Adrian Mowat, EMs equity strategist, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar of Tata Sons and Shourya Doval of India Foundation shared their views and outlook on Indian economy’s priorities and challenges.

“We don’t know where this new order is going to sit because we have disrupted the old order. I don’t think any particular party or politician has done it. I think it is systematically happening because of the reasons that you mentioned, greater accountability, greater transparency, and judicial activism. We are now in a situation where exactly what is happening is that the state is becoming increasingly defensive and therefore it is becoming more intrusive and therefore, nobody wants to take a decision, so yes, this is a big challenge for business and the answer to this also does not lie in the hands of the business. To some extent, it lies in the hands of the electorate, in the hands of the people,” said Doval.

“I would say those who want to make decisions will make decisions. Those who want to rationalise indecisions will use it to rationalise indecisions. Your question suggests a very paralysed policy, I am not quite sure I agree with that. On one hand, I accept or note a lot of what you said, I think there is the other side of it as well, which was that there is more data out there, because of that there are processes out there which make it – a lot of things which would have stayed under cover don’t stay under cover. I think Shourya Doval has got one point which is society is changing, techniques are changing, technology is changing, priorities are changing. So some of what you say will happen,” Jaishankar added.

“The slowdown in China is about domestic policy, it is not about trade. The trade numbers out of China are still quite strong. So the contribution is coming through there positively. If you wanted to link them then I think you would stretch it by saying that the Chinese might want a little bit more cushion on their economy so it would be more inclined to ease. I have been struck by the Trump administration how they take us to the brink. When you start to think about Trump dealing with the new president of Mexico – he has not even sworn in – but they come to a deal with Mexico very quickly because one of the great advantage of Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and they have spent so much time on TPP that no other deal needs to be signed and when they have the willingness to sign it, it goes ahead. So we have a geopolitical dispute going on with a trade part to it, I think you could continue to have protected technologies not being sold to US but you could still have greater clarity about what the tariffs are going to be,” Mowat further mentioned.