“Proud of our Democracy”- Ravi Shankar Prasad after NITI Aayog CEO’s comment creates row

New Delhi,9/12: Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Tuesday said that “tough reforms” are difficult in India because “we are too much of a democracy”, but added that for the first time the government had shown the will to bring hard-headed reforms across sectors. One part of his quote — “too much of a democracy” has attracted sharp reactions from people on social media.

“We are proud of our democracy,” Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, closing the subject.

On an online event ‘The Road to Atmanirbhar Bharat’, organized by Swarajya magazine yesterday Amitabh Kant, CEO NITI Aayog had commented, “So tough reforms are very difficult in the Indian context, we are too much of a democracy. For the first time, the government has had the courage and the determination to carry out very hard-headed reforms across sectors – mining, coal, labour, agriculture. These are very, very difficult reforms. The easier reforms were done away with. You needed a huge amount of political determination and administrative will to carry out these reforms which are being done”.

“Many more reforms still need to be done. This government has at least demonstrated its political will to do hard-headed reforms and we need to see them through to become a major manufacturing nation. It’s not easy to compete with China. It’s not easy to become a manufacturing nation, it does not happen out of holding seminars and webinars. It requires a very hard-headed ground-level approach which has been attempted for the first time in India,” he added.