Ashwini Vaishnaw’s quotes from Davos

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The most important factor which the world should know is the element of trust which India has developed through its foreign policy and through the Prime Minister’s economic thinking. They are experiencing it. They should understand the thought process behind it and they should understand the rationale, the systematic thinking which has gone into this.

  • We are continuously striving to improve the technological base of railways, in terms of new trains, new types of tracks, upgradation of tracks, and maintenance in every sector. We are trying to get the latest technologies.
  • On the slowdown in the second quarter of this fiscal – “There are three big levers in the economy – The fiscal policy, the monetary policy, and the credit policy. RBI has had a very restrictive stance since quite some time, and liquidity has been controlled because RBI wanted to put a big break on the inflationary pressures. Because of the elections, and prolonged monsoon, construction in many sectors was impacted. I think this is just a small blip in the entire curve. We definitely are in the 6 to 8% growth band.”
  • On why global companies will choose India – “This must be seen from a different frame. The frame that I want to present is the frame of trust, the frame of talent, and the frame of design capabilities. This is the uniquely Indian advantage that we have. India has an abundance of talent. Almost 2,000 GCCs are working on advanced chips. And the biggest factor is the way our Prime Minister has conducted the economic and foreign policy over the last 10 years. Due to this, the world today trusts India, and India respects their IPR. This is why so many people are shifting not just their supply chains but value chains as well to India. And, this is why people want to manufacture semiconductor in India. India is one of the top 3 destinations for semiconductors in the coming years and the base is already set. They see India should become the use case capital for AI. Today models are practically becoming commoditised. So how do we create a ecosystem where we should be able to create use cases and applications and agents for the entire world and industry. So that’s the framework I would like to see – the framework of trust, design and availability of talent.”
  • On reducing trade tariffs and trade protectionism – “Simplification of tariffs is one of the major agendas of our government. Lot of simplification and digitalisation has happened in the past. That has really helped the industry and global supply chain. In the case of electronics manufacturing we have a saturated domestic demand because 99.1% of mobile phones that we use in our country are today manufactured in India. From here growth strategy has to change. So this is the change in mindset. Earlier we were looking at the import substitution, manufacturing for the domestic demand. Now we are looking at Make in India, Make for the world. Look at export led growth in the next phase of growth. That is happening in many industries e.g. Pharmaceutical industry, Chemical industry. It has been in the Garment industry for sometime. So that change in mindset has been happening and simplification in the Customs laws and Customs structure is also happening. I agree that there will be some duties to protect certain segments which is important for us. That kind of calibrated approach is the better approach. I frankly don’t agree with the very theoretical approach of the many economists, I would rather take a calibrated approach which is more practical and more commonsensical.“
  • On AI and skilling – The focus on skilling is huge. In the case of AI, we have set a target for ourselves, that at least 1 million people should be ready with AI tools, AI Skills. They should be able to create those use cases, create those applications which the world wants. We have shown that kind of scales multiple things. In telecom, we have set up 5G labs in hundred universities so that the students come out ready for the  industry. In Semi conductor we have 240 universities where we have given the most advanced EDA tools so that the students can actually design the chips while they are in their 3rd year or in the final year of the projects. The course curriculum is getting fully aligned with what the industry wants. So at the mid level, at the lower level and at the top level, each part of this value chain we are focused on skilling and the results are visible. Today the economy is generating one and half million formal jobs in a month. Mr S. N. Subrahmanyan has said that he is short of 35000 people. That’s the kind of attrition rate that is happening because the economy is moving.  The real income in the rural area is rising, and that is again giving impetus to consumption and the growth cycle is being created by that.”
  • On How to get manpower for textiles – Today our new education policy has really changed the way our education institutes teach.The top level and mid level universities, cutting edge diplomas, polytechnics and ITIs – all are changing in a very big way. The fundamental focus of the new education policy is to align industry requirements with what the university teaches. At Gatishakti Vishwavidyalaya, we have focused on transportation. Airbus wanted engineers to be fully trained and to be ready for aeronautical works, like design, maintenance, and operations. We told them here is the white board, you can design the course curriculum yourselves. They did not believe initially they got the course curriculum done and we didn’t even change a comma or full stop. Today, they have decided to train and hire 15,000 aeronautical engineers from Gatishakti Vishwavidyalaya for their global work force. There are multiple such examples and I will be happy to engage with you for your specific needs. We can actually earmark a university or institution and you decide the course curriculum. We can make sure the students who get ready for you so that your talent needs can be met. I can give that open offer to everybody present here.”
  • On manufacturing or services: There has to be manufacturing “and” services, it cannot be manufacturing “or” services. People who try to espouse that it cannot be that model of manufacturing led growth, I would like to say that it has to be manufacturing and services combined.
  • On unified pavilion : “The thought process was that Indian pavilion should be a unified pavilion, it should be integrated. Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi jee got this feedback last year and he gave us a very clear thought process that we should have all the state pavilions integrated into a unified India’s pavilion. Then we spoke to the Chief ministers of respective states and all of them were very happy to be a part of this thought process. That’s how we have the entire India pavilion as one unified one integrated India.”
  • On AI Driven world and status update on semicon : The confidence that people have on our government, policies and leadership is huge. People had a lot of skepticism few years ago, but now they are clear that India is having a consistent growth. India’s policy is very clear. Prime Minister Modi ji’s entire thrust is on having a strong technological base in our country. Just three years back, people used to say that we heard there is a semicon program starting in India. Today you have five units where the construction is in a very advanced stage and the first chip will be rolled out in this year. This gives a lot of tremendous confidence in the people. So we had a small announcement that INOX will be the materials partner for Micron as well as for Tatas. That’s a very big thing. We used to manufacture parts per million, and now we will have to manufacture parts per billion purities. This requires tremendous investment in R&D and manufacturing capabilities. All these things give strong confidence to people.
  • On AI – We have a huge AI talent pool in the country, and people have taken strong note of the approach that we have taken. We have taken this approach of having public investment to create a AI 10,000 GPU computing facility which will be made available to everybody. People liked this facility as the start ups don’t get the opportunity to have these computing facilities. Our Hon’ble Prime Minister says that we must democratise technology, which means it should be accessible to all.