'Seeking a pro-reform Budget strong on implementation'

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From Silicon Valley to BPL Mobile to the upper house of parliament Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP, Rajya Sabha & Former Chairman, BPL has always followed his heart. An advocate of reforms this entrepreneur parliamentarian always tells it like it is.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Chandrasekhar gave his perspective on the government's performance in the past year and his expectations from Budget 2010.

Here is a verbatim transcript of the interview. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: Let me start by asking you, this is a funny story and I was reading a blog of yours that you wrote before the budget in July and you said personally I long since learn to ignore pre-budget hype and read and watch the expectations drama only if I have very little else to do or I am struggling for a cure of temporary sleep deprivation- what do you think you are up these days?

A: It is not the budget for sure. What's keeping me up is essentially concern about the second generation reforms and not really linked to the budget. But a number of things that I believe that the government ought to be doing is that they clearly are not doing enough of.

Q: You also spoke then about the fact that India at this point needs tax borrow investment economic architecture as opposed to tax borrow and spend fiscal strategy, that is what we have had in the past but you want to tax invest economic architecture - do you think in the last year since the last budget the government has done enough to get this economic architecture in place?

A: No, not at all. I genuinely believe that the last one year we have spent essentially waiting for the global economy to recover. I do not think we have done very much internally to set ourselves up for the time when we de-link from the stimulus and have to grow the economy on the other sound principles of investment and the basic principles of growth which is investment growth.

I think a lot of the time that we spent in the last one year is being spent on are we recovering, are we getting out of the economic crisis, should the stimulus continue. It has been a stimulus led growth. It has not been what I believe a sustainable model for growth.

Q: But to be fair given the extraordinary situation that the world was facing and not just India, in terms of the stimulus measures do you think at least what the government has done to sort of recovery from the economic shock at least there you would give the government high points?

A: No. I point that I was making is not that the stimulus was wrong. I think the stimulus was right, it was appropriate, it was necessary. And doing nothing at that point would have led us to pretty bad situation.

What I was hoping that we would have done in the last 12 months is set the basis for reforms. We have not done so much by way of architecting, if you want to call it that, this second generation of reforms in the last 12 months which we could have done in anticipation of the global economy getting ready to look outward and invest more aggressively.