Reforms initiated under PM Narendra Modi’s watch incomplete: Manmohan Singh

Speaking at an event at the Dr BR Ambedkar School of Economics (BASE), Bengaluru, former prime minister Manmohan Singh said that fresh efforts are needed since the Planning Commission, designed to ensure growth and equality, has been abolished.

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Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. (Express photo)

The process of economic reforms initiated under his watch as a finance minister and Prime Minister remains incomplete and a lot of fresh thinking is needed to return the country to a high rate of economic growth while tackling growth related inequalities, former prime minister Manmohan Singh said here on Wednesday.

Speaking at an event in the Bengaluru Dr BR Ambedkar School of Economics (BASE), the former prime minister said that fresh efforts are needed since the Planning Commission which was designed to ensure growth and equality has been abolished.

“The economic liberalisation that I was associated with in 1991-96 and 2004 to 2014 was above all a process of opening up new opportunities for people without economic and social access. This was the guiding vision behind our reforms,’’ Singh said. Critics are spreading despair but economy is on track, says PM Modi

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“I must confess that the process is still incomplete and we need a lot of fresh thinking to work out a new design for our social and economic policy which will be a judicious mix of both high rate of economic growth and a strong focus on containing growth of economic inequalities and working effectively to reduce it,’’ Singh said.

“Development planning and the planning commissions were designed to ensure that while our economy grew inequalities would reduce. With the abolition of the planning commissions fresh efforts have to be made to keep inequalities under control,’’ he said.

The former chairman of the former prime minister’s economic advisory council and chairman of the Madras School of Economics C Rangarajan while speaking on the occasion said that a decline in investment rate in the Indian economy lies at the heart of the slowdown of the economy.