Adopting Global Best Practices

 On "Adopting Global Best Practices" — A Way Forward (11th NITI Aayog Council)

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Respected Shri Narendra Modi ji,

In your message on X after chairing the 11th NITI Aayog Governing Council

 meeting on “Inclusive Human Development for Viksit Bharat@2047,” you joined

 two ideas in a single breath — “adopting global best practices” and “strengthening

 the journey of reforms.” You named renewable energy in particular, and you set it

 all within our shared faith in cooperative federalism.

May I, a 93-year-old citizen who has been writing on exactly this theme for over a

 decade, offer a respectful “way forward” — because those two ideas of yours are,

in truth, one idea.

Two old blog notes of mine bear directly on your words:

1. “How China Makes Cheap?” ( 09  Nov  2014 )

   https://myblogepage.blogspot.com/2014/11/how-china-makes-cheap.html

2. “Level-Playing Field is a Double-Edged Sword” ( 09 Feb 2017 ) — itself building

    on my note of 12 June 2016

   https://myblogepage.blogspot.com/2017/02/level-playing-field-is-double-edged.html

In 2014, when there were loud demands to ban cheap Chinese firecrackers,

 agarbattis, machine tools, power equipment — and solar panels — I asked the

 one question no one was asking: not how do we keep these goods out, but what

 enables the Chinese to make them so cheap in the first place? 

My answer then was that the practice worth adopting is not the product but the

system behind it — their

> labour policies, 

> single-window clearances, 

> land-use laws, 

> bank interest rates, 

> tax structure and 

> manufacturing methods. 

I wrote, " Let us IMPORT those SYSTEMS " , and we will both save and create

jobs.

In 2017, when Sachin Bansal and others demanded a “level playing field” to

protect Indian firms from foreign capital, I offered a caution : 

> a level playing field is a double-edged sword ;

 — two can play at protection, 

and it does not in any case exist, since no two  countries share the same eco-

system of :

> manpower, 

> finance,

> land,

> policy ...........and

>  infrastructure. 

Demanding it is futile. 

The wiser course, I argued, is to benchmark ourselves continuously against the

world’s best on each input — and to ask : 

> how did they get there, and what reforms must WE introduce to catch up? 

That is precisely the marriage of “best practices” and “reforms” you spoke of this

week.

Read together, Sir, the two notes suggest a way forward in four steps:

1. Adopt the enablers, not merely the practice.

 

Let NITI Aayog take each global best practice we admire and trace it down to the

 handful of structural conditions that make it work elsewhere — the labour rule,

 the clearance window, the land law, the cost of capital — and treat THOSE

 reforms as the real deliverable.

2. Stop chasing a level playing field; chase the benchmark instead. 

As I wrote in 2017, the field will never be level. 

So rather than seeking protection, let us name the world’s benchmark on each

parameter :

>  Ease of doing business,

> Ccost of capital, 

> Productivity, 

> Logistics 

 and set a national reform target to close the gap ,

— while fiercely defending the one benchmark where India already leads the

 world : our demographic dividend, the 70 crore youth you rightly called our

 greatest asset.

3. Make cooperative federalism the delivery engine. 

Let the States compete to implement these reforms —

>  Manufacturing clusters,

>  Single-window clearances, 

>  Plug-and-play parks, 

>  Sector-aligned skilling 

— with a public NITI scorecard that ranks them each year.

 Competitive federalism is what turns a best practice into a habit.

4. Begin with renewable energy — the sector you named.

 Here the two notes meet: in my 2014 list, “solar panels” was already among the

 goods we wished to ban. The lesson holds twelve years later. 

If we merely tariff imported solar, we choose protection — the double edge

If instead we import the SYSTEM that makes Chinese solar cheap :

 > Scale, > Finance, > Clearances, > Integrated supply chain ,

 then “Make in India” can come to mean cells, wafers and polysilicon made here, 

 not panels merely assembled here. 

That is best practice  and reform, working as one.

 

I placed these notes on record in 2014, 2016 and 2017 not to claim foresight, but

to offer them now as one citizen’s small contribution to the resolve you articulated

this week. 

If even a single line is of use to NITI Aayog as it studies the States’

best practices and plans the way forward, my writing will have served its purpose.

With respectful regards,

Hemen Parekh 

Mumbai | 12 June 2026

www.HemenParekh.ai  |  www.IndiaAGI.ai