PM Modi’s US State visit: “India could really show world how to do it right,” says American economist Paul Rome

Nobel prize-winning American economist Paul Romer who met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York on Tuesday (local time) commended India’s model of Aadhar-based authentication saying that the country can “really show the world how to do it right.”

Prime Minister Modi and the former chief economist of the World Bank discussed India’s digital path, including the adoption of Aadhar and cutting-edge solutions such as Digilocker during their meeting. They also discussed various initiatives being undertaken by India for urban development, according to a statement by the Prime Minister’s office. The Prime Minister said their “extensive conversations” focussed on leveraging technology to improve lives and the discussions involved on how to make cities more sustainable and people- friendly.

Following his meeting with Romer, PM Modi tweeted, “Glad to have met noted economist and Nobel laureate, Professor @paulmromer. We had extensive conversations on leveraging technology to improve lives. We also talked about how to make our cities more sustainable and people-friendly.”

The American economist said, “It was a great meeting. We talked about the importance of successful urban development. He understands these issues very well. PM articulated it very well that urbanisation is not a problem. It’s an opportunity. I take this as a slogan. India can show the way to the world on the authentication front with programs like Aadhaar.”

Prime Minister Modi arrived in the United States as part of his four-day historic State visit on Tuesday and met a galaxy of leaders from various walks of life, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Senior Vice President of the World Bank, Paul Romer said that he first met with PM Modi in the year 2013 and that time, the two talked about the importance of successful urban developments and the things that the government really needs to do to help lead in urban development.

“So for me, a good day is when I learned something and I learned a bunch about what India is doing on this issue of authentication,” the American economist and policy entrepreneur said.

Romer said, “It’s really exciting because the government has to be involved as they are, but they have this foundation with the Aadhar system that means they can do things that most governments around the world can’t do.”

“I think India, just as India did this for Aadhar, I think for telephony and electronic authentication, I think India could really show the world how to do it right,” Romer added.
In 2018, Romer bagged a Nobel Prize for Economics for his contributions to the understanding of long-term economic growth and its relation to technological innovation.
His work shed light on the ways in which technological advances that help sustain economic growth are generated in human economic activities and showed that persistent growth requires government intervention in the form of investment in research and development (R & D) and carefully designed intellectual property laws.