INDIA: YESTERDAY, TODAY & TOMORROW

At many places I hear of India reaching the economic super power status. Has India really reached the level of a global economic super power? I am not sure about it! But one thing is sure, India is moving forward to become a global economic super power.

The rate at which it is growing, India, currently a fast developing nation, is expected to become a global super power. Of course, there are others in the race too. China for instance, is ahead of us and may be, there are Brazil and Russia. A leading consulting company had even coined a word BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China & South Africa) to be the global economic giants by year 2025. If everything is going well, that is.

For the purpose of an analysis, we will have to put India in three time zones. And that is the past, the present and the future.

Of course India has had a glorious past. Let us look at India in the 17th Century. Up till then, India was one of the richest nations in the world. Every other nation, particularly those who had sea travel power, wanted to reach India somehow, to trade with her and to be connected to her. Lots of armies from far beyond and from the neighboring nations invaded and that included Alexander from Greece, Timur from Mongol, The Genghis Khan, The Lodi’s, Khilgis, Mughals etc. Then came the Europeans, the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch and later, the British. Under the British, India got plundered, squeezed hard and left high and dry as a very poor nation. By the time she gained independence in 1947, India has had everything sucked out of her by her invading rulers.

For close to two hundred and fifty years, India remained as one of the poorest of nations. It had lost all its sheen and the height of its helplessness got exposed in 1991, when the country’s foreign exchange earnings dipped as low as seven days’ worth of Import, economically, we were almost on the brink of death.

With no choices left, India had to take the diktats from the World Bank and International Monitory Fund to follow the reform process. It was at this point a South Indian Prime Minister (Narsingh Rao) combined his strengths with a Punjabi Finance minister (Manmohan Singh) to reverse the trend. India got opened up. It started getting liberalized and it started understanding the power of Private sector. From a ‘Hindu growth rate’ of two percent, the country started growing steadily, initially at rates higher than four percent and that moved up to 7 to 8 percent. Over the last two decades, the country had been growing economically at above 6% in a compounded manner. And that has been a phenomenal growth indeed! We have only one country to beat in the growth rate and that is China. So, at present, the India Juggernaut is rolling forward, steadily.

So, now is the future to be looked at. Where do we go from here?

Many predict that India could make it to being one of the top three nations of the world, along with China and United States, in future. Let us see what will make that come true.

Currently we are adjudged as a soft power. A soft power is that has technology power. Yes, India had become an IT super power for the last 10 to 15 years. Information technology, particularly software and India are very synonymous. We now need to bring technology into the country’s governance soon. This is expected to improve efficiency of bureaucracy, not to speak of annihilating the rampant corruption that we are in today.

But now, we need to improve our infrastructure drastically. Infrastructure would include road, rail, power, ports etc. No nation had ever progressed without roads. Transportation is the lifeline of any growing nation, that includes road, rail, air and water transportation. There is plenty of scope for that to improve in our Country. How is it possible? It can only happen through regulated public private participation (ppp).

We need to give much more attention to education particularly the higher and vocational education. Our learning centers had become quiet archaic. For a country which boasted of Nalanda and Takshasila centuries ago, our present education system is nothing to write home about.

India is one of the most populous countries of the world. Every sixth person of the world is an Indian. With more than 1 billion people of whom 30 percent are middle class, we offer one of the largest markets to corporations of the world. In fact, our middle class alone will be bigger than the markets of America and Europe respectively. And again, more than forty percent of the Indian are of the age group of less than 25 years. Only India has this youth power advantage which is now globally called as ‘demographic dividend’. How effectively we could deploy this youth power across the world needs to be seen. The future global opportunities should give our youth a big boost to meet their aspirations.

Our political system really needs to mature to catch up with our growth. The country, though a democracy, is not politically very mature. Local parties and the coalition government is not a boon to our growth. So is dynastic politics. More and more educated people should get into politics and the governance of our nation.

India’s growing malady is corruption at the high places. Today we hear about corruption cases that had deprived the country of wealth to the tune of Rs.1,76,000 crores in 2G scam, Commonwealth Games (Rs.8000 crores), Adarsh Housing, Bangalore land scam etc. Unless we put a check on it, we could disintegrate into a worthless nation soon.

The corporates of our country currently is only running after profits. For them, the motto is profits at whatever means. For this, they form unholy nexus with ever corrupt politicians. Year on year, the size of the corruption is increasing heavily. It is time the corporates also started thinking about is social responsibilities. The rules of the country and their political allies must not allow crony capitalism to be formed to plunder the nation.

Inclusivity is another challenge that the country is facing. The gap between the rich and the poor is increasing very rapidly. Unless we are able to bring all the people of the nations, be it rich or poor, dalits or upper class and touchable or untouchable, we have to bring all to the umbrella of governance and financial independence as much as possible. Inclusivity has to the nation’s highest priority.

As a nation, over the last 15 years, we never had it so good. While we had grown economically, we also could elevate 10 more percent of the population out of poverty. There is much more to be done. If we are governed well, there is every chance for India to emerge as the Global Economic Super Power.

On to this dream, I rest my post.