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Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture had privilege of the gracious presence of Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President of Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi for the 77th Annual General Meeting held on Sunday, 18th September, 2011.
Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta is the President of Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, one of the India’s most distinguished think tanks. Earlier he was Professor at Harvard University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Dr. Abhay Firodia, President welcomed the Chief Guest, Members and Invitees of the Chamber. In his welcome address he said that the European economy is burdened with heavy debt . Japan is stagnating. In India and China there are signs of some amount of slow down. At backdrop we are more concerned about the economy of Western and Southern Maharashtra. In the Pune region, there has been an enormous growth in the automotive sector. Indigenous industries are also booming. IT industry is doing well and education is playing a very powerful role in the developmental growth of Pune. The growth of Infrastructure of Pune is far better than that of Mumbai and other Indian cities.
Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries & Agriculture is playing very active role. The Chamber has been doing its best to address local governance and other civic issues. He also briefed about the ongoing projects – The International Exhibition Centre at Moshi, and International Airport at Pune, Metro and other infrastructure projects, which are yet to take off.
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Key Note Address by
Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta
President, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi
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He emphasised that lack of consensus on major reforms has hampered the infrastructural growth of the country. But this has happened not because of lack of our efforts, but a lack of political consensus has led to a lag in infrastructural development. The Chamber is actively working on this and is also trying to resolve the issues of tax from mega investors in the Western Maharashtra.
Events of the last few months have shown that social and political changes need to be brought about urgently . Transparency in the political arena must be committed. The socio political reform will ultimately generate support for economic reforms.
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Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President, Centre for Political Research, a leading economic think-tank in the country, addressed the gathering on ‘The relevance of economic reforms’. He said that Pune has extraordinary social and cultural heritage. MCCIA has a unique and a special broad based membership of high-tech industries, trade and agriculture. India is undergoing momentous changes across social dimensions. In urban India female education has surpassed male education. We do not have enough skilled labour and the paradox is that only 20% of female labour enters into the job market because of absence of support systems like day care centre, flexible hours of working etc.. Institutions have not opened up to the requirements of the work force. One of the reasons why economic reforms debate has lost momentum is because we are not focusing on small innovative steps. Economic reforms have to take into account various parameters of society to make it more people friendly. There have been twenty years of globalization but the response is slow. For the last 20 years of economic reforms the belief was that globalization would help India’s integration with the rest of the world. Two big beneficiaries of globalization have been India and China but the rules of international system were driven by logic.
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