Economic Development
Economy, a component around which the contemporary world organizes and engages, has many interpretations. George Bernard Shaw defined it as “the art of making most of life” (VIU 2021). The economy is the key to any development taking place in a country.
India, one of the fastest-growing major economies, has a market value of $694.93 Billion in the first quarter of 2021-2022 (IBEF 2021). To reach the vision of a $1 Trillion economy, Innovation will act as the driving force and essential for the empowerment of the citizenry. Three major innovations which reformed the Indian economy were Demonetisation, Digital Payment in the form of UPI, and Tax collection with the introduction of Goods and Service Tax (GST). In November 2016, Govt. of India announced the demonetization of INR 500 and INR 1000 notes in the view of exposing the black market (Unnikrishnan 2020) (Chakravorti 2017). In the next four years, a total of 18. 87 lakh pieces of fake notes have been seized across the country, according to the RBI (Unnikrishnan 2020). But this act of demonetization has led to the Digital Revolution, encouraging cashless transactions syncing to the Digital India initiative. The overall digital transactions (including all modes like UPI, NEFT, IMPS, etc.) have seen a rise from INR 1,459.02 crore (FY18) to INR 3,434.55 crore (FY20) (Soni 2020). UPI payment volume stood highest in FY20 at INR1251.86 crore up from INR91.52 crore (Soni 2020). Then, a simplified and uniform tax rates reform called Goods and Service Tax was formulated. GST is the biggest and substantial indirect tax reform since 1947 (Khurana and Sharma 2016). These tax reforms have seen a huge success in Increasing the tax base (38 lakh, July 1, 2017, to 1.23 crore taxpayers on March 2020), Revenue Collection (an increase from INR 7.4 lakh crore in FY 18 to 11.7 lakh crore in FY 19), Introduction of E-Way Bill system and Rate Rationalisation across India (Deloitte 2021).
Business and industry are pivotal factors towards the growth of a nation. Several Policy level interventions are drafted by the Govt. of India which leads innovative economic development of the country. Among them the Start-up India Programme launched on 16th January 2016 has contributed significantly to the global economy with more than 30 unicorns and 41,000+ start-ups recognized by DPIIT (Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade 2021), which are spread across 590 districts of India. 45% of these start-ups are from Tier-2/3 cities. The recognized start-ups have contributed significantly to job creation, with more than 5 lakh jobs reported by 48,093 start-ups with an average of 11 employees per start-up. About 1.7 lakh jobs were created by recognized start-ups in the period of 2020-21 alone. 30 States and Union Territories are having a start-up policy after the launch of the Start-up India Action Plan. More than 37 regulatory reforms have been made by States and UTs for facilitating ease of starting up.
The foundation laid by these innovative reforms and policy will aid in achieving the $1 Trillion economy vision.