United Nations: On its way to achieving Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of becoming a developed society by 2047, India must maintain its independence of action, according to Suman Bery, the Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog, India’s premier policy advisory body.

“What is more important is that India must retain its independence of action, which is sometimes called strategic autonomy,” he said during an exclusive interview with IANS at the UN headquarters where he attended the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. India has been resisting pressures to take sides in the internationally polarized scenario.

Maintaining financial stability is another key element for India to achieve the 2047 goal, Bery said. The year 2047 will mark the century of India’s Independence from colonial rule when it began charting its course, and PM Modi has set that as the milestone marking its emergence as a developed society, he said.

The next two decades would be crucial for determining India’s trajectory towards that goal, Bery said. “The next 20 years – India’s Amrit Kaal [pivotal era for greatness] – is the period of India’s so-called demographic dividend, and, therefore, any strategy, if you want to call it that, has to be about getting the most out of India’s human resources, women, youth, in particular,” he said.

A country has a demographic dividend when its labour force is enriched by a confluence of factors that contribute to working-age people, 16 to 64 years, dominating the population, a stage India is now in, Bery said. As for an overarching plan for the entire nation, he said, “India is too large and diverse for there to be a national economic strategy” or an “industrial policy”.

“How you get there has to be decided by individual states,” he said. PM Modi has observed that “it’s only when states grow that India grows”, Bery said, explaining the shift in approach. “The Prime Minister has said that the strategies must be local. All of his emphases, including the abolition of the planning commission, is that this should not be top-down,” he said.

“His counsel to me when I took on the job was that my role was as much with the states as with the central government,” he said. NITI Aayog “no longer exercises financial powers, but we work just as much with states as we used to,” he added. Asked about widely differing levels of development of states, Bery said that “it’s important to note each of Indian states is like a ‘mini-country’ in many ways. There are legacy problems that will take time to resolve”.

Bery said that he saw positive signs with the poorer states quickening the pace of development. “I was quite encouraged that when we put our multidimensional poverty index, [and] measured by that index, it was some of the poorer states that did better than a few richer states,” he said. While there was “no magic bullet” to end the disparities, he said that the Finance Commission is the most important tool the government has to deal with.

“The 16th Finance Commission has just been appointed and in their financial award, they [will] take account of the distance of states from the national level. And that to me, I think is the most powerful tool,” Bery said.