KV Kamath views attaining financial accessibility at your fingertips as a significant milestone

One of the most remarkable accomplishments within the past eight to ten years has been the accessibility of finance to every Indian citizen at their fingertips.

Speaking to CNBC-TV18’s Latha Venkatesh, KV Kamath, former president of the National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development (NaBFID) stated that one of the biggest achievements is making finance available virtually at the fingertips.

He attributed this success to a series of initiatives that were set in motion earlier, including IndiaStack, Aadhaar and Jan Dhan after 2014, the push for data availability, the introduction of UPI, and the modernisation of the financial system.

Regarding India's most significant failure, Kamath pointed to the persistence of a uniform economic policy that remained in place for several decades longer than it should have.

Kamath identified a period of roughly two decades where opportunities were lost, eventually followed by a reform process that necessitated a decade of difficult adjustments. In his view, the story of India's economic journey spans around 76 to 77 years, characterised by around ten years of challenges post-1990, followed by sustained reform efforts.

Turning to the topic of the laptop import ban, Kamath offered his perspective on the matter. He endorsed a strategy aligned with the belief that "India can do it," citing recent examples such as the successful inclusion of defense items that were previously imported.

“The way I look at it is we open the doors, and it's very difficult now to selectively close doors or closed doors. So I would think that the strategy on laptops is an extension of, I would say, ‘India can do it’ and I think that has to be our mantra, India can do it," he said.

Kamath recalled advocating for the domestic production of critical defense equipment years prior, which eventually led to every major automobile and heavy truck manufacturer in the country diversifying into defense equipment production within a span of two years.

Given the success of localising electronics manufacturing, Kamath believed that the government's confidence in this achievement could be extended to include laptops.

He highlighted that, in his opinion, the complexity of today's cell phones surpasses that of laptops, and that the technology underlying laptops is now two decades old, making it feasible for India to venture into producing laptops domestically.