NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Ashok Kumar Lahiri urges India to simplify land acquisition processes to attract more industrial investments and support its goal of becoming a developed economy by 2047.
India needs to make land acquisition far easier if it wants to pull in more industrial investment, NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Ashok Kumar Lahiri said at the NCAER India Policy Forum 2026 in New Delhi. Lahiri said the country has improved the ease of doing business, but argued that deeper changes are still needed at the level where firms actually try to build plants, buy land and expand operations. He said the biggest barriers remain structural, with land and capital market problems still weighing on investment decisions.
According to Lahiri, land acquisition continues to slow not only industrial projects but also government-backed infrastructure schemes, often because of legal disputes and other hurdles. He said India’s investment base depends mainly on domestic savings, while foreign savings have helped only to a limited extent compared with inflows into China and Singapore. Lahiri also argued that well-designed infrastructure spending can support, rather than replace, private capital by encouraging firms to invest alongside the state.
Lahiri said India’s foreign direct investment picture has improved since the 1990s, but that the quality of those flows matters as much as the headline numbers. He pointed to gross foreign direct investment of $95 billion in 2025-26, while net flows were muted because of higher repatriation and outbound investment. He said net FDI showed signs of recovery in April 2026, reaching $7.4 billion compared with $1.6 billion in the same month a year earlier.
Looking ahead to the government’s Viksit Bharat goal for 2047, Lahiri said India will need far faster income growth to reach developed-economy status. He said one estimate puts per capita income at $18,000 to $20,000 by 2047, implying annual nominal growth of about 9.25% over the next 21 years from an estimated $2,813 in 2026. Lahiri said the government is trying to support entrepreneurship and innovation through schemes including the production-linked incentive programme and the Atal Innovation Mission.
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