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Key Takeaways

1. The seven appeals are not one-year measures — they are long-term national goals.
2. Moral suasion alone will not work.
3. India's fertiliser policy is a decades-old distortion that demands immediate reform.
4. Energy security is a strategic imperative, not a long-term aspiration.
5. Last-mile connectivity is the decisive barrier to public transport adoption.
6. India is sitting on a gold reserve it is not using.
7. The free food grain programme has outlived its original purpose.
8. Consumer willingness exists — but it needs information and trust.
9. India's manufacturing and FDI trajectory needs urgent course-correction.
10. A dedicated governance mechanism is essential.

I. Introduction

India finds itself at a critical economic crossroads. Against the backdrop of an escalating geopolitical conflict in the Middle East — involving Iran, Israel, and the United States — global crude oil prices have surged, placing acute pressure on the country's balance of payments, the rupee, and the fiscal position of oil marketing companies. In response, the Prime Minister has issued an unusual but significant seven-point appeal to citizens, urging voluntary behavioural changes to help cushion the economy from the shock. The appeal, framed as a nudge rather than a legal mandate, covers the following areas:

• Prioritise work from home wherever possible and reduce petrol and diesel consumption.
• Prefer metro and public transport over private vehicles.
• Avoid non-essential foreign travel for one year.
• Avoid purchasing gold for one year.
• Cut down on cooking oil usage.
• Reduce reliance on chemical fertilisers and move towards natural farming.
• Use domestic (swadeshi) products over imports.

The appeal carries profound economic implications — touching upon employment, energy security, the current account deficit, agricultural reform, and the long-term trajectory of Viksit Bharat 2047, India's vision of becoming a fully developed nation by its centenary of independence. It arrives at a moment when India, while still the fastest-growing major economy in nominal terms, faces structural vulnerabilities that persistent external shocks continue to expose.

EGROW Foundation — a research body commissioned by NITI Aayog in May 2021 to undertake a study on India Vision 2046–47 — convened a special webinar to evaluate the Prime Minister's appeal, situate it within the country's macroeconomic reality, and generate actionable policy recommendations. The panel comprised economists, banking professionals, consumer researchers, a former parliamentarian, and domain specialists. The session was chaired by Professor Ashima Goyal, an eminent monetary economist and former member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Reserve Bank of India.

This article presents a structured account of the proceedings, capturing the principal arguments advanced by each panellist, followed by a consolidated list of all recommendations made during the discussion.

II. Summary of the Discussion

2.1 Context and Framing

The webinar was opened by EGROW Foundation's CEO, Prof. Charan Singh, who underscored the historical parallels of India's current predicament with the experiences of South Korea (1962–1989) and China (1979–2012), both of which sustained high rates of growth — 10% and 8% respectively — over long stretches, even while confronting major external shocks including oil crises. He emphasised that the path to Viksit Bharat 2047 requires India to sustain 9% growth, and that the current oil shock, though disruptive, should not be allowed to derail that ambition.

He contextualised the Prime Minister's appeal as an economically motivated intervention designed to conserve foreign exchange, reduce the import bill, and stabilise the balance of payments — all without resorting to coercive legal measures.

2.2 Professor Ashima Goyal — Short-Term Stabilisation and Long-Term Reforms

Professor Goyal, chairing the session, drew upon her experience as an MPC member during the Ukraine conflict to argue that persistent shocks need not be permanent in their impact. During the 2022–23 oil shock triggered by the Russia-Ukraine war, India's GDP growth fell by approximately 2 percentage points and inflation breached the upper tolerance limit — but the economy rebounded to above 9% growth the following year. She estimated that the current conflict, if sustained for six months, could reduce GDP by approximately 1%.

She underlined that India's policy response after the pandemic — a judicious mix of countercyclical fiscal expansion, structural reforms, and moderated oil price pass-through — had been successful, and recommended replicating that playbook. She described the seven appeals as instruments of intrinsic motivation — not substitutes for price incentives, but complementary tools that encourage behavioural change and build social solidarity. She also noted that domestic firms had signalled intent to increase efficiency and reduce costs, as they had done during COVID-19.

On the rupee and the balance of payments, Professor Goyal argued that with approximately USD 700 billion in foreign exchange reserves and only six years of insufficient inflows in a 35-year reform era, the current account pressure was being overstated by markets. She cautioned against capitulating to market pressure through special tax concessions or NRI deposit schemes, likening such moves to "arm twisting."

On the long-term side, she identified the need to push through reforms that had been stalled — particularly enabling legislation for gas pipelines in cities, rooftop solar, and greater state-centre coordination — using the crisis as a political lever to overcome resistance.

2.3 Dr. Surjit Bhalla — The Case for Price Signals Over Moral Persuasion

Dr. Bhalla offered a contrarian perspective rooted in classical economics: that outcomes should be engineered through price incentives, not moral suasion or appeals to patriotism. He questioned the claim that India is the fastest-growing major economy in the world, presenting data from 190 countries for the period 2014–2025 that ranked India ninth in GDP growth and sixteenth in per capita GDP growth in US dollar terms.

He was critical of the delay in raising oil prices — attributing it to electoral calculations — and called this irrational policy-making. He drew sharp attention to the perennial misallocation in fertiliser subsidy policy, pointing out that economists across parties and governments had flagged this problem for three to four decades without effective resolution. He expressed scepticism about the efficacy of moral persuasion, noting that it had not worked during COVID-19 and was unlikely to work in the present situation. He argued that structural policy corrections must precede any expectation of citizen compliance.

2.4 Professor Ashok Vishandass — The Fertiliser Subsidy Distortion

Professor Vishandass focused his intervention on the perverse incentive structure in India's fertiliser policy. He explained that the price of urea (the nitrogen-based fertiliser) has been fixed at INR 5,360 per tonne since 2012 — unchanged for fourteen years — while the prices of phosphorus and potassium-based fertilisers have risen three to four times. This is because for urea the price is fixed and the subsidy floats with cost, while for the other two nutrients the subsidy is fixed and the price floats — a structurally irrational arrangement that has led to massive overuse of urea.

He noted that farmers apply urea disproportionately, even on crops such as pulses that do not require it, simply because it is cheap. This overuse depletes soil fertility, increases import dependence, and crowds out balanced nutrient application. The total annual fertiliser subsidy bill of approximately INR 1.87 lakh crore is heavily skewed towards large, irrigated landholders, while small and marginal farmers — who often lack irrigated land — benefit least.

He recommended freeing up the urea subsidy from its fixed-price structure and distributing the subsidy on a per-hectare basis directly to farmers. This, he argued, would reduce urea overconsumption, benefit small and marginal farmers equitably, and reduce India's dependence on imported fertilisers.

2.5 Col (Dr) M.P. Singh, PhD — Historical Precedents and Civic Leadership

Col (Dr) M.P. Singh provided a historical survey of prime ministerial appeals to citizens during economic crises, noting that similar exhortations had been made by Prime Ministers Lal Bahadur Shastri (1965), Indira Gandhi (1973–74), P.V. Narasimha Rao (1991), Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998), and Manmohan Singh (2008–2012). International precedents included Winston Churchill's wartime rationing appeals and President Jimmy Carter's energy conservation address during the 1979 US energy crisis. He argued that such appeals have a legitimate place in the policy toolkit, particularly when paired with visible government action.

He drew attention to the social impact of the seven appeals: three of them — fuel conservation, public transport, and cutting non-essential spending — primarily affect the common man, while three others (foreign travel, gold, swadeshi) bear more heavily on the affluent and middle class. He recommended that the government demonstrate leadership by example: curtailing foreign travel of senior officials, using video conferencing in place of in-person meetings, and announcing specific energy-saving norms for government offices.

2.6 Mr. Gulshan Malik — Energy Security and Manufacturing as Strategic Imperatives

Mr. Malik, a former Deputy Managing Director of State Bank of India, offered a comprehensive banking and strategic perspective. He argued that the geopolitical turbulence was symptomatic of a broader structural shift in the global order — where critical raw materials and energy supply were being weaponised for political ends. In this context, the Prime Minister's appeal was not merely a short-term measure but a reminder that India needs a long-term strategic framework to absorb recurring external shocks.

On energy security, he highlighted that India imports 85% of its crude oil, and that the solution lies in a dramatic acceleration of electrification — through renewable energy generation and electric vehicles — along the lines of China's model, which increased its EV penetration from near-zero to 60% over fifteen years. He pointed to the government's coal gasification initiative as a promising path to domestic feedstock for the fertiliser sector.

On manufacturing, he noted that India's merchandise trade deficit is persistently large and growing. He criticised the limited effectiveness of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme beyond a few sectors and called for the government to develop fully serviced industrial estates that reduce the burden on manufacturers in acquiring land, obtaining approvals, and building infrastructure. He flagged the decline in FDI by approximately 16% in the previous year as a red flag requiring urgent attention.

He also raised concern about India's growing dependence on foreign AI platforms and models, stressing the need for India to invest in indigenous AI capabilities to avoid strategic vulnerability. On the gold front, he argued that India's 34,000 tonnes of gold holdings — a staggering 15–16% of all gold ever mined — could be better mobilised through an improved gold monetisation scheme. He linked trust in financial instruments to macro stability and low inflation, noting that gold is primarily used as a hedge against financial uncertainty.

2.7 Dr. Sunil Parekh — Consumers Speak: Survey Findings

Dr. Parekh, Chairman of the Consumer Education Research Centre, brought empirical grounding to the discussion by presenting findings from a rapid survey of approximately 2,000 consumers on each of the seven appeals.

On fuel reduction, the majority said they were unsure how to comply in the absence of price signals. On public transport, respondents consistently cited poor last-mile connectivity — especially in smaller cities and rural areas — as the primary barrier. On EVs, the surveyed population flagged pricing, charging infrastructure, and range as unresolved challenges that could not be addressed in the 3–6 month timeframe of the appeal. On work from home, respondents acknowledged feasibility only in the IT and services sector, while noting significant productivity losses across other industries during COVID-19.

On foreign travel, there was no appetite to curtail business travel; on weddings, respondents flatly said they would continue; and on holidays, the survey found that foreign tourism had actually become cheaper per-day (excluding airfares), making the appeal counterproductive in its current form. On gold, the survey showed near-unanimous willingness to comply for one year, as most families already had sufficient gold. On edible oils, many women respondents expressed readiness to switch to local ghee, but cited confusion — particularly from social media — about whether ghee was nutritionally superior to imported palm oil.

Dr. Parekh concluded by calling for a quantitative assessment of the cumulative macroeconomic impact of 5–10% reductions in each of the seven categories, and for a much stronger coordinated government effort on public transport investment, transmission infrastructure, and long-term structural reform.

2.8 Prof. Charan Singh, CEO, EGROW Foundation — Observations

Prof. Charan Singh synthesised the discussion by acknowledging that while moral persuasion alone was insufficient, the Prime Minister's appeal — if properly operationalised — could serve as a powerful catalyst for long-overdue policy action. Drawing on his conversations with Ola and Uber drivers, he noted that even ordinary citizens recognised that price signals, not appeals, would drive behavioural change in fuel usage and carpooling.

He shared several specific observations and measures: developing "wedding parks" in scenic and heritage locations across India to compete with Indonesia and Thailand as wedding destinations; rationalising the free ration programme (currently covering 80 crore people, or about 66% of the population, against an estimated poverty rate of 3–5%); deploying nano-fertilisers to dramatically cut chemical fertiliser consumption; incentivising public transport through expensive parking at city centres and reimbursed monthly transport passes; and reviving the gold monetisation scheme with improved trust mechanisms and Indian bullion standards. He also advocated for a dedicated Viksit Bharat Ministry to monitor and operationalise the seven appeals as long-term national goals.

2.9 Dr. Amar Patnaik — A Former Legislator's Perspective

Dr. Patnaik, a former member of the Rajya Sabha, argued that the seven appeals were not just crisis responses but long-term strategic imperatives that should be embedded in the Viksit Bharat vision documents. He highlighted that the food subsidy — currently around INR 4 lakh crore in combination with the fertiliser subsidy — was a major driver of paddy and rice cultivation, which was depleting groundwater tables. He proposed redirecting subsidies towards millet cultivation, which would benefit tribal communities, improve nutritional diversity, and align with India's National Millet Mission.

He was critical of the slow pace of electrification and called for differentiated subsidy structures for solar adoption based on income and geography (rural versus urban). He called for mandatory emissions disclosure by industries as a precondition for creating meaningful incentive and disincentive mechanisms, and underscored the need for research breakthroughs in solar panel efficiency (currently around 19–20%) and battery storage.

2.10 Mr. S.C. Agarwal — Citizen-Level Interventions

Mr. S.C. Agarwal offered several practical, ground-level suggestions from a citizen perspective: producing government-backed films encouraging young people to use ancestral jewellery at weddings rather than purchasing new gold; introducing a dedicated solar loan scheme (of approximately INR 50,000) through SBI and public sector banks for village shopkeepers to install 3 kW rooftop solar systems; promoting government-backed testing of EV conversion kits developed by engineers in Bengaluru for retrofitting existing petrol-driven vehicles; and supporting small wind turbines manufactured domestically by MSMEs, which had so far escaped government attention through the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

III. Recommendations

The following recommendations were drawn from the deliberations of all panellists and participants during the webinar. They are organised thematically for ease of reference.

A. Macroeconomic Policy and Fiscal Management

• Adopt a burden-sharing approach to absorb the oil price shock, distributing the impact across consumers (through partial pass-through), oil marketing companies (drawing on their recent profits), and the government (through a modest, countercyclical increase in the fiscal deficit of up to 0.5% of GDP).
• Avoid special NRI deposit schemes or tax concessions to attract capital inflows, as India holds approximately USD 700 billion in reserves — sufficient to manage the current account pressure without capitulating to market demands.
• Resist pressure to raise interest rates in response to the external shock; instead, stimulate the economy through structural reforms while moderating the price impact on consumers, replicating the successful post-pandemic policy mix.
• Raise domestic fuel prices to meaningful levels to send accurate price signals to consumers and reduce fuel consumption organically, rather than relying solely on moral persuasion.
• Rationalise and reduce politically motivated freebies announced by political parties at both the state and central level, which erode fiscal resources required for productive investment.
• Rationalise the free food grain programme (PM-GKAY): restrict coverage to Below Poverty Line households (estimated at 3–5% of population) rather than the current 66%, and redirect savings to reduce the import burden on food commodities and increase agricultural exports.

B. Energy Security and the Green Transition

• Treat energy security as a national strategic priority, analogous to defence preparedness, and develop a multi-decade roadmap to reduce crude oil import dependence from the current 85%.
• Dramatically accelerate EV penetration — currently at only 3–4% — by building out charging infrastructure for passenger vehicles, buses, trucks, heavy-duty machinery, and mining equipment, learning from China's example of moving from near-zero to 60% EV penetration in fifteen years.
• Prioritise renewable energy transmission infrastructure alongside generation capacity — a critical gap that is currently leading to curtailment of solar power because the grid cannot absorb it.
• Promote rooftop solar at scale, with improved coordination between discoms and households to prevent wastage of distributed generation; Kerala's experience provides a replicable model.
• Invest in coal gasification projects to use India's domestic coal reserves as feedstock for the fertiliser sector, reducing dependence on imported natural gas.
• Expand the use of induction-based cooking in restaurants, hotels, and industrial kitchens, powered by electricity rather than LPG, to reduce fossil fuel consumption in the food-service sector.
• Develop a roadmap for nuclear power as a stable, long-term baseload energy source, reducing dependence on variable renewables and imported fossil fuels.
• Promote and test small wind turbines manufactured by domestic MSMEs through the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), as this segment has been largely neglected by policy.
• Research and invest in improvements to solar panel conversion efficiency (currently around 19–20%) and battery storage technology to unlock the full potential of solar energy.
• Introduce differentiated subsidies for rooftop solar adoption, providing full subsidies in rural areas and smaller cities while reducing them in large urban centres where adoption is already occurring organically.
• Support a programme to introduce solar loans (approximately INR 50,000) through SBI and public sector banks for village shopkeepers, enabling installation of 3 kW solar systems for self-consumption.
• Explore EV retrofit kits developed by domestic engineers for converting existing petrol and diesel vehicles to electric powertrains, and commission government-supported pilots to test their viability.

C. Fertiliser Policy Reform

• Delink the urea price from its administratively fixed rate (unchanged since 2012 at INR 5,360 per tonne) and instead float the price of urea in line with cost, while fixing the total per-hectare subsidy amount paid directly to farmers — removing the distortion that encourages massive overuse of nitrogen.
• Distribute the fertiliser subsidy on a per-hectare basis directly to farmers (including through DBT), ensuring equitable access for small and marginal farmers who are currently doubly disadvantaged — lacking irrigated land and unable to access subsidised urea in meaningful quantities.
• Promote the use of nano-fertilisers, which require only one-hundredth of the volume of conventional chemical fertilisers to achieve equivalent results, targeting a significant reduction in the annual fertiliser subsidy bill of INR 1.87 lakh crore.
• Incentivise and scale organic and natural farming practices as a course correction from decades of over-reliance on chemical fertilisers, which have degraded soil fertility and agricultural productivity in many regions.
• Launch a dedicated campaign to educate farmers on balanced nutrient application, discouraging the indiscriminate use of urea on crops such as pulses that do not require nitrogen supplementation.

D. Agriculture: Pulses, Oilseeds, and Food Security

• Revive and implement — with sustained political will — a dedicated mission for domestic production of edible oilseeds, replicating the structure of earlier missions that have stalled due to policy discontinuity and ministerial change.
• Increase domestic production of pulses to reduce import dependence; India's status as the world's largest consumer of pulses and yet a major importer represents a structural agricultural failure.
• Redirect food subsidies towards millet production, channelling support to tribal communities and smallholder farmers who grow millets, consistent with India's National Millet Mission and its international commitments on nutritious food.
• Issue clear, authoritative nutritional guidance — ideally from the National Institute of Nutrition — on the comparative merits of local ghee versus imported palm oil blends, to help consumers make informed choices and reduce the import bill for edible oils.

E. Public Transport, Last-Mile Connectivity, and Urban Planning

• Address the last-mile connectivity deficit in metro and rail systems as the single most important barrier to increasing public transport usage — including completing broken metro links such as the Greater Noida–Noida gap — with dedicated infrastructure investment.
• Introduce financial incentives to shift commuters from private to public transport: make city-centre parking expensive and simultaneously offer fully reimbursed monthly public transport passes to offset the cost.
• Develop dedicated "Wedding Parks" in scenic, heritage, and religious locations across India — including Jammu & Kashmir and the Northeast — as world-class, competitively priced alternatives to foreign wedding and honeymoon destinations in Indonesia and Thailand.
• Strengthen internet connectivity infrastructure, particularly in peri-urban and semi-urban areas, to make work-from-home a viable and productive option — crucial given that even transitions between Noida and Greater Noida can involve multiple connectivity drops.
• Require new large-scale private and government buildings to adopt centralised air conditioning systems, which are significantly more energy-efficient than individual window or split units and can be designed to run on clean energy sources.
• Mandate and promote tele-education platforms to reduce the daily commuting burden on students and teachers, enabling significant savings in fuel consumption and commuting time.

F. Manufacturing, FDI, and Industrial Policy

• Develop fully serviced industrial estates — with land, utilities, approvals, and common infrastructure pre-arranged by the government — so that manufacturers can focus entirely on production rather than spending four to five years in preparatory activities.
• Investigate the causes behind the approximately 16% decline in Foreign Direct Investment in the previous year and urgently address the regulatory, approval, and trust-related factors deterring investors.
• Digitise and streamline land acquisition and regulatory approval processes for industrial projects to improve India's competitiveness as a manufacturing destination.
• Expand the reach and sectoral depth of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, which has thus far shown success mainly in mobile manufacturing, to a broader range of import-substituting industries.
• Promote campaigns encouraging consumers to choose Indian-made products, backed by quality standards and competitive pricing, as part of a long-term structural shift in domestic demand patterns.

G. Gold Monetisation and Financial Deepening

• Revive and substantially redesign the Gold Monetisation Scheme to make it more accessible, trustworthy, and attractive to households. With 34,000 tonnes of gold in Indian hands — including approximately 3,000 tonnes in temples — there is enormous potential to monetise this store of value without additional imports.
• Establish Indian gold bullion standards (e.g., a Surat or Delhi Bullion Standard) to reduce dependence on the London Bullion Standard and build domestic credibility in gold grading and trade.
• Invest in modern gold assaying technology, now capable of certifying purity within minutes, to address historical consumer concerns about quality and encourage participation in deposit and monetisation schemes.
• Promote awareness campaigns encouraging households and institutional investors (including temples) to deposit gold in interest-bearing schemes, with the assurance that jewellery can be returned on request.
• Reduce gold import dependence by deepening domestic financial markets — including mutual funds and equities — and improving trust in financial institutions, since gold is primarily held as a hedge against inflation and financial instability.
• Produce government-backed films and media campaigns, particularly targeting young people, encouraging the use of ancestral jewellery at weddings rather than purchasing new gold.

H. Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and Digital Infrastructure

• Invest in developing India's own large language models and AI platforms to reduce strategic dependence on US and Chinese AI systems, which could become points of vulnerability or leverage in future geopolitical confrontations.
• Upskill India's IT workforce for AI-era capabilities, ensuring that the country's largest export services sector can maintain — and grow — its global share even as AI disrupts traditional IT services delivery.
• Require industries to publicly disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, creating a data infrastructure for incentive-based decarbonisation rather than relying on administrative mandates and moral persuasion.

I. Governance, Coordination, and Operationalisation of the Seven Appeals

• Establish a dedicated Viksit Bharat Ministry (or equivalent high-powered inter-ministerial body) tasked specifically with monitoring and operationalising the Prime Minister's seven appeals, converting them from short-term nudges into long-term, measurable national goals.
• Produce a quantitative scenario analysis assessing the macroeconomic impact of 5%, 10%, and 15% reductions in each of the seven categories (fuel, public transport usage, foreign travel, gold, edible oil, fertiliser, imports), to give policymakers and the public a clear sense of the cumulative potential of the appeals.
• Require central and state government departments to adopt and publicly report specific energy-saving measures — video conferencing in place of official travel, energy-efficient lighting and HVAC in government offices, EV fleets — to demonstrate leadership and motivate citizen compliance.
• Improve policy coordination across value chains — particularly between solar power generation and transmission, EV adoption and charging infrastructure, and public transport networks and last-mile connectivity — recognising that a missing link anywhere in the chain can render the whole effort suboptimal.
• Use the present crisis as a political window to push through long-stalled structural reforms — particularly on fertilisers, food subsidy targeting, gold monetisation, and manufacturing approvals — that have faced resistance in normal times.
• Ensure that the Prime Minister's appeal is treated with seriousness and not trivialised by performative compliance or competitive virtue-signalling, which could undermine public confidence in the initiative.
• EGROW Foundation, NITI Aayog, and other research bodies should commission detailed research papers on each of the seven appeal areas, quantifying costs, modelling reform scenarios, and producing policy briefs accessible to state governments, industry, and civil society.

EGROW Foundation | This transcript has been edited and organised for clarity and publication.