India Taking Flight

India poised to dominate the world economy in the next couple of decades or so. With the economy currently growing at around 8.5 per cent a year, India’s place in the list of world economies is changing. Two years ago India joined the world’s top 10 economies, and, according to a report by Goldman Sachs, India’s economy will surpass that of Italy, France and the UK to become the fifth largest in the world. Additionally, international economists agree that India will overtake the US economically by about 2050 as measured in dollar terms.

This rate of growth is due to several reasons:
1. India receives more inward remittances than any other country in the world by the 20 million-odd Indians who live abroad;

2. The boom in Information Technology (IT) and IT-enabled services (ITES) has made India the back office of multinational companies for key functions ranging from banking to homework guidance and even booking airline tickets. As a result, more than $39.6 billion in revenues in 2006-07, up 30.7 percent from the year before;

3. Rise in savings and investment rates which currently stand at about 32 to 34 percent of India’s gross domestic product and are expected to rise somewhere between 37 and 40 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2013;

4. And most importantly, a significant part of India’s 1.1 billion plus population is its youth. India’s highest percentage of population is below the age of 25 as compared to other nations. In essence, India is ensured that for decades, it will not be faced with a labor problem resulting in growth and savings rates

However, all that is well and fine. But it is better if we do not ride high on the waves of economic gains and success and turn a blind eye to the serious problems that still face the country.

First and foremost is poverty. While article after article is devoted to applauding the rise of India’s new middle-class, the reality is that it is only close to two or three hundred million people, a meager portion of India’s more than one billion population. The truth is that the gap and the inequality between the rich and the poor has widened so dramatically that it is visible every where.

Statistics show that at least 300 million live below the official poverty line of $2 a day and even in prosperous States like Punjab, desperate farmers are committing suicide unable to cope with their poverty-stricken states. And in India’s capital, New Delhi, five million of its 12.5 million population is homeless. Secondly, even after more than half a century of freedom, we cannot provide good drinking water to our citizens. And, compounding that problem are the water shortages and electrical power cuts that plague the Indian citizens be it summer or winter.

Thirdly, India has one of the lowest female literacy rates in Asia. In 1991, less than 40 percent of the 330 million women aged 7 and over were literate, which means today there are over 200 million illiterate women in India. This low level of literacy not only has a negative impact on women’s lives but also on their families’ lives and on their country’s economic development.

The problems that dog India’s achievements are too numerous to be listed but they include: religious bigotry, high-scale corruption in every sphere of the Indian society, child-mortality rate of children under the age of five - 57 per 1,000, though in rural areas and 62 per thousand in urban areas, child, and armed struggle by insurgents in different parts of India.

But all is not lost! India overthrew the shackles of the British Raj. From importing even the smallest things like nails following freedom from Britain, India makes its own supercomputers and satellite launch vehicles and will overcome the issues that stand in its way of becoming a true superpower, India will finally make its elusive “tryst with destiny” as envisaged by Pandit Nehru six decades ago.

- Editor