As India moves towards self-reliance, the mindset of always asking what government can do for startups needs to change, said India’s Chief Economic Advisor Krishnamurthy Subramanian as he exhorted the country’s private sector to invest in things beyond for its own competitive benefits. “This is the outcome of the socialistic era we were in where everything government had to do but in a capitalistic era where invisible hands of markets build the economy, I think the question should be what should private sector does rather than what can the government do,” Subramanian told Financial Express Online in an interview.
The CEA was responding to a question on how government can further support the availability of domestic capital by encouraging Indian corporates to invest in Indian startups much like SoftBank, Alibaba, Tencent, Foxconn, and others. “First thing the private sector needs to say is that basic research is something we need to be investing in as a country as shown in the Economic Survey this year. Private sector’s contribution to gross expenditure on research and development in India is much lower than in advanced economies…what government must be doing is stepping up the ease of doing business but business and investment has to be done by the private sector,” Subramanian added.