Chennai: Welcoming the US-Iran peace deal, chief economic advisor V Anantha Nageswaran on Monday said India must continue to grow faster in such an environment.In his virtual address at the inaugural edition of the CPCL-SOOPER Leadership Lecture Series here, he said the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint, can simultaneously raise energy costs, fertilizer prices and disrupt free trade.“The peace deal that has been announced in terms of its framework is therefore very welcome for an oil-importing, natural gas-importing and fertilizer-importing country like India. And I hope it lasts. This is the environment in which India must keep growing fast and keep reforming faster,” he said while delivering his speech on the topic, ‘Public Sector leadership in shaping India’s journey to a developed nation’.Pointing out that public sector leadership must build strategic reserves across the critical commodity spectrum and not just crude oil, he said, “It must accelerate nuclear energy with greater seriousness. Nuclear power is immune to chokepoints and fuel-price swings, and it provides the baseload that a nation of fabs and data centres will need.”Nageswaran emphasised that India, standing in a multipolar world, will not rest on diplomacy alone. “It will rest on industrial capacity, on the ability to make things, to supply things, and to hold positions in global value chains that others cannot easily replace. Strategic leverage is underwritten by what you can build. A country that depends on others for energy, critical minerals and frontier technology will have little room to negotiate. A country that builds depth in these areas negotiates from a position of strength. That is the deeper meaning of self-reliance. The public sector is one of the principal instruments through which such depth is created,” he added.
