?
I must say that Hindustan Times has packaged the story very well — there’s a full page story in today’s newspaper, and the online version has a PDF file of the print story and a video. The print story has nice little profiles on the seven of us —
Gaurav Mishra, Assistant General Manager, Indica, Tata Motors
The IIM Bangalore graduate has been with the Tatas ever since he stepped out of the campus six years ago. Mishra believes in sticking around and climbing the corporate ladder. He simplifies his complex job profile to one line — “I sell cars” — and the best part of his job is that his office is located two minutes from his home. When home, he disappears and writes his blog gauravonomics.com, which deals with marketing technology. Eventually, Mishra wants to set up something on his own and create jobs.
It’s fascinating what someone picks up when summarizing a half hour discussion in a paragraph. For instance, I blog about “marketing, technology and social media” and not “marketing technology” and I’m quite sure that whenever I start something on my own, it won’t create a thousand jobs.
Here’s the full text of the story — I’m pleased to tell you that Hindustan Times used a quote from me as the headline 
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‘A Budget difficult to argue with’
Finely tailored suits, chic skirts and fancy designations — a perfect picture of corporate India, but without the grey hair. On Friday, young MDs, VPs and filmmakers, representatives of the changing face of corporate India, got together to take part in the Hindustan Times Young India Forum. To discuss, naturally, the Budget presented by Finance Minister P Chidambaram.
As the FM read out the fiscal Budget — his fifth in a row — clad in a pristine white dhoti, these designer-clad corporate honchos chuckled, sighed, laughed and gave their perspective on one of the biggest events of the year in India.
Put seven Young Turks in a room and it would not take very long for any discussion to heat up. And when the issue is as crucial as the Budget, it takes no time at all.
The forum kicked off immediately after Chidambaram’s Budget presentation with one big, noisy agreement: that this Budget was aimed clearly at the forthcoming elections.
“A feel-good, populist budget. It’s very difficult to argue with it,” said Gaurav Mishra, assistant general manager (Indica), Tata Motors. An “inclusive budget,” agreed Nikhil Kaushik, associate vice-president, BTS Investment Advisors.
It was corporate-neutral budget, according to Sarang Wadhawan, managing director, Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited, and one of the moderators for the discussion. “It’s targeting the middle-income and agricultural votes.”
Everyone agreed, however, with Devita Saraf, executive director, Zenith Computers, when she said: “Corporate India has had a long bull run so it’s good if the FM has decided to let it be and focus on the bottom of the pyramid where there are genuine concerns.”
Not everyone was happy though. Filmmaker Vipul Shah complained that the entertainment sector, especially the film industry, had been ignored. “We’ve been fighting against entertainment tax for five years,” he said.
What attracted everyone’s interest was the Rs 60,000-crore wavier of loans for small and marginal farmers. While corporate India agreed that it was worthy to have tackled the agriculture debt crisis, they were wary of its repercussions.
“The headlines will be about wiping out farmer debts, and rightly so, but whether Chidambaram has opened a Pandora’s Box remains to be seen,” said Wadhawan.
The initiatives on education also got the thumbs-up. As the second moderator for the debate Purvi Sheth, vice-president, Shilputsi, put it: “We need more IIT graduates and more skilled young people. If we want India to compete on an international stage, we need more high-grade educational institutes.”
Shweta Joshi felt that educational incentives would now enable India to focus on research and development. “The boost to technology in education and a knowledge network are good news. Moving to being a knowledge-based society from the current consumption-based society will be good for India,” said the former teacher.
Introducing himself as an environmentalist, Sohail Khan, head of sales for Deal Group Media, pointed out that environmental issues had been largely ignored, except for the protection of tigers. “Eventually, it’s an ecosystem we exist in where everything affects everything, directly or indirectly,” he warned.
The discussion was not without its unanswered questions. How will all allocations be implemented effectively? How do you let people at the bottom of the pyramid know of the initiatives for them? What’s the plan on enhancing agricultural productivity?
The forum ended with hearty laughter as Kaushik quipped on Chidambaram’s statement that he was a lucky FM.
“He’s a lucky FM all right! He made an entry when India went into a growth phase; he’s going into the election year in a growth phase.”
No one contradicted Sarang when he ended the session saying it was a budget aimed at “bringing Congress back to power”.
Comment (1)
Wow ! You are creating waves now !!!!
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