From emerging as a global software industry powerhouse, a source country of top CEOs of the MNCs, a trailblazer in space missions to harnessing the soft power of a vibrant film industry, when India celebrates its 78th Independence Day on Thursday, it can say- I have arrived. And all the while setting an example of a secular multi-faith, multi-lingual polity that is unequalled in the world.
Krishnamurthy Subramanian, the executive director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), earlier this week said as India is able to clock a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rate of 8 percent per annum in real terms, it has the potential to emerge as the “Sachin Tendulkar” of the global economy. And that means an ambitious $55 trillion economy by 2047, thus officially becoming the economic powerhouse of the world.
Economy
If India maintains an 8 percent real growth rate, coupled with a 5 percent inflation rate, the nominal growth rate in Rupee terms would be 13 percent, said Subramanian, who was also the 17th chief economic advisor to the Indian government.
He said, while unveiling his book ‘India@100 Envisioning Tomorrow’s Economic Powerhouse’, that starting from a GDP of $3.25 trillion in 2023, the country’s economy would undergo four doublings over the 24-year period from 2023 to 2047, reaching $52 trillion by the time India celebrates the centenary of its independence.
The IMF executive director acknowledged that it is ambitious but possible through compounding and effective policy implementation, comparing it to cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar’s career trajectory.
Subramanian also emphasized the importance of manufacturing and integrating into global value chains and urged state governments to implement reforms to attract global investments.
Outpacing global majors like the United States and Germany, India experienced the fastest growth in intangible investments from 2011 to 2020.
India ranked 14th in absolute levels of intangible investments among 26 advanced economies in 2020.
As per reports, the key drivers included software and data, reaching over 10 percent of GDP, higher than the 9 percent GDP of Japan, reflecting a significant global process.
According to a column by Navaneel Kar, the Managing Director of IPM India — the Indian affiliate of Philip Morris International, published in CNBC-TV18, at the heart of India’s robust economic stability lie several growth drivers, each running on full steam to power the country’s upward trajectory, and these growth pillars include infrastructure, digital ecosystem, rising middle-income and progressive reforms.
India emerged as a global leader in software development, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), and other IT-related services, with Indian Information Technology (IT) companies dominating the global market and India-based leaders steering the wheels of world tech.
Additionally, the rise of a young population and growing disposable incomes fueled growth in the country’s banking, insurance, and related financial services.
Ahead in Space Race
Another major pillar of economic progress is space technology where India is rapidly emerging.
Last year, India became the fourth nation to successfully land a spacecraft on the lunar surface and the first country in the world to soft land a lunar module on the undiscovered south pole of the Moon .
While India is preparing to send astronauts to space in its first human spaceflight mission next year, the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission helped establish the country as a capable space power and bolstered its growing space ambitions.
The journey of India
India’s economic journey since gaining independence has been marked by distinct phases. In the decades following independence, the country adopted a largely socialist and protectionist economic model, characterized by state control, public sector dominance, and limited foreign participation.
While this era laid the foundation for some essential industries, it also resulted in slow growth and significant economic inefficiencies.
The turning point came in 1991 when the country faced a severe economic crisis, prompting the government to initiate a series of landmark economic reforms, and these reforms aimed at liberalization, privatization, and globalization (LPG), marking a shift towards a more market-oriented economic system.
These economic reforms unleashed a wave of economic growth, leading to significant improvements in productivity, increased trade, and a growing influx of foreign investment.
Poverty in India was a major challenge despite overall reductions in the last several decades as its economy grew.
Since the 1950s, the Indian government and non-governmental organisations have initiated several programs to alleviate poverty, including subsidising food and other necessities, increased access to loans, improving agricultural techniques and price supports, promoting education, and family planning.
These measures have helped eliminate famines, cut absolute poverty levels by more than half, and reduced illiteracy and malnutrition.
Poverty Alleviation and Assertion
Although the Indian economy has grown steadily over the last two decades, its growth has been often uneven when comparing social groups, economic groups, geographic regions, and rural and urban areas. But the country is always on a course correction as it lifts millions out of poverty.
According to the World Bank, India has achieved annual growth exceeding 7 percent over the last 15 years and continues to pull millions of people out of poverty.
The South Asian nation has halved its poverty rate over the past three decades and has seen strong improvements in most human development outcomes, a report by the international financial institution has found.
Growth is expected to continue and the elimination of extreme poverty in the next decade is within reach, said the World Bank, which warned that the country’s development trajectory faces considerable challenges.
Healthcare
Moving to the healthcare sector, India has made significant improvements in the health outcomes of its people, according to the Asia Pacific Observatory (APO).
As per APO, life expectancy at birth increased to 69.6 years in 2020, from an expected 47.7 years in 1970, while Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) declined from 301 to 130 per 100,000 live births between 2003 and 2014-16, and Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) declined from 68 in the year 2000 to 24 per 1,000 live births in 2016.
However progress is uneven across states, and demographic and epidemiological changes means India faces a double burden of disease and an ageing population, while the top three causes of death in 2019 were ischaemic heart disease, COPD and stroke, APO said.
Deloitte reported, quoting the World Health Organization, that India will require at least 1.8 million physicians, nurses, and midwives to meet the standard of 44.5 health workers per 10,000 people by 2030, while artificial intelligence (AI) could be used as a powerful tool to fill these gaps using precision medicine and genomic data to design treatment paradigms.
Women power
According to recent data, women’s potential holds key to 10 percent growth for India.
The data also highlights a significant uptick in women’s labour force participation rate (FLFPR), climbing from 23.3 percent in 2017-18 to 37 percent in 2022-23.
This shift, particularly evident in rural areas comprising skilled agricultural labour, reflects women’s growing involvement in productive activities, as per new data.
Rising diplomatic assertion
From its avowed non-aligned policy and fence-sitting to assertion in global platforms while remaining rooted to the core of its foreign policy of non-interference in other country’s affairs, India has come a long way in the past one decade led by its Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“When Modi assumed office in 2014, critics quickly labelled him a ‘provincial politician’ lacking in foreign policy experience. His ‘Hindu nationalist’ background was seen as a potential hindrance to India’s relations, especially with the Islamic world. However, Modi surprised both detractors and supporters by adopting a pragmatic foreign policy centred around the ‘India first’ principle,” wrote Harsh V Pant in an article on the think tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF)’s platform.
India’s stance has been in response to the global challenges and changes in geopolitics. “The rise as a formidable player in global politics is also largely driven by structural changes in the international order. The shifting balance of power and increasing disillusionment with China in the West have turned global attention to India, now the world’s fastest growing large economy,” Pant wrote.
“Favourable demographics, its appeal as an alternative to China, and its strategic position in the Indo-Pacific have made this moment, India’s,” he wrote.
According to a Brookings study titled “The Fate of India’s Strategic Restraint”, India’s rearmament effort, riding on the nation’s unprecedented economic growth, has prompted some observers to wonder whether the country has decided to balance Chinese power in Asia or is seeking to correct the anomaly of strategic parity with Pakistan, a country one fifth its size.
Indians themselves want their country to act more assertively, and India’s primary rival, Pakistan, has never bought into neighborly restraint, as per the study.
India’s nuclear capability and defence might today are major bargaining chips in its strategic policies.
India’s Cultural Diplomacy
According to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, cultural diplomacy is an important dimension of a country’s soft power, and the international impact of India’s soft power was felt long before the term found place in popular parlance in the 21st century.
Indian arts, culture and spiritualism have attracted people from all around the world for centuries. From Yoga to the global popularity of India’s vibrant film industry (from Bollywood to the Southern filmdom of India) churning out films that touch the right chord in people across the world looking for entertainment and social consciousness with a heart, India is on the forefront.
The five pillars of India’s soft power, used in a strategic sense are Samman (dignity), Samvaad (dialogue), Samriddhi (shared prosperity), Suruksha (regional and global security), and Sanskriti evam Sabhayata (Cultural and civilizational links). These are interlinked with India’s broader political and economic goals of the country, the ministry said. (Times of Oman)
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