The government is focused on implementing key structural reforms in the domain of taxes and labour laws, Arvind Panagariya, chairperson of Finance Commission said.
"The implementation of the four labour codes enacted by Parliament in 2019 and 2020 is a low hanging fruit. Once that is done, there are whole host of reforms in GST, personal taxation, privatisation, higher education. Its a long process," he told NDTV editor-in-chief Sanjay Pugalia in an exclusive interview on Friday.
Panagariya's comment comes weeks before the Union Budget 2025 is tabled by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament.
Reform push on challenging subjects have been slow, as India still deals with the overhang of socialist economic planning and policy, said NK Singh, ex-chairperson of Finance Commission.
"We were under the shadow of socialism since independence. Inspite of repeated attempts, we have not been able to shed that overhang. Reform in means of production like capital and labour have eluded us," he said.
In its first term, the Modi government passed land acquisition reforms in Parliament, but later pulled them back after protests. The same happened with agricultural reforms in 2020.
In 2019, the government introduced four bills on labour codes to consolidate 29 central laws, which received legislative approval. These are code on wages, industrial relations code, social security code and occupational safety, health and working conditions code.
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