India in the 21st Century

India Today and in the Future

India is a success story on many levels. The rate and scale of change in recent decades has been extraordinary and continues.

India is the second most populous country in the world with an estimated population of over 1.3 billion people.

This represents around 17% of the global population (7.8 billion people) or one in six people. Within a decade, however, India is expected to be the most populous country in the world and have the largest workforce.

Moreover, India is a very young country with around half of the population under 25 years and around two thirds under 35 years.

It is the largest democracy in the world with more than 900 million eligible voters.

India is already one of the largest economies in the world. When ranked by nominal output (Gross Domestic Product) India is the fifth largest economy. Over the last two decades India’s economy has increased seven times and now exceeds $US3 trillion.

As in the case of China and many other developing economies, India’s economic growth has been driven by a range of factors including economic reforms (liberalising markets and increasing competition) and urbanisation.

However, although hundreds of millions of people have seen dramatic shifts in their standard of living and many millions have escaped poverty, India’s economic growth remains uneven and the country’s potential continues to remain untapped.

The Indian Government is pursuing an ambitious economic reform agenda and aims for India to become a $US5 trillion economy by 2024.

Although COVID-19 might impact the timing of this goal, it will not diminish the will or ambition of Indians to join the ranks of the world’s leading economies.

A key factor will be India’s relentless focus on innovation, technology and knowledge-driven economic growth.

This is critically important given the “global shift towards knowledge-based forms of competitiveness” and efforts by nations to move up the value-chain (Kulkarni, 2019).

This focus on innovation has led to India becoming globally renowned as an outsourcing destination, especially for technology firms, and for software development.

India increasingly excels in many other innovation and technology areas including the number of graduates in science and engineering, quality of innovation, information and communication technology exports, elite education and training institutions in the engineering and physical sciences fields and grass roots innovation.

There is also a growing start-up culture, an increasing focus on overall exports (including higher value manufacturing) and increasing participation in global value chains. Bangalore (officially known as Bengaluru), the information technology capital of India, has been called the next Silicon Valley.

In addition to Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi have been ranked in the world’s top science and technology clusters.

A considerable driver of India’s economic success and innovation leadership is the reach of India’s diaspora – the largest in the world – with around 18 million of India’s citizens living in other countries.

Many of the global Indian diaspora are amongst the most successful migrants.

For example, in the United States Indian migrants are amongst the most successful and wealthiest immigrants.

An increasing number of CEOs of Silicon Valley and big tech firms are Indian born.

While discussing India’s success, it is also important to recognise the challenges which will have to be overcome. These include sustainability, infrastructure, a sizeable proportion of people living below the poverty line, education, natural environment challenges, job creation and labour force participation.