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Mittal calls 1991 Budget speech Freedom Day
Rediff··11 Aug
Bharti Enterprises founder Sunil Mittal said Manmohan Singh's 1991 Budget speech felt like Freedom Day for entrepreneurs locked by licence controls. He recalled watching the Directorate General of Technical Development abolished and imports suddenly opened. Mittal said 1991 delivered a needed systemic shock, while today's agenda needs further ease-of-doing-business changes rather than another jolt of that scale.
Prism
What It Means For You
- Readers get a first-person account of how 1991 import and licence changes unlocked private telecom growth.
- Entrepreneurs can note Mittal's caution that capital is easier now, but staying rooted and scaling in India still matters.
- Anyone tracking reform debates can separate nostalgia for 1991 from his call for quieter bureaucratic fixes today.
What's Happening
- In a Business Standard interview carried on Rediff, Sunil Mittal revisited the 1991 reforms and telecom opening.
- He described Manmohan Singh's Budget speech as Freedom Day after years of Exim and DGTD controls.
- He said further reforms are welcome, while arguing India does not need another shock of 1991 intensity.
Why 1991 Still Frames India's Business Memory
- The 1991 crisis forced rapid dismantling of import bans, capacity caps and many industrial licences.
- Telecom liberalisation that followed created space for new private operators such as Airtel.
- Business leaders often use anniversary interviews to map unfinished ease-of-doing-business work onto that origin story.
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