Sure, but increased aspirations are also driving growth. Politicians used to tell me: “We sell dreams to people that we knew we’d never be able to fulfill.” Today, the mind-set of these politicians has changed. They genuinely believe we have an opportunity to substantially alleviate poverty by 2030.
We are using new technologies in meaningful ways. To build our new refinery in 60 percent of the time it took to build our first, we are training 20,000 people in a new generation of welding technology in six months. This is where demographics comes in. We have 650 million people who are below their early 30s, while the U.S. and Europe face a shortage of skilled workers. A billion people used to mean lots of problems. Today I see a billion people as a billion potential consumers, an opportunity to generate value for them and to make a return for myself.
We will work with farmers to get them to increase their productivity and produce the right products of the right quality. This also requires a major investment in technology because there are minimum import standards [overseas]. We are also creating something that is totally missing in India: an efficient distribution system, linked to supermarkets across the world. This will generate up to 1 million new jobs and make us the largest private-sector employer in India.
In my father’s language: “To create something out of nothing.” That possibility exists in India even in old-world sectors like agriculture.
Absolutely. Reliance is involving itself in agriculture in a big way. This will help to create a second green revolution at a time when energy and agro are converging. Oil is now at $70 a barrel, [but it’s] a finite asset. We need a fallback position. We are looking for more gas and oil but we are also trying to grow our own energy. We think this has the potential to change the world.
Fundamentally we had different approaches. My view is to give everyone the space to grow in his own way. When you see restructuring or separations in a family [firm], value has almost always been destroyed. This is the first case where value has been enhanced. In that way it has been a win-win ending.
