"We are a mixed economy. We will remain a mixed economy. The public and private sector will continue to play a very important role. The private sector in our country has very ample scope and I am confident that India's entrepreneurs have the capacity, and the will to rise to the occasion"
About this Quote
A reassurance disguised as a mission statement, this is Manmohan Singh doing what he did best: making structural change feel like continuity. The phrase "mixed economy" lands like a stabilizer. It tells skeptics of liberalization that the state isn’t being evicted from the premises, while quietly telling investors the locks are being changed. Repetition does the heavy lifting: "We are... We will remain..". It’s an incantation meant to calm a country trained by decades of planning to treat markets as suspect and reform as rupture.
The subtext is political triage. In early-1990s India, reform couldn’t be sold as ideology; it had to be sold as pragmatism. Singh frames the private sector not as a rival to the public sector but as a partner with "ample scope" - a bureaucratically polite way of saying: space is being cleared. Even the praise of entrepreneurs is strategic. "Capacity, and the will" isn’t mere flattery; it’s a public invitation to take responsibility for growth, jobs, and competitiveness, while allowing the state to reposition itself as enabler rather than sole provider.
What makes the rhetoric work is its measured confidence. There’s no triumphalist "free market" chest-thumping, no attack on the old order. Singh speaks in the language of governance - roles, scope, occasion - because the goal is to make reform legible to Parliament, palatable to unions, and credible to capital. It’s a bridge between two Indias: the one that feared markets, and the one that needed them.
The subtext is political triage. In early-1990s India, reform couldn’t be sold as ideology; it had to be sold as pragmatism. Singh frames the private sector not as a rival to the public sector but as a partner with "ample scope" - a bureaucratically polite way of saying: space is being cleared. Even the praise of entrepreneurs is strategic. "Capacity, and the will" isn’t mere flattery; it’s a public invitation to take responsibility for growth, jobs, and competitiveness, while allowing the state to reposition itself as enabler rather than sole provider.
What makes the rhetoric work is its measured confidence. There’s no triumphalist "free market" chest-thumping, no attack on the old order. Singh speaks in the language of governance - roles, scope, occasion - because the goal is to make reform legible to Parliament, palatable to unions, and credible to capital. It’s a bridge between two Indias: the one that feared markets, and the one that needed them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Entrepreneur |
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