"Institutions must be autonomous but cannot be isolationist": FM Arun Jaitley at Republic Summit 2018

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley gave a keynote address at the inaugural Republic Summit on Wednesday wherein he spoke on the topic 'Silver bullet for the economy'. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was later in a conversation with the chairman of Goenka Group Sanjiv Goenka and Republic's Editor-In-Chief Arnab Goswami and spoke about a number of issues. 

When Sanjiv Goenka asked Mr Jaitley on the autonomy of institutions, he said:

"At the end of the day, by large, government and politicians are more accountable, because everyday they are questioned by the media, their parties, the electorate... Institutions need to be autonomous but not isolated, if you are dealing with the regulators in the country, for instance, the Telecom regulator or any other regulator, he has to be independent to be appointed the regulator. But he has to consult with the stakeholders, only then that you get the feel of the market. The recent debate between me and the central bank was because it is my responsibility to tell them that we have a liquidity problem.

Now institutions like RBI must be autonomous but cannot be isolationist. If they are isolationist there is a fair chance they will go wrong."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, earlier in the day, had broached a number of key topics while delivering his keynote address at the Republic Summit on Tuesday, all of them combining to neatly depict exactly why India was surging. 

READ: Ten things that PM Modi said at the Republic Summit that demonstrate a surging India

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi also laid India's vision for 21st century during his speech. 

He said that the vision for 21st century India rests on three pillars - transparency, self-confidence and delivery. The Prime Minister mentioned the steps taken by his government to achieve the pinnacle transparent and people-friendly governance. He stressed on the transparent GST architecture simplifying the tax regime and giving impetus to capacity building by getting stalled projects worth 12 lakh crore on track through the PRAGATI framework, a transparent mechanism to monitor and ensure time-bound performance in the traditionally laggard infra sector.

READ: Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid down pillars of Surging India in his Republic Summit keynote