States need to play a pivotal role in India's growth story: Former NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant

Amitabh Kant

• States must grow at 10 percent yearly for India's development
• India needs 500 new cities and focus on smart urbanisation
• Adopting new tech like EVs, solar, and minerals will boost jobs

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Former NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Friday underlined that states need to become key drivers in India's growth story. States need to grow at 10 per cent over the next three decades to complete the ongoing phase of development.

Speaking at Network 18 Rising Bharat Summit, Kant gave a blueprint of how India should move ahead to complete its growth story. He said: "India's GDP need to grow nine times , savings and investment rate needs to grow enormously for India's economy to grow towards developed nation."

Detailing the effort, the former bureaucrat emphasised on how strategic urbanisation can play a big role in the overall growth story. There is a big thrust on urbanisation. India needs 500 new cities of one million each. India's challenge is to create two Americas. 41.6% people in agriculture have increased to 46% post covid which is too high. People need to move to manufacturing. All developed states have taken this trajectory in the development phase.

According to Kant, good and smart urbanisation will also play a decisive role in shaping India’s future. “Much like the government got all the states together on GST, it needs to bring political will and administrative ability to drive good, smart urbanisation,” he said. “The top 20 cities actually account for almost 45% of GDP. If you are able to drive that and make it grow enormously, they will become not merely the drivers of GDP but also generate a huge number of jobs.”

While emphasising about sustainable urbanisation, Kant said the country will see around 5 million people getting into the process of urbanisation and there will be a need to create 500 new cities in India.

Speaking on new technologies and how India should adopt them, Kant remarked: "India needs to accelerate pace in New technologies like EVs, solar manufacturing, critical mineral processing, which will lead to job growth. It will be export led manufacturing growth in next 3-4 years."

Speaking on demographics and how India can utilise its young population, Kant said: "The aspect of demograpgy is extremely vital. The Western part of the world is ageing and Japan has already aged, even China is ageing. India is just 28 and even when we become 100, the average age will be 35 years."