Theme of NITI Aayog's meeting is important because India is at a take-off moment: CEO

BVR Subrahmanyam, Chief Executive Officer of NITI Aayog, on Saturday said the theme of the Governing Council Meeting was Viksit Bharat and "this is important because India is at a take-off moment". Speaking during a press conference after the NITI Aayog's 8th Governing Council Meeting, the CEO said, "The theme (of the meeting) was Viksit Bharat...Why is Viksit Bharat so important at this point? It is important because India is at a take-off moment. We are not only the largest country by population but also the fifth-largest economy. The fifth is going to become the third in a couple of years."

The CEO of the think tank said, "Demography is in our favour not just in terms of the total number of people but also in terms of the number of youthful people." He said India will have about 20 per cent of the world's working-age population in a couple of years and it is going to be the largest provider of working-age people for the next 20 years or so.

Elaborating on the working population, he said, "The median age is about 28-29 in our country. The time has come for India to utilise this opportunity. The countries which have crossed this particular level of development actually then go through a rapid period of sustained high-speed growth if the corrections are done." He said India actually has 25-25 period where "if we do the right things and do things the right way, the country can actually make it to its aspirational goals".

The CEO also said that the rate of digitalisation in India is extremely high and talked about how all the countries are monitoring this achievement. On the lines of startups, he said, "Our country has the world's third-largest startup ecosystem. We have 90,000 startups, for which the DPIIT (Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade) has got records. We have over 100 unicorns."

"Given our aspirational population, given our demographics, given GDP which is there at this point, given that we are at the last mile of resolving a lot of basic issues like sadak, bijli, pani," the CEO said, adding, "we are at a point we move from basics and go towards development." (ANI)

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