Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held out this message for the political class on Friday as he outlined his vision for a new India and focused on the challenges ahead for India to bridge the gap between "performance and potential".

Singh counted a massive expansion of education and healthcare facilities, revitalisation of the administration, judiciary, legislature and institutions of local government and deploying science and technology as ingredients that would have to go into the exercise of making India a global force.

India would also need huge investments - public and private - to ride the "new wave of industrialisation", an economic environment conducive to growth and one with moderate tax rates but high level of compliance to generate funds needed for education and healthcare.

But Singh - who often has to dribble his reforms agenda past hurdles erected within and without the UPA - emphasised at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit that India also needed "a basic political consensus on some of the difficult things that the government must do and governments alone can do" to create an environment conducive to sustainable development.

"To unleash our full potential, we need a politics of constructive engagement. We need forward-looking political leadership at all levels of our polity. If we do not think into the future, if we don't think big, if we do not think afresh, if we cannot and will not learn from the experience of the rest of the world, we will not be forgiven by future generations".

Education and healthcare were at the centre of Singh's vision. India would have "a vast army of young men and women" over the next few decades that could fuel the engines of growth and redistribution if they were adequately empowered, educated and healthy.

"We have to widen access to education, make it more equitable, accessible and relevant," he said, describing education as the "surest way of unleashing the full potential of all our people".

Singh said India's neglect of modern science and technology and her inability to harness it for growth that made her miss the industrial revolution that swept the world.

"Once again, advances in science and technology, particularly in IT and connectivity, are making enormous changes in the way we organise our lives, our industries, our economies and our institutions. This is throwing up immense opportunities. If we have to realise our destiny and once again be counted among the great nations, we have to ensure we do not miss this new wave of industrialisation.