Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, Confederation of Indian Industry
India is just three years from the milestone of celebrating 75 years as an independent nation. Since 1947, India has achieved notable progress and overcome many challenges on her development journey.
Inclusive development means that all citizens should have equal access to opportunities. A collective vision for development and joint actions are required.
To do this, in 2008-09, CII initiated the India@75 campaign. India@75 is an inclusionary process that aims at redrawing and achieving the vision for India. Guided by Padma Bhushan C K Prahalad, India@75 undertook a pan-India initiative to articulate a shared vision for development. A wide spectrum of society including students, farmers, policymakers, housewives, slum dwellers… contributed to this effort.
It resulted in the vision document ‘India@75 – The People’s Agenda.’ This encapsulates key goals that Indian citizens across the country wish to act for themselves for 2022.
SEVEN THEMES OF the VISION DOCUMENT…
Ten broad areas were clubbed into seven themes of the National Vision Document: Education and Skills, Technology and Innovation, Agriculture and Food Security, Business and Economy, Urbanisation and Environmental Sustainability, Arts, Literature and Sport, Moral Leadership, Governance and Public Administration
The National Vision Document became CII’s guiding document as it worked towards creating an inclusively developed India by 2022.
To make this vision a reality, CII set up a robust organisational framework comprising: The India@75 Foundation to lead the work across sectors and across geographies; The India@75 Apex Council and a Committee; The India@75 Execution and Operations team.
The task of strengthening India’s inclusive development belongs to all sections of society. The industry has a special role to play in creating the new India. Collective action is the need of the hour and this can come from the right institutional processes and platforms to converge dispersed efforts. The government is playing a key role through a strong reforms process aimed at unleashing national entrepreneurship and easing the business environment.
SKILLS AGENDA
CII has been engaged proactively in working on achieving the Vision of India@75.
Under the Skills agenda, CII has set up 11 Sector Skill Councils and undertakes career counselling and placements for youth through the 5 Model Career Centres. 22 CII-Pan IIT Skill training Gurukuls have been set up. Altogether, our initiatives impact 1 million youth every year in skilling and jobs.
The City Connect initiative is an industry-led citizen-centric platform to promote participative urbanisation and develop cost-effective local solutions for local issues. Seven chapters have been set up and 33 cities are in the pipeline.
We have also scaled up our work in green buildings and have developed almost 5000 green building projects adding up to close to 7 billion square feet and making India the second largest in the world in green building footprint. Other major initiatives are underway on clean air and water productivity. In volunteerism, since 2014, 17 million people have been involved and the Pro Bono initiatives have registered 1600 corporate volunteers.
All these are creating a significant impact with unique and innovative interventions to catalyse citizen participation in development.
CII is committed to continuing on this campaign and will undertake efforts to build a better India that is more inclusive, more responsible and more sustainable.
Together, there is much that we can do to catapult India into the league of developed nations. India@75 is the next milestone and industry is addressing the challenges of national development as we head towards completing 75 years of our Independence as a nation.
