Terming the passage of the GST Bill the will of the people, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday said that the people’s pressure was what spurred the politicians to pass the Bill in Parliament.
“The common thing between the GST and Bankruptcy Bills was that they were passed unanimously,” Mr. Jaitley said while speaking at a convocation ceremony of the OP Jindal Global University. “This shows that there was very strong public opinion inflicted on the politicians that now was not the time to go slow.”
The Finance Minister pointed out how several countries and regions in the world are trying desperately to achieve growth while India is doing pretty well in this regard. “The whole world is in slowdown mode,” Mr. Jaitley said.
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“Countries are resorting to desperate measures to achieve growth, such as negative or negligible interest rates, competitive devaluation of currencies. But India is coming out of this very well.” He, however, added that the world would increasingly be turning to India to supply the manpower needed, something that can be to India’s great benefit.
“The world will need more hands and minds in the coming year,” Mr Jaitley said. “We have a surplus population in agriculture and even when we start to increase the size of our manufacturing, our main strength is services.”
The Finance Minister said India’s education sector had progressed leaps and bounds from the time when the only option was public sector educational institutions.
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“When there was regulation, the system was for the government to raise taxes and create educational institutions,” he said. “Then, when it was opened up, many private sector universities came up.”
“Often it is suggested that most of these private sector institutes are not up to the mark,” Mr. Jaitley added.
“But these will fall by the wayside. The advantage of being private is that they are not bound by government structures, and they can attract the best global teaching staff.”