Budget Battleground: A tale of two Indias

India is a developing country but a huge economic divide poses a major challenge to its growth. The gap between the have's and the have's not is widening continously but solution to the problem can't be seen in the near future.

  VIDEO

Question Time with Janmejaya Sinha, MD of Boston Consulting Group

24:38

India is a developing country but a huge economic divide poses a  major 

India is a developing country but a huge economic divide poses a  major challenge to  its growth. The gap between the haves and the have nots is widening continously but solution to the problem can't be seen in the near future.  NDTV's Prannoy Roy talked to Infosys founderNarayana Murthy , Biocon CEO Kiran Majumdar Shaw and former chairperson of Thermax India Anu Aga to look for solution to this issue and throw light on others, which impede growth of the Indian economy. Here is the full transcript of the conversation.

Prannoy Roy: Hello and welcome. I tell you, it’s just a great, great pleasure to have the most wonderful panel of, I was going to say gentlemen, but only one gentleman fortunately, people who I really admire and we are, all of us here at IIM Bangalore, where the campus, and I can tell you, we’ll try and show some shots, one of the most beautiful campus I have seen from around the world, and I have been to many campuses in many countries in the world, and let me tell you this is world-class campus and, of course, students are world class or not?

Audience: Yes.

Prannoy Roy: Anybody willing to say no; Murthy, brighter than us?

Narayana Murthy: Oh, there is no doubt about that.

Prannoy Roy: So, but you are going to have tough questions from them.

Narayana Murthy: Well I am quite prepared to be seen as stupid so …

Prannoy Roy: Okay, let’s get on with the broad topic that we are going to discuss, where is our country going? The economy, the Budget is just coming, what would you like to see in this Budget? But first I know I'd like to ask you and then take questions from all of you on the broad issue of, is this Budget only about the middle class and taxes and exemption rates and rich? Or is there more in our economy, in our growth that we should be focusing on?

Anu Aga: I do hope that we are not focusing on people like us here, and if we see there is a real two India’s. There is one with wealth and power and the other without opportunities, facing a blank wall and growing despair. And I think this is not sustainable if our economic growth does not touch the poor, social stability in the longer run will not be there. So I think this is unhealthy, so I hope we don’t. Or if we focus, it’s for tokenism or for votes. We do, do a lot of things for votes, wrong things, like subsidies which has not helped really, because after so many years, I’ll give you just a few examples, malnourishment has not gone down from 1996 to 2011, our hunger index has worsened if you see.

Prannoy Roy: But I'd just like to ask you on that particular point and bring Murthy also in and Kiran, on that particular point. Therefore are you saying Murthy we should not be focusing on growth and only focus on malnutrition?

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