Hyderabad / New Delhi, May 11 (FN Bureau) Chancellor of the ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education and former Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India, Dr. C Rangarajan, said India needed multi-dimensional growth in both the manufacturing and services sectors. In his inaugural address at the two-day 16th Annual Doctoral Thesis Conference on Macroeconomics of Net Zero Emissions’ organized by the ICFAI School of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, in collaboration with the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), here on Thursday, Rangarajan, the former RBI Governor, said that institutions of higher learning have a dual role to play: disseminating and at the same time increasing accumulated knowledge from research.
Speaking on what is required for the country’s growth, Dr. Rangarajan said that sustained growth calls for increased private investment along with a reduction in government investment. The government needs to decide on the sectors where investments must be made; he said that export-led growth is not viable. According to him, India needs multi-dimensional growth in both the manufacturing and services sectors due to the varying nature of skills in the country. He said that the country needs to concentrate on industries like food processing. Speaking on growth and equity, Dr. Rangarajan said that India needs both simultaneously, and both have to move in the same direction, with equity not impending growth. In his special address,’Macroeconomics of Net Zero Emissions: Navigating the Transition to a Sustainable Future’ at the conference, Prof. Basanta K. Pradhan, Director and Vice-Chancellor, IGIDR, Mumbai, observed that as India climbed the development ladder, it would become one of the largest greenhouse gas emitting countries in the world. This calls for a need to transition to net-zero emissions.
Prof. Pradhan was of the opinion that the main barriers to transitioning to net zero are organizational, economic, policy- and framework-related, technological, or external barriers. Prof. Pradhan further said that transitioning to net zero requires incremental capital spending of 3% of global GDP. Such a massive shift in capital allocation can lead to the loss of 187 million jobs and slow economic growth in the short term. But the long-term benefits, like avoiding the risks of climate change, can outweigh the short-term costs. In the long term, a netzero transition could create 202 million new jobs. This calls for new technologies, which are still under development, as well as redeploying and scaling up existing clean technologies. This 16th edition of the conference has attracted research scholars from several leading institutes in the country, including IIMs, IITs, NITs, CESS, and other central and state universities, who will be showcasing their doctoral research. Dr. L. S. Ganesh, Vice-Chancellor, ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education, while presiding over the inaugural session, said that there is a need to do lifecycle analysis and also pay attention to externalities.