Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder of conglomerate Bharti Enterprises, just stepped down as chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), a body that promotes international trade. Days before the end of his two-year term, he spoke to Sidhartha on economic issues:

What’s your assessment of the global economy?

The global story in the last two years has been very good. Things have evolved on the positive side in terms of economic momentum picking up. It was also a period that saw Brexit, a big shock to the European system, and the election of Donald Trump. Our fears in some sense are also coming true now that free trade is being termed as fair trade and fair trade is being defined in the way the US wants. From ICC’s corner, we have actually taken a very strong position that you cannot suddenly turn around on the emerging world, which have opened up their economies. We believe WTO still is relevant.

With economic growth back do you expect protectionist tendencies to come down?

Right now what’s happening is the force of technology is taking away, at least temporarily, a lot of jobs and that is causing crisis. The biggest issue in India’s coming election would be job creation. Not enough jobs are being created and in the end somebody in India will get up and say ‘Gosh! If you are not creating enough jobs then why am I creating jobs for somebody sitting in China manufacturing toys.’ These things are always a political reaction to loss of jobs and economic downturn. I really hope that the economic momentum stays and if that stays then waters do calm down.

Since you interact with lot of investors across the globe, what is the view on India?

India remains a good spot for investment and everybody wants to invest. People do sometimes feel that India can do its things faster with the ease of doing business. Good news is our prime minister and the government is focussed on that. Problem on the ground is it does take more time than the Europeans and American companies are used to. That’s something we must accelerate. Ultimately companies need growth and you get the growth from India.

What are other key concerns?

You know, typically ease of doing business is a bundle, whether it’s M&A (mergers and acquisitions) that should shorten up, NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal) timelines, and other statutory clearances that need to kind of fasten up. Some of the areas are doing well with streamlining formation of companies and the remarkable job that Sebi has done on listing. Generally, people are happy with the legal system despite some complaint that it takes a long time. People like GST because it makes India a unified market.

When do you see investments picking up?

FDI has been very robust. Leave out few industries like telecom, where we alone are investing over $10 billion over three years, people are cautious in creating capacities. Real estate is a big setback, with a lot of money stuck. Infrastructure projects, especially led by government – roads, railways – are driving hard. The power sector has suddenly frozen. Large infrastructure projects which have been funded, especially in the power and telecom sector, are suddenly turning NPAs. With banks getting cautious, supply to industry side is going down. It’s a cycle. It will break when capacity gets consumed. In a year or two, you will see there is not enough (capacity) left so there will be pricing power and projects will start again.

Some of your colleagues in industry are little critical, especially with the way insolvency code has been implemented. Many have lost their family business.

This is one of the areas where you can say that the mood is down a bit at the moment. But in any big change this is bound to happen. India is readjusting itself for a new world order. Bankruptcy norms are there everywhere. It’s very clear now that you can lose your company, something which was unthinkable earlier. In India or Asia, the attachment to business is high. The identity becomes your business and when you start to lose that identity it’s hard.

Four years ago when Narendra Modi became PM, the perception was that he will be very pro-business. A lot of your colleagues don’t share that perception in private?

The confusion is pro-businessman or pro-business. I don’t think Mr Modi has moved away from being pro-business. But perhaps the accessibility to a chief minister is always greater than accessibility to a PM. Today, when people say he is less friendly to business, I think what they are trying to say is that he is less friendly to the businessman and to that extent I think he is doing the right thing. He is trying to grow the economy, grow markets, put rules and regulations. In fact a rule-based economy is much better than a discretionary kind of economy.