Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged investors to support the nation's development and said that his administration has redefined governance to help the underprivileged and spur economic progress. He also claimed that the globe might gain from India's prosperity.
“In India’s prosperity is the world’s prosperity and India’s growth is the world’s growth… When you associate with India’s growth journey, India gives you guarantee of growth,” the PM said at the Economic Times Global Business Summit, which had global and Indian industry leaders in the audience.
Modi wove his speech around the two-day event’s theme of ‘reimagining business and reimagining the world’ and said that since 2014, his government has sought to “reimagine and reinvent” every element of governance – from building infrastructure to direct benefits transfer and providing toilets, tap water, housing and other amenities.
He quoted Rajiv Gandhi as saying that just 15 pence of every rupee went to the intended recipients, adding that over the past nine years, the government has disbursed £280 billion via DBT under various initiatives. "If Rajiv Gandhi's statements had been accurate even today, 85% of it - roughly £240 billion - would have gone to someone's pockets, with only £40 billion going to the underprivileged. But now, 100% is going to the underprivileged”, he remarked.
Modi said the trust shown by the government in the citizens, instead of the earlier “mai-baap” approach, had resulted in an increase in the taxpayer base, apart from a projected three-fold jump in revenue collections. “When people realise that their tax is going for the welfare of people and the nation, they pay honestly,” he said, in addition, compared to the prior standard of an average processing time of 90 days for income tax refunds, approximately half of these returns are now handled within 24 hours.