New Delhi: The government will continue with the reform agenda, getting into "nuts and bolts" of trust-based governance but industry needs to ramp up investment on R&D and shed protectionism to enable India to become an attractive global production and innovation hub, NITI Aayog Member Rajiv Gauba said on Tuesday.
In a world that is undergoing structural changes due to geopolitical crisis and tariff wars which has shifted discussions from pure efficiency to resilience of supply chain, India should be "able to replicate the Apple story multiple times over" as it competes with other countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Mexico to become a global production hub, he said while speaking at the CII Annual Business Summit 2026 here.
While the government will continue with the reform agenda, the industry would need to focus on some important issues, Gauba said, listing out investment of R&D as "number one" item.
"India's gross expenditure on R&D, we all know, is low. It has remained stuck at around 0.7 per cent of GDP, well below the global average of 2.3 per cent and much less than what countries, like South Korea and Israel do.
Of this 0.7 per cent, 60 per cent is government funded," he noted.
He further said,"Indian industry, I think, must invest more in R&D and shift from importing technology to creating it. R&D investment is not a cost. It is strategic comparative."
Gauba also exhorted Indian industry to take up the challenge of global competition with the country entering into free trade pacts with other nations.
"Indian industry needs to shed its instinct for protectionism. The government of India has entered into landmark trade agreements with the UK, EU and New Zealand, many others are on the anvil. These will open vast new markets to Indian exporters, but the logic of free trade requires reciprocity," he stated.
Gauba also called on the industry to focus on skilling of manpower, saying the government alone cannot do it.
"The government has made significant investments through the Skill India Mission. I think skilling cannot be the government's responsibility alone, The rise of industry 4.0, AI and automation has made workforce skilling a matter of survival," he said.
On reforms, he said under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi the government has undertaken the next generation reforms, adding while the 1991 reforms dismantled industrial licensing but not the 'Licence Raj'.
"Since 2014, following PM's relentless push for use of doing business and ease of living, over 42,000 compliances have been eliminated and 3,700 provisions decriminalised. This exercise has to be carried to its logical conclusion," Gauba said.
He further said,"What is needed now is nuts and bolts reforms, the unglamorous, the granular, but vital change for businesses to open, to operate and to shut down when necessary".
"The next generation reforms must make a clean and decisive break from the colonial mindset of distrust of citizens and punishment, even for small violations to trust based governance," he asserted.
Participating in the session, Hero Enterprise Chairman Sunil Kant Munjal said the next reform must not be about "just taking away all that is unnecessary" but should be about "ensuring it is actually institutionalised, is permanent, it operates and is measurable".
"It is important to put reform in place but even more important to see that it is actually a working system for the consumers," he noted.
Rasna Pvt Ltd Group Chairman, Piruz Khambatta called for laws which are clear, predictable and unambiguous in order to avoid litigations and piling up of cases in the judiciary and adequate transition time needs to be given when a new law comes. PTI
