Michael Debabrata Patra: Financing India's aspirations

Keynote address by Dr Michael Debabrata Patra, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, at the Financing 3.0 Summit "Preparing for Viksit Bharat", organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), Mumbai, 3 September 2024.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Namaskar! Good morning,

I am honoured to be here today. This initiative by the CII – the Summit on Financing 3.0 – is perhaps the first of its kind and assumes timely significance in positioning itself as a beacon of light illuminating India's leap towards its future. At the outset, therefore, I would like to express my deep appreciation of CII's role in shaping India's industrial and business landscape since 1895 as arguably the most visible business association in the country today. It is only befitting that I pay tribute to the CII's extraordinary contributions by dwelling on our ambitions as a nation and the role of finance in actualising them.

II. An Aspirational Vision of India

There is a palpable pulsation in the mood of the nation. It is widely believed that this is India's century. A window of opportunity has opened up for striking out on a path that secures for every Indian the best living standards in the world. In the tradition of classical economics, it is a productive workforce that is the true source of value creation; capital is only an organising factor, boosting the productivity of labour and creating conditions for its growth. In that classical sense of the supply side of the economy, every sixth working person in the world is an Indian benefiting from a population that is the youngest in the world. The United Nations projects India's working age population to grow at 9.7 million per annum.2 This cohort is expected to peak at 68.9 per cent of the total population by the 2030s3.