No country other than India has better prospects for future: RC Bhargava

There is no other country in the world better placed than India in terms of future growth, Maruti Suzuki India Chairman RC Bhargava said on Monday. Speaking at an event here, the veteran industry leader noted that the country needs to get rid of the old baggage of various defunct laws, regulations and practices to move ahead.

"I can't see any country in the world today which has better prospects for the future than India has," Bhargava said here when asked about the future of the country. He noted that the western countries have reached a certain level where growth is now a dicey matter. "Whether they grow or they're getting into recession and things. People have lost that ethos of working. People want a much more luxurious kind of life. They want good things to come without working," Bhargava said.

On the other hand, in India people are aspiring to greatly improve not only their own future, but the future of their families and children, he stated. "And that hunger is going to drive India forward, which very few countries can match," Bhargava said.

The country needs to get rid of a lot of baggage which has accumulated over the past 60 years, he said when asked if the Indian economy could touch the USD 30 trillion mark by 2047. "And that is taking time. And that baggage is in terms of not only the entire system of laws and regulations but also the way we have trained our bureaucracy to function," Bhargava said.

The country has all the ingredients for a rapid economic growth but unfortunately, it did not happen for a long time, he stated. "But why the world has become very bullish now is because over the last 10 years, the whole system has changed. And now people find that there are really no fetters for them to grow to their full potential," he added.

Speaking about Maruti Suzuki, Bhargava stated that the automaker has always followed a very frugal management style. "We have been able to finance our growth from the original 1 lakh cars to 22 lakh cars, which is about 21 times our original capacity, all from resources generated internally," he stated.

The company has utilised internal resources so far to fund its capital requirements for growing the business, Bhargava said. "We will double this (production capacity) to 4 million again without raising money from anybody. We don't go to banks, we don't go to the stock market. We don't go anywhere for money. And with all that we've done till now, we have ₹50,000 crore of cash reserves," he noted. "So it's not that companies cannot have money, it's the style of management which makes the difference."