Modi unleashes a spate of reforms over a year
Jettisoning the incremental approach that marked his first term in power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has opened up every sector of the Indian economy to domestic and foreign competition.
Indian IT can benefit from H1B visa restrictions
Stricter immigration policies in the US could force US tech majors and other large corporations to outsource many critical functions to foreign locations like India in order to maintain their global competitiveness. This could lead to more work for Indian IT companies and greater employment opportunities for professionals in India.
Indian tech cos could gain from Paytm-Google spat
Chaffing at the bit at what it considers abuse of its market dominance by Google, Vijay Shekhar Sharma has launched a mini app store and plans to take on board one million apps by 2022. This could open the floodgates for Indian apps to grow in size and reach global scale soon.
Goyal’s train of thought addresses cut in rail freight costs, improving passenger experience
The Indian Railways is upping its game to capture a larger slice of Indian freight traffic from the road transport sector – a target of 50 per cent share of the country’s total freight traffic by 2030. This includes many measures and slowly phasing out cross-subsidies that have made the cost of logistics in India prohibitive for businesses.
Smartphone companies are dialling up plans to set up a presence in India
With Apple, Samsung and dozens of other firms moving significant portions of their global supply chains to India, the country could emerge as a major source of smartphone exports with global sales of $90 billion over the next five years.
India’s farm sector reforms are a pathbreaking step forward
The Modi government has taken a bold political step by ushering in far reaching reforms that will free the Indian farmers from socialist-era regulations that hinder price discovery and open up the sector to foreign and domestic investments that can bring in billions of dollars and new technology to India’s farms.
Modi government reforms labour laws to make India globally competitive
In a major new reforms initiative, the Indian government has replaced more than 40 central laws and over 100 state-level statutes on labour with four comprehensive labour codes to improve the ease of doing business and to address concerns of domestic and foreign investors without compromising on worker benefits.
Government e-Market Place targets $100-bn sales in 5 years
The Modi government has launched the biggest-ever reforms of India’s public procurement system by taking the process online. This has substantially reduced human interface and, with it, brought down corruption, delays and inefficiency. It has the potential of becoming the Indian government’s answer to Amazon.
India steps up its economic aid to Maldives
The Narendra Modi government recently launched a cargo ferry service to help open up the Indian market to Maldives’ exports and also provided $500 million in grants and soft loans to finance the largest infrastructure project in the island nation.
Collaboration with US key to India diversifying energy basket
The Strategic Energy Partnership between New Delhi and Washington has emerged as one of the most important components of the larger strategic convergence between the two countries. This engagement is helping India balance the imperatives of development with the need to protect the environment.