We need 300 to 400 new cities: C.K. Prahalad
Thursday, 30 July 2009, 23:51 IST   |    33 Comments
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We need 300 to 400 new cities: C.K. Prahalad
New Delhi: India's proposed unique identity project would help the government reduce corruption in the implementation of welfare schemes and ensure that the benefits of such programmes reach the right people, renowned management thinker C.K. Prahalad said Thursday. "Never has it been implemented anywhere in the world. This would help minimise leakages and corruption will itself get reduced," Prahalad said while speaking at an industry conference here. The government's ambitious identity project seeks to give a unique identity number to each of the country's 1.17 billion people. The government has set up a special agency, Unique Identification Database Authority of India (UIDIA), to execute the project. Referring to the recent controversies over land acquisition for industrial purposes in India, Prahalad said there has to be "transparency" in the land acquisition process. "While we acquired land for major industrial units earlier, we made it a point to offer jobs to the owners of the land. I think what lacked in recent acquisition for SEZs (special economic zones) was lack of a clear-cut policy that could have made the process simple," he said. The management guru added that it was difficult to reverse the flow of migration from rural to urban areas. "We need 300 to 400 new cities. But despite all this 40 percent of India's population would remain in villages," he added. Prahalad is a professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan in the US and has written several well-known books on corporate strategy.
Source: IANS