Jim Yong Kim, who took over as the president of the World Bank in July last year, is on his maiden visit to India. He speaks to NDTV's Vikram Chandra on his first impressions of the country, the development challenges that India is facing and how poverty levels can be brought down.
Here are the highlights of what Mr. Kim said:
Here are the highlights of what Mr. Kim said:
- Significant that I went to Uttar Pradesh in my first trip to India
- Our mission is to end poverty and aim for inclusive economic growth
- Unless we are successful in UP, we will never be able to meet our goals
- I left UP knowing that there is so much great stuff happening in Uttar Pradesh
- A sense of optimism and possibility in UP
- India must take advantage of its youth population
- Never doubt the possibilities for India
- We can't end poverty without India; so India simply has to grow
- We learnt from the Arab Spring - you can have GDP growth but if it is not inclusive, you are building inequities into the society
- The good news is the government of India understands this as well as any other government
- India should lay the foundation of a functioning healthcare system
- Healthcare should be linked with education
- The task now for India and other developing countries is to build a system that can deliver across priorities.
- India needs an integrated health system
- World Bank working on conditional cash transfer programmes in developing countries
- Conditional cash transfers have been extremely successful because it puts money directly in households but makes it conditional
- We are happy to see Indian government is interested in these kind of programmes and I think it can work
- Data from Brazil and Mexico are really overwhelming
- What they found was that not only did it have direct impact like keeping kids in school, it also spurred economic growth
- We have to find a way to make it work in India
- We at World Bank have zero tolerance to corruption; all our projects are audited
- I am not at the World Bank to give preference to one group over the other. We are here to fight poverty.
- India has to be successful for the World Bank to be successful
- It's very important for Indian youth to do what inspires them and help people out of poverty
- You can't be a doctor if you don't like biology.
- Instead, build a company like Infosys, hire people, and lift them out of poverty
