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Sitharaman Says Tech Can Push India Beyond 10% Growth (Img: IANS)
Chennai: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that India can achieve economic growth of more than 10 per cent by harnessing technology and innovation across sectors.
While speaking at a fireside chat organised by the IIT Madras Alumni Association, Sitharaman said achieving such a growth rate would require significantly greater efforts from all stakeholders as India works towards the goal of becoming a Viksit Bharat by 2047.
“We have too many naysayers. We have too many people who have vicarious pleasure being derived if India fails. We really cannot afford that. We need to nudge these people to think positively," said finance minister.
Finance Minister highlighted the growth of India's startup ecosystem and said technological interventions had made a significant difference in connecting agricultural producers with markets while also improving productivity.
She pointed to the use of drones and aerial geospatial instruments for precision mapping of land parcels and said such technologies had empowered the farming community.
FM Sitharaman also cited the use of point-of-sale (POS) machines in fertiliser distribution as another example of technology-driven intervention.
Under a pilot programme, the POS system recorded details of farmers, their land and the crops being cultivated. It also provided information on the quantity of fertiliser that could be sufficient based on soil, irrigation and crop conditions.
Sitharaman said such interventions demonstrated how technology could improve access to information and help make agricultural processes more efficient.
At the event, Sitharaman also unveiled Cashless Nation: How UPI Changed Everything, authored by Dr Santanu Paul and B Sambamurthy, at ‘Sangam 2026’, the annual conference of the IIT Madras Alumni Association and IIT Madras.
The book traces the story of India's digital payments transformation, including the conception, development and rapid expansion of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
Sitharaman had said last month that UPI was operational across 11 countries, including France, Singapore, the UAE, Greece and Mauritius.
"From powering seamless payments in India to enabling digital transactions across borders, UPI continues to take our digital public infrastructure to the world," FM Sitharaman said.
The Finance Minister further said UPI-enabled payment points had increased around 260 times since 2018, expanding the reach of digital payments across the country and providing greater access and convenience.
She also highlighted India's growing role in global real-time digital payments, saying one out of every two such transactions worldwide takes place in India.
Sitharaman's remarks come as the government continues to emphasise technology, innovation and digital public infrastructure as key drivers of India's economic transformation and its long-term development goals.
