NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant's statement on the difficulty faced in carrying out tough reforms in India as the country is “too much of a democracy” on Tuesday, has grabbed headlines for the wrong reasons.
During a virtual event organized by Swarajaya magazine, Kant was answering questions. When asked about the Centre’s policies, Kant replied, “Tough reforms are very difficult in the Indian context...we are too much of a democracy. For the first time, the government has had the courage and determination to carry out very hard-headed reforms across sectors...Mining, coal, labour, agriculture. These are very, very difficult reforms. The easier reforms were done away with. You needed a huge amount of political determination and administrative will to carry out these reforms which have been done.”
Kant immediately took to Twitter to say that is was “definitely not” what he had said.
When asked about the comment, Kant said that it was taken out of context. “It is mischievous and totally out of context. I was speaking about production linked incentive and manufacturing. Not about political systems. I said that we spread our resources too thin and we should create global champions,” Kant told The NationWide.
