Shahi Exports, India’s largest apparel exporter, started in 1974 with one sewing machine. Today, it employs over 100,000 workers across 50+ factories, with women making up nearly 70% of its workforce.

In this episode of Growth is Good, we explore Shahi’s remarkable rise, its impact on women’s empowerment, and what it teaches us about India’s manufacturing potential.

From family-led beginnings to becoming a global supplier for the world’s top brands, this is the story of how one company stitched together an industry success.

📘 Learn more about Shahi’s journey in our detailed case study report: https://www.fedev.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Web-Page-View_31st-March_SHAHI-EXPORTS.pdf

Entrepreneur and thinker Jerry Rao joins Growth is Good to reflect on India’s reform story — from the unlikely rise of the software and BPO industries to why simplifying taxes and fixing administration are key to sustaining growth.Chapters:0:00 – 1:51 | Promo1:52 – 7:55 | Teachers’ unions, election roles, & why admin reform must precede attitude change7:56 – 9:38 | “We lost 20 years”: License Raj, FERA, & anti-business training of the bureaucracy9:39 – 15:47 | Targets, tax harassment, appeals-as-punishment, and how it strangles small firms15:48 – 16:31 | From policy to practice: why execution trumps intent16:32 – 35:40 | (General reform context) Culture, bureaucracy, and risk aversion in India’s growth story35:41 – 57:14 | (Broader policy thread) PILs, POSCO, copper, and how process blocks projects57:14 – 57:33 | Setting up the software/BPO question57:33 – 1:02:15 | How India’s IT boom “happened by accident”: SEEPZ rules, exporting “over the wire,” the floppy-disk hack, self-certification, and early BPO1:02:15 – 1:05:07 | The 16%–16% idea: one GST rate, one income-tax rate; why complexity breeds gaming1:05:07 – 1:06:01 | Flat, simple, predictable beats exemptions and discretion1:06:02 – 1:08:38 | Start with administration: defense reforms by memo; stop revenue “targets” and serial appeals1:08:38 – 1:10:21 | Our administrative DNA: colonial incentives, exchange rate for pensions, and lingering habits1:10:22 – 1:13:38 | Teacher unions again, absenteeism, why vouchers/private schools bypass the gridlock1:13:38 – 1:15:32 | Unintended consequences: tax “terrorism” doesn’t raise revenue; it kills activity1:15:32 – 1:16:24 | Politics of ideas: why persistent articulation (Fabians-style) still matters1:16:24 – 1:20:48 | Culture, commerce, and closing reflections on India’s reform pathTune in on Spotify:Watch more episodes of Growth is Good:    • How India’s IT Boom Took Off and Why Tax R...  Subscribe to our newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/fedev.org/amitabh-...

In this episode of Growth is Good, Rahul speaks with Montek Singh Ahluwalia, former Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission and a central figure in India’s reform journey.

They discuss how reforms were debated and designed inside government, why some changes stuck while others stalled, and what it takes to build political coalitions around growth. Montek reflects on lessons from the 1991 reforms, the “MD Note” that leaked into public debate, the role of leaders like Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, and why continuity across governments mattered.

The conversation also looks ahead: how India can reach 8% growth, the challenges of climate change and technology disruption, and why states must lead the next wave of reforms.

A rare insider’s view on three decades of reform — and what India must do to deliver on the promise of Viksit Bharat.

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In this episode of Growth is Good, Arvind Panagariya returns to unpack his latest book, The Nehru Development Model—a sweeping intellectual and historical account of how India embraced socialism post-independence and why it stayed stuck there for decades.We dive deep into how Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision of industrialization, planning, and self-sufficiency created a sprawling license-permit Raj, why Indian intellectuals, bureaucrats, and businesses bought into the model, and how Narasimha Rao (not just 1991) ultimately broke the mould.What we cover:How Nehru built his unique brand of socialismThe heavy-industry obsession and its lasting costsWhy reforms failed under Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai, and Rajiv GandhiHow Narasimha Rao became India’s Deng XiaopingWhy the legacy of the “Nehru Model” still lingers in bureaucracy, business, and the academyThis is a must-watch for anyone curious about India’s economic journey—why it stalled for decades, how it finally turned a corner, and what it takes to keep reform momentum alive.

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📘 Grab The Nehru Development Model by Arvind Panagariya for the full story.

What drives India’s biggest reforms? How did campaigns like Incredible India and Startup India come to life? And what really goes on inside the engine room of government?When we talk about economic reform in India, we often think of big slogans or bureaucratic hurdles. But few people have actually been inside the engine room of reform quite like Amitabh Kant. From his early days as a district collector to spearheading campaigns like God’s Own Country and Incredible India, and later shaping national programs like Startup India, Ease of Doing Business, and the G20 presidency—he has been a central figure in India’s transition from a control-driven state to an enabling one.In this wide-ranging conversation, he reflects on what it really took to brand India on the global stage, how punishment postings turned into platforms for innovation, and why enterprise—not just policy—is central to national progress. He shares candid views on privatization, public sector reform, and how India’s bureaucracy can evolve to match the ambition of its people. As he closes out a storied public career, this episode is both a retrospective and a forward-looking blueprint from someone who’s helped shape the India we see today.If you're interested in economic development, public policy, branding India globally, or just want to understand how India is positioning itself on the world stage, this conversation is for you.🔔 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit the bell icon to stay updated with future episodes of Growth is Good.#AmitabhKant #G20India #IncredibleIndia #StartupIndia #EaseOfDoingBusiness #IndianEconomy #NITIAayog #GrowthIsGoodPodcast

When we talk about infrastructure in India, it’s usually in the context of potholes, delayed metro lines, or power outages. But our guest this week, Vinayak Chatterjee, brings a far deeper and more nuanced lens to the discussion. Vinayak walks us through the sector’s remarkable journey—from the crumbling systems of the 1990s to a present where power shortages are rare, road connectivity has transformed, and ports and airports have matured into global gateways. In this wide-ranging conversation, Vinayak shares sharp insights on what infrastructure development has gotten right, where the private sector came in (and fell out), and how public-private partnerships rose and declined. He discusses why infrastructure must now be seen not as a bottleneck but as a backbone—and why the next era will demand a new imagination that centres people, not just projects. It’s a candid account from someone who has observed the policy shifts and project rollouts up close for nearly three decades.

Our popular discourse is obsessed with what should or should not be taught in schools. This mostly relates to history-medieval, and even ancient Indian history. Our guest for this episode has her own lament in this regard, though the history she's talking about is a lot more modern, hence relevant to our present challenges and opportunities. Shruti Rajagopalan, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, thinks modern India's economic history needs to have a chapter of its own, in schools and universities, so the next generation gets a real sense of what life was like under socialism, and how an extreme shortage economy held us back for over 40 years after independence, until liberalisation in the '90s allowed India to dream beyond a Bajaj scooter. 

Shruti shares several insightful anecdotes, all underlining that liberalisation hasn't been taught or understood as much as it needs to. It's perhaps the hush-hush nature of the exercise which meant that we never fully followed through on market reforms that could have rescued Indian manufacturing from the stagnation it's witnessing today. In this hour-long conversation with FED Director Rahul Ahluwalia, Shruti shares her prescription on what's needed to repeat that pivotal moment in our history. "It's a bit like how Ernest Hemingway described going bankrupt. Gradually, then suddenly." It will be largely down to well-meaning folks in policy, academia and civil society, who must keep the iron hot, which means we must continuously advocate for economic reforms, so that when the political window opens, the deregulation sentiment can be written into law.  

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We’ve talked a lot in this podcast about what plagues India’s businesses. ‘Regulatory cholesterol’ is a term that comes up repeatedly. Our guest for this episode is a corporate lawyer who has helped his clients navigate the minefield that is entrepreneurship. Akshay Jaitly, Founding Partner at Trilegal, started out thinking about growth from the Nehruvian lens of redistribution, which was the founding paradigm for our regulatory regime that treats any entrepreneur as a soon-to-be crook. However, his years of experience as a practicing corporate lawyer exposed him to the day-to-day difficulties faced by his clients in trying to navigate through the ‘regulatory cholesterol’. If private investment is going to be the engine of growth, then we can’t have a regulatory regime that is biased towards businesses that succeed or fail based on their ability to manipulate their way through our regulatory systems. We must foster a climate of entrepreneurship that encourages value adding businesses to scale up.

To that end, Akshay shares a whole range of ideas, from the philosophical root causes of our malaise, to decriminalisation, replacing the empty threat of imprisonment with more actionable penalties, to using data for reform. At the core of it all is the fundamental belief that people must be trusted, hence their transactions, with the state and each other, must be smoothened. He also covers the incredible strains on India’s energy sector, and ways to rescue us from the precipice we find ourselves teetering over.

Every episode of Growth Is Good has delved into why we must reform India’s economic policies to unlock our manufacturing potential. Labour remains a critical aspect where reforms are needed, often attempted, but found difficult to implement. The politicised nature of the question has given birth to narratives that contrast worker wellbeing with industrial growth, as if both cannot coexist. India’s socialist imagination, which looks at big businesses with suspicion, doesn’t help the cause either. Given this state of affairs, it was refreshing to speak with Virjesh Upadhyay, a lifelong trade unionist who’s served as the General Secretary of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, one of India’s largest trade unions. We were in agreement on many questions. Most of all, it was refreshing to hear that the labour movement wholeheartedly supports industrial growth. 

The question that remains then is how do we strike common ground on issues that still divide us and which have in the past driven a wedge so deep as to put important policy reforms in cold storage for decades. Here, Virjesh shared several anecdotes that underlined the importance of building relationships and cultivating an environment of trust amongst all stakeholders. The core belief that should drive all of our efforts? Our paths may differ, but we’re all striving for the same goal: Greater prosperity for all Indians.

Episode Chapters

(00:00) Episode Highlights

(02:36) Virjesh Upadhay on witnessing economic growth

(11:55) Making society a stakeholder in growth: lessons from '91

(16:02) Farm laws and where we went wrong

(21:13) Narrative building for implementing reforms

(28:28) Are India's tough labour laws holding back industrial growth?

(36:32) Building relationships for effecting policy reforms

(37:52) How dialogue helped breach Industry-Trade Union stalemate at Maruti

(46:14) Should government mandate minimum wages, overtime pay?

(48:40) The 90-hour workweek and pay disparity in industry

(49:38) Ethical business practices

(57:23) Virjesh Upadhyay's perspective on labour movement in India

Our guest for this episode is an employer who went beyond merely railing about the excessive compliances that Indian businesses must put up with. Manish Sabharwal, Vice-Chairman at TeamLease RegTech, remembers the number by heart – 26,134 – the number of different reasons an Indian employer can be put in jail. So do so many people from the industry, academia, and the government. ‘Jailed for Doing Business’, a 2022 report by TeamLease and the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), was the kind of seminal document that brought home the exact scale of India’s regulatory cholesterol, which inhibits innovation and entrepreneurship at every stage of a business’s life cycle.

In this hour-long conversation with FED Director Rahul Ahluwalia, Sabharwal admits that his earlier attempts at influencing policy outcomes for the Indian industry were overly philosophical. “But reform only happens when you make your ask specific, finite and actionable,” he says in this episode. Sabharwal has many actionable asks. They all circle back to shedding our regulatory weight, cutting down on bureaucratic excesses, and turning India into a lean and mean administrative machine that empowers businesses instead of limiting them.

“The job of the government is not to set things on fire. It is to create the conditions for spontaneous combustion.”

Episode chapters -

(00:00) - Terrorism & jobs: growing up in Kashmir

(12:20) - India's persistent 'regulatory cholesterol'

(23:15) - Is it becoming more difficult to advocate for economic growth?

(30:40) - India's inefficient welfare state

(43:30) - Politics vs economics

(51:10) - GDP growth for geopolitics and defence

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