Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Saturday that the 'Start up India' initiative, which aims to encourage entrepreneurship, will break away from the conventional license raj system.
Jaitley emphasised that the role of the government should be that of a facilitator, not of a regulator. He spoke to 1,500 entrepreneurs at the launch of the 'start up India' event at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi, NDTV Profit reported.
"We ostensibly broke away with license Raj in 1991. But the break was only partial, because who would be funded, there was an invisible role of the state, control over land permissions, foreign investment proposals and environment clearances. Unless the political nods came to venture into newer areas which involved a lot of capital, an entrepreneur was reluctant," Jaitley said during the event.
Last year during Independence Day celebrations, the prime minister had announced his "dream scheme" to convert India from a job seeker nation to a job creator nation. The move has attracted a big number of venture capitalists, start-up entrepreneurs and investors — seeking the plan which the government had for them, DNA reported.
At a time when the country's economy is passing through various challenges, the start-ups will encourage growth in India, Jaitley added. According to the finance minister, ever since the BJP government was voted to power in May 2014, the government has made an effort to restrict the role of state in the policy domain.
"When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was voted to power in 2014, if I look at changes, some of them are extremely significant. I find the traffic of industry visiting North Block has almost ended. There are no files to be pushed," Jaitley said.
According to reports, the finance minister has promised a friendly tax regime in the union budget to be unveiled next month.
