‘We are growing at over 7% and you cannot accelerate growth with many Indians in the BPL category,’ Kant

The Dollar Business Bureau

India needs to accelerate its economic growth, and in order to materialise it, the country must lift vast number of people out of poverty, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Wednesday.

"We are growing at over 7 per cent. We need to accelerate growth...The real challenge is that you cannot accelerate growth rate if vast number of people are living below poverty line," he said when speaking at the Tata Trusts, Tech 4 Transformation conference.

Laying importance on the power of innovation and harnessing the power of technology, he said, ‘India has become integral part of the global supply chain and to maintain the rapid acceleration of growth, we must focus on social sectors like education and healthcare.’

He appended that the government should implement a very concentrated approach to lift people above the poverty line and implementation of technology in the rural sector will bring about the much needed change in India.       

The CEO also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is more focused on outcome-based monitoring of government schemes.

Underlining the importance of technology, Kant said the government’s thrust is on Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) but it is not achievable without technology.

The quality of education in the country has also fallen, he said pointing out that 42 per cent of class five students are incapable of doing addition and subtraction.

"The quality of education has radically fallen...it is not possible to improve teachers’ attendance in government schools physically, it is only possible to do it with technology," Kant said.

(Source: PTI)