Times Of India
We are truly humbled by the overwhelming response to The Times of India’s ‘ManifesTOI: Our Agenda For The Next Government’, published in yesterday’s edition. Prominent businessmen, politicians, academics, jurists, doctors, activists, sportspersons and engaged citizens have written in or spoken with us. They have described it as “a brilliant initiative”, “a superb agenda”, “pathbreaking”, “visionary yet detailed”, “definitely worth adopting by the next government”, “ideologically independent” and “a great template and guide for a modern India” — to quote just a few of the many, many compliments that have poured in. More importantly, we’ve received some wonderful, worthwhile suggestions and ideas, which we plan to incorporate into a comprehensive agenda for the next government when it takes over. Not everyone has agreed with every proposal of ours, but there is unanimity that ‘ManifesTOI’ was conceived with India’s best interests at heart and put together without any bias, prejudice or vested interest. What makes us happiest is that we have been able to get this conversation started.
Clearly, TOI has laid down a bold agenda for the new government. It’s important for the new government to prioritize and have a mechanism for measurement of outcome over the five year tenure of the new government. There are some low hanging fruits such as pick up in administrative decision making, focus on execution of decision, medium to long term strategy to ensure that there is pick up of capital investment. There are several short term agenda items such as tax reforms, implementing administrative tax reforms et al, both of which must be adopted. — Mukesh Butani, managing partner, BMR Legal