Viewers, in our continued series on talking to the movers and shakers of India, on this landmark that the Prime Minister has notched up 12 unbroken years as Prime Minister, setting a new record in office. As you know, viewers, the last person to have been elected as Prime Minister and held on to the office for as long was India's first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. But now the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has broken that record. And of course, there are still two and a half, three years to go in his third term, so he will have outdone Mr. Nehru by quite a margin. But fundamentally, viewers, we're going to be speaking now with Mr. Sanjiv Goenka, who's the chairman of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group. He needs no introduction. One of India's foremost businessmen, an individual with diverse business holdings across many different verticals. Thank you so much, Mr. Goenka. I know you're taking time out. You're speaking from overseas, and that's what explains the light and shadow play that we're going to see. You're of course sitting in the beautiful sunlight of some absolute paradise. I'm here in this rather dark studio, but it's great to be speaking with you, Mr. Goenka. Thank you very much for taking the time out. Look, the Prime Minister has completed 12 years in office. What do you believe has been the single most transformative economic reform of this period?
Thank you, Rahul, for having me on the show. And let me begin by saying that he is not only the longest-serving Prime Minister for India, he is by lengths the best Prime Minister that India has had. And he is somebody who's transformed India by thought, by action, and by policy. It began with reaching out to the Aam Janata, the common man, with the Har Jal, the Har Ghar, and many schemes like this, where he gave comfort and a sense of dignity to every Indian who was deprived. He gave Indians a respect in the world that we had never seen before. Today, India and Indians are viewed with great respect across every part of the world, and that is thanks to Prime Minister Modi. India today has a voice in every major global decision. That is thanks to Mr. Modi. India thinks scale. That is thanks to Mr. Modi. India thinks of leading the world. That is thanks to Mr. Modi. So if you ask me to list the most transformative, I think there have been several most transformative policies, ideas, thoughts that he has done.
Let me ask you more specifically, Mr. Goenka. Many people have said that the government was formed on the promise that it will deliver more governance, less government, and that was the promise that Prime Minister Modi made. However, the welfare state has expanded quite a bit. Government is occupying a bigger space, some people would say, in our lives than it did earlier. Is that a problem? Number one. Number two, or let me not call it a problem, but is that a sort of revision of the original idea? And secondly, many people also say that private business would have come to the party, this transformative party, with greater enthusiasm if red tape and regulatory framework, or at least the landscape of regulations, had been nipped a little bit. We have a huge plethora, for example, to set up factories in India, enterprises, hurdles. Would you agree with this?
No, I think the confidence that India Inc. has today and Global Inc. has on India has never happened before. Look at the scale of investments. Look at the breadth and depth of investments. Look at the range of industries and sectors across which investments are happening. I think it was inconceivable 10, 12, 15 years ago, and it just keeps increasing. And you're seeing investments on the ground. We just heard of a three lakh crore investment on a data center a couple of days ago. Now, so this is international investment, right? You keep hearing of investments from India Inc., and nobody talks of less than 10,000 crores. So it's 1 lakh crore, 50,000 crores, 2 lakh crores, 3 lakh crores, depending upon the size of the balance sheet, and everyone's investing. So it's a confidence on the policies of the Modi government, or on Mr. Modi himself, and this belief that Modi, you know, this confidence in the leader is very important. The security of the investment, the security or the sanctity of continuity and consistency is very important. So I think I can, speaking for India Inc., I can say we have never been more confident of investing than we are today.
This is very interesting because I have some statistics which seem to suggest that though the Modi government has pushed manufacturing through initiatives such as Make in India and PLI schemes that you know are well known, there hasn't been much of an uptick in manufacturing. If you look at the record from 2012 onwards to now, it's remained, manufacturing as a share of GDP has remained around 14-15% at the highest and around 13%. So it hasn't really, you know, become this manufacturing powerhouse that we were expecting. Why do you think this is the issue, or are we looking at statistics the wrong way?
I think they're looking at statistics the wrong way because you're looking at it as a percent of GDP, and GDP itself has grown several times. So every sector has grown, services have grown, manufacturing has grown, and the GDP itself is something that was inconceivable when Modi came to power. And I think it's growing every day. And investments don't happen overnight. They take three, four years to fruition. Then they take another couple of years before they get to capacity. So you're looking at a lead period of about five to six years from conception to complete implementation.
If you were somebody who was going to advise the Prime Minister on ensuring that the climate for private capital is much more attractive, what are the two or three regulatory policy bottlenecks that you would say we could relook at, we could sort of take away from the table?
You know, Rahul, honestly, always you say 'manga dil mang more', but at this point in time, I don't think there is that much more that India Inc. could ask from the government.
