The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, has said that India's future lay in integrating its economy with the global economy. Addressing the students from Colombia, Wharton and Stanford universities, here today, the Prime Minister said that growth alone was not the sufficient condition for alleviating poverty. Emphasising the need to bridge the divide between urban and rural India, Dr. Manmohan Singh said that there was a need for large-scale investments in rural India and creation of human resource base. The Prime Minister noted that the creation of environmentally sustainable growth process should be encouraged, as it would absorb the surplus manpower.

Referring to the process of economic liberalisation, Dr. Manmohan Singh said that tariff rates had come down drastically and Indian economy has become much more open and that there was a new creativity among Indian entrepreneurs.

The Prime Minister told the budding financial leaders that leadership is all about managing the processes of change so that they do not throw unacceptable burden on the weakest in the social and economic spheres.

Noting that Indo-US relations had never been so good, Dr. Singh hoped that the visit of the students of Business universities of the United States was an essay in mutual comprehension would be mutually beneficial and good for the future.