"If you look at the numbers in the last decade," he says, "despite the slowdown in the Western world, India has done a good job in growing the size and scale and depth of our economy. There's still tremendous growth potential because there is tremendous untapped demand.
"We have two tasks: to maintain the robust growth in manufacturing, agriculture and IT, and then to make sure some of that growth gets to the poor. A lot of jobs growth will come from manufacturing. The global slowdown led to last month's decline in industrial output. But I wouldn't be too focused on one month's figures. Today the electronics industry in India is worth $45bn. In less than four years it will be worth $400bn. We don't want to be importing most of this, it will be bigger than our oil imports."
Pilot believes IT can contribute to reigniting Indian economic growth and to poverty reduction. He also thinks it can be used to tackle corruption. He reels off a list of dizzying figures. At more than 100 million, India has the third highest number of internet users, behind only the US and China. There are 900 million mobile phones in India. But there is one figure Pilot is not happy with: there are only 12 million broadband connections. So the government has a multi-billion-dollar program to hook up connectivity across the nation. Every 10 per cent increase in broadband penetration brings nearly 1.5 per cent increase in the overall size of the economy, he says.
Pilot believes IT can tackle production. His government is going to force the state governments to make records and services available digitally. This will reduce the scope for what Indians call "speed money": bribes paid to avoid the Indian disease of bureaucracy, "death by delay".
He also believes IT can tackle poverty and development. More than 40 per cent of Indians don't have bank accounts and only 5 per cent of villages have a physical bank. Hand-held devices that are digitally connected can revolutionise villagers' ability to connect with the world and carry out commerce that can transform them from subsistence to trading.
The Indian IT sector will grow by 19 per cent this year, Pilot says, a figure most countries would find impressive, but it's down from 30 per cent the year before. More than 60 per cent of India's software exports go to the US, and Pilot wants to diversify that.
Parthasarathi Shome, of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, tells me the two greatest reforms India needs are a simpler set of labour laws and more effective anti-corruption laws. These are part of what discourages foreign investment.
But there's a lot else Pilot would like to see, including a GST. For the moment, the government has retreated on its attempt to open up multi-brand retailing to foreign ownership and competition. Yet the country desperately needs a bigger and more efficient retail sector.
Naveen Jindal, the chief executive of Jindal Steel and Power, greets me at his plush New Delhi home and recounts the pleasure of doing business in Queensland and NSW. Government bureaucrats do what they say they are going to do, and don't want any special considerations in return.
Julia Gillard's decision to lift the ban on Australian uranium exports to India has removed a roadblock in the relationship, and Indian investment in Australian resources will accelerate.
Manish Tewari, an MP and spokesman for the Congress Party, is lavish in his praise for Gillard and her decision.
"Prime Minister Gillard has shown the sagacity and vision to take a hard decision," he says. "We are aware of the sensitivity of this issue in Labor Party policy. You have sent an important signal to India that you have levelled the playing field between India and China. This may be the most important single step in the past three decades in furthering India-Australia relations."
After two weeks in India, it is impossible to mistake the positive reception to the uranium decision. It is also impossible to miss the absolutely ubiquitous debate on how the country can reignite higher economic growth rates.
And perhaps that is the most encouraging out-take from India today: the overwhelming consensus that the country wants to keep pursuing high economic growth. Only economic growth, after all, can lift tens, even hundreds, of millions of Indians out of poverty.
