Dr. JP Seeks NRI Help In Transforming India

India has the potential to become the second largest economy of the world accounting for 15 to 18 percent of the world’s GDP in the next 20 years, said Lok Satta Party President Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan.

Addressing meetings organized by People for Lok Satta in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, Dr. JP recalled that India contributed 25 percent of the world’s GDP up to the beginning of the 18th century. As it missed the industrial revolution, India’s contribution plummeted to just one percent of the world’s GDP by 1991. Thanks to certain measures taken out of compulsion, and not conviction, it rose to two percent in 2010 when India is said to be ‘shining and rising.’

“India has today the potential for phenomenal growth because it has the technology and resources. It is, however, possible ibkt if we change our practices, institutions, and mechanisms in which we are deficient.”

Dr. JP sought the cooperation of NRIs in building institutions in India. “India needs your talent, leadership, commitment, and participation. You can take an Indian out of India but you can not take India out of an Indian.”

Loksatta Tamil Nadu President, Vijay Anand said that the most dangerous problem facing the nation today is the silence of the middle class with respect to its participation in the democratic process.

Dr. JP also addressed the student community at Stanford University where he was the keynote speaker for the Brainstorming India 2010 conference. Dr. JP and Vijay Anand took part in an intellectual discussion at Google headquarters in Mountain View.