One of the major issues that India must urgently address is lack of enough employment opportunities, particularly in rural areas. More employment opportunities must be created in agriculture and other sectors. To do that and prevent rural-urban migration, India’s villages must develop and become self-sustainable. The government must explore sustainable and innovative ways to fund rural infrastructure – roads, education, healthcare, power, water etc. How do we provide better facilities and improve lives in rural India? If India has over 6,50,000 villages, how do we target each of these and create model villages? The key is to make our villages economically self-reliant with flourishing businesses in and around, and with that infrastructure, roads, schools and colleges and everything else will follow. People would no longer see any need to go to cities. It is time to build the nation village upwards and not city downwards.

It is imperative that India works to bridge the gap between its growing 350 million who are moving up the ladder with best education and healthcare and those over 900 million people in the lower social economic strata who are still struggling for basic needs. They should be provided ample right opportunities to grow. For this to happen, it is important that good education and skilling opportunities are created in rural areas, tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Education and skill development, particularly for young girls, is crucial so that they become confident and become successful entrepreneurs.

When we talk of closing the gap, India must find ways to close the ever-widening divide between its poor masses and small affluent elite. India is among the world’s most unequal nations where its bottom half own less than 3% of its wealth whereas the top 1% own 40% of its wealth. A very small percentage of the country’s economy is controlled by the majority. This wealth inequality has deprived 70% of Indians from bare minimum necessities. Rising inflation is bringing more people into poverty every day. India must ensure equitable distribution of wealth among its people but doing it is indeed a challenge. It is not that it has not been looked into, but the poor-rich gap has only widened. We should now explore whether we can achieve better distribution of wealth through imposing some kind of ‘wealth tax’ on the rich and super rich, increasing revenues by widening the tax base, hiking corporate tax slabs, and lowering taxes for marginal earners.

A key step in this direction will be to reform India’s taxation policy. Given populist underlying tax structures, just 4.5% or 5.9 crore of the total population of the country pay income tax. Many may be paying indirect taxes but it is different from direct tax. Indirect taxes are based on your usage. You pay tax when you go to a restaurant, if you do not you need not pay any tax. It is your choice. Whereas a direct tax must be paid mandatorily. We need to increase the direct tax base. In India, wealthy farmers do not pay any kind of tax as well as wealthy people in many other professions owing to loopholes in the taxation system. This large tax evasion has deprived the country of immense revenues that could be used to fuel its growth. Further, the prevalence of cash transactions, which has remarkably come down in recent times but still persists in large numbers, prevents fair taxation. So, India must strengthen its taxation system, make it fair, transparent, and robust.

helpless and devastated. To treat a disease – heart ailments, cancer, or other non-communicable ailments – we must ensure it is treated the right way, the first time. Right technology and talent are required to do that. The treatment costs should be fair for both patients and hospitals, and this cost can be covered by the right kind of insurance that every patient must have today. This will help them get the right treatment, that too cashless across the country and at the same time will incentivize private enterprise to penetrate tier 2 and 3 cities. On the other hand, the government must redefine its role, it cannot be a service provider as well as a monitoring body. The government should only monitor and ensure that the right and optimal quality of services are provided. The best government is that which governs the least. It should not become an impediment to growth. India’s private enterprise is remarkable, and they must be involved in a big way for sustainable delivery of quality healthcare.

Similarly, universal education is critical for India to become an advanced nation. High quality education in multiple regional languages accompanied with job-oriented skills training should be imparted in India’s rural areas. This will bring the children and youth in villages on a par with those in urban areas. Our youth is extremely promising and intelligent. They are doing extraordinarily well abroad and heading several large companies in the US, Europe and elsewhere. There also some exceptional Indian medical professionals and academicians abroad. We have the intellectual capability, and we can make it happen in India as well. If only India is unbound, it can achieve all this.