India’s Best CEOs 2025 awards: Private sector will realise the vision of Viksit Bharat, government will augment it, says Piyush Goyal

The private sector will not augment the government’s vision to create a Viksit Bharat. Instead, the private sector will create Viksit Bharat, and the government will augment it, Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce Industry, said at the India’s Best CEOs awards on Monday.

“You (the private sector) will not complement it. You will create a Viksit Bharat, and the government will complement it,” Goyal said in a fireside conversation with Shashwat Goenka, vice chairman, RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group. He quoted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has said that the vision of Viksit Bharat—of a developed and prosperous India—will be the collective effort of 1.4 billion Indians.

“Government can only play the role of facilitator, and the government needs to stay out of your business. It needs to stay out of your hair,” said Goyal. He gave the anecdote of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who, as Prime Minister in 1998-99, took the prescient decision of leaving the IT sector in India to its own devices. “He did not bring too many regulations, too many obstacles in their world. The IT industry has flourished in the last 25 years. It has not looked back,” said Goyal.

The Union Minister also added that the current government wishes to replicate that. “Please ask us for what can be done to complement your efforts, to help you work better, whether it is decriminalising laws, or removing obsolete laws, helping compliance become easier, reducing the burden. Whatever we can. Our intent is speed, to ease the doing of business,” exhorted Goyal.

Goyal said that India has the talent and ability to provide high-quality goods and services, but he lambasted the ‘chalta hai’ mindset in India, which needs to change in order to reach that level of quality. “I think the ‘jugaad’ mindset is reducing gradually. But that ‘chalta hai’ approach, if that can be changed, if we all start looking at high quality,” he said.

The Union Minister gave the example of the building and construction industry to illustrate the lackadaisical approach towards perfection. “If you tell a mason that this construction is 2 millimetres off, he will laconically reply, ‘It is just a matter of 2 millimetres, sir.’ What he doesn’t realise is that this 2 millimetre oversight will cause a lot of trouble during interiors and other later stages. The multiplier effect is huge. We need to change the mindset towards perfection. Our youth can be inculcated with the spirit of precision and quality being paramount, and being meticulous,” he explained.