Essay: India@100
This Independence Day, BW Businessworld decided to look ahead — 30 years from now — and define the contours of ‘India at 100’
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Five-year plans are passé. Today, when we talk of the planning process in India, we talk in terms of 15-year vision documents.
The present Narendra Modi government is already talking about a ‘new India’, which it says would be a reality by 2022, five years from now. This Independence Day, as India turned 70, we at BW Businessworld decided to look ahead — 30 years from now — and define the contours of ‘India at 100’.
There are various sub-themes of this idea. Will we be a world power by then? Will our economic potential be fully realised? Will India’s strategic interests and capabilities be respected by other global powers? How would have India’s famed demographic dividend played out by then? Would there be enough jobs for all in, by then, the most populous nation of the world?
BW Businessworld, in the following pages, explores the above questions and many more.
There are research findings by leading agencies that say that India would be the second largest economy by 2050. Our own NITI Aayog (look out for the interview with its outgoing vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya) believes that India could be one of the top three economies in the next two decades.
We put the questions to an array of thinkers, economists, industry leaders and thought leaders. BW Businessworld reporters look at the growth potential of their respective sectors in the coming years, and paint a promising picture of India.
We undertake a nationwide survey and a corporate India survey to gauge the mood at 70, and also look at the issues that will affect them in the coming three decades.
A BW panel comprising Gurcharan Das, S. Gurumurthy, Abhijit Sen, Rakesh Mohan and Jagadish Shettigar looks at the hits and misses of the last seven decades and also at what the future has in store for us.
M. S. Swamianthan, Sunil Kant Munjal, A. M. Naik, Baba Kalyani, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Ajay Shriram, Sanjeev Sanyal, S. Y. Quarishi and John Chambers, among others, hold forth on what they believe India would look like in 2047, when it turns 100.