INDIA IN ASIA - DEEPER ENGAGEMENT Compendium

government, academic, private sector or Modern India’s orientation to the East Simultaneously, it will also have a larger think-tank experience across the Asian began to change in the 1990s with strategic and geopolitical role within region spanning South, Southeast, and the initiation of the official “Look East” Asia and in the rest of the world. [...] to do, one of the first things the Finance the third-largest economy in the world, Minister will have to do, is to formulate and, towards the end of 2024–29, India Going back to an earlier question that I and present a budget. [...] This was estimat- “What is going to be the agenda for the what I just said: that what happens in the ed by the National Council of Applied new government?”, automatically and aggregate to India is a function of what Economic Research (NCAER) on the implicitly, you are assuming that there happens to the individual states. [...] And if basis of a model for the Ninth Finance was something wrong with the policies I look at the last 10 years, amongst the Commission, and this was based on the pursued by the Narendra Modi govern- major states, not the minor ones, if I assumption that the GST was a perfect ment in the first and second terms, and, look at the last 10 years, only two states GST. [...] And to understand what has One reason why the call centres moved for agricultural reforms, reforming the been happening in India, one needs to to Gurgaon—the main reason why the kind of input subsidies we give, reform- appreciate that most of the urbanisation call centres moved to Gurgaon—was ing controls in marketing, distribution, that has occurred … we don’t have the the rigidity of the Delhi S.