India's biggest industrialist, Mukesh Ambani, says "jobs need to be created for all" in Mumbai. Ambani's comments were in response to a question about Mumbai's migrant politics. Ambani says Mumbai "belongs to all of India." He was speaking at the London School of Economics as part of a panel discussion at the book launch of 'Not By Reason Alone' by JD (U) Member of Parliament, N K Singh. The discussion was moderated by NDTV's Barkha Dutt.

NDTV's Barkha Dutt: We used to talk about a world without borders, but now, within India, because there is such a tussle over resources and urban migration is such a problem. You are from Mumbai, when you see something like this happen - the whole debate around taxi drivers - is it really a metaphor for a city that doesn't want any more new migrants? One way of looking at this is parochial politics; the other way of looking at this is economics. How do you see it as a resident of Mumbai?

Ambani: What we all have to first realise is that we are Indians first and India is above everything. I think whether it is Mumbai or Delhi or Chennai or Kolkata, it belongs to all Indians. But within India, there has to be equal opportunities. I think that the biggest challenge for us in the coming decade is really about employment and earning opportunities.

This is nothing but a manifestation that we are not moving fast enough and we really have to get out of this so-called license raj. We in the corporate sector have networked ourselves, and got ourselves out of the license raj, but the poor taxiwallah is still in the license raj, that part of the governance we need to change

NDTV's Barkha Dutt: How does that change?
 
Ambani: The challenge before us really is how do we create employment opportunities, how do we create earning opportunities? And I really think there is only one way we can measure our progress, and that is are we creating 15-20 million new employment and earning opportunities in the whole of India? Are we doing this year in, year out? We are a young country, and over the next 15 years we are going to have over 12-15 million new people entering the workforce. That is our opportunity, but that is also our challenge.