IIT Gandhinagar hosted a Fair Observer discussion on the Indian economy in 2022. Christopher Roper Schell, who spent more than 11 years on Capitol Hill, worked for the Pentagon and ran for the US Congress, moderated. Retired CIA officer Glenn Carle, FICCI hotshot Sunil Parekh, Professor Neeldhara Misra and Fair Observer Editor-in-Chief Atul Singh were the speakers. The context of the discussion was higher projections for India's economic growth. In January 2022, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised India’s growth forecast to 9%.

With the benefits of the 2017 goods and services tax (GST) coming into play, India has finally become a common market. India has also brought in reforms such as the Real Estate Bill and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code that have increased the formalization of its economy, bringing large efficiency gains. Furthermore, India is building infrastructure at a record pace that will have a massive multiplier effect on growth rates in the years ahead.

Incomes are rising, the middle class is growing, urbanization is increasing and the rural-urban divide is decreasing. This is boosting consumption and Indias are spending more on health, education, leisure, technology and lifestyle products. As of January 28, 2022, India is home to 85 unicorns with a total valuation of $287.89 billion.

At a time when geopolitical tensions between China and the West are rising, India is the only economy with the scale, the population and the markets to be a driver of global growth. This India story is yet to be understood fully and the panel at IIT Gandhinagar sought to make sense of it.

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