Can India become the world's next superpower?

  

 

Can India become the world's next superpower?

 

General elections are going to be held in India from 19 April i.e. Friday. The process of elections will continue for the next six weeks during which 96.9 million eligible voters will exercise their right to vote. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party Bharatiya Janata Party will try to win power for the third time in the country.

India is one of the few countries in the world that has nuclear weapons and last year India became the first country to land on the South Pole of the Moon.

India is the most densely populated country in the world and has recently surpassed the United Kingdom to become the fifth largest economy in the world.

Many global observers are predicting that India will fast growing economy be the world's next global superpower, but the country's rise is a mixture of both hope and danger.

A size of its economy

Narendra Modi had announced during his visit to South Africa in August 2023 that 'India will be the engine of world growth'. And then by the end of 2023, India has earned its title as the world's fastest growing major economy. Recall that in the last three months of last year, the size of its economy had increased by 8.4 percent.

World economies can be classified by GDP (Gross Domestic Product). GDP measures the economic activity of companies, governments and individuals in a country.

According to several financial institutions, including the American investment bank Morgan Stanley, India will be on the way to become the third largest economy in the world by 2027, surpassing Germany and Japan.

Even more remarkable is that at the time of its independence in 1947, India was one of the poorest countries in the world.

Decades of British rule left the country with inadequate infrastructure and agricultural industry, and the country was unable to feed its growing population. According to estimates at that time, the life expectancy of people in India was 35 years, but according to the World Bank, today it has almost doubled to 67 years, while the world average is 71 years.

According to the World Bank, India is the tenth largest exporting country in the world. Its major exports include oil, diamonds, and medicines.

India's economy flourished rapidly as the country grew in the service industry, telecommunications and software sectors. But according to economists, employment opportunities could not be created at the same pace.

An HSBC briefing estimated that India needs to create 70 million more jobs over the next decade given its population growth rate, but only a third of that is actually and estimated. It is unlikely that more jobs will be created.

A bursting population bubble

Unlike many other developed countries, the majority of India's population consists of youth.

India currently has a total population of 1.4 billion, and Indian economists Bashar Chakraborty and Gaurav Dalmia have predicted that by 2030, the country's working-age population will exceed one billion.

He told the Harvard Business Review recently that the economic boom of other Asian economies, including Japan and China, depends on their "growing working-age population." But keeping all these young people in the country can be difficult. According to the United Nations, the largest number of people living abroad in the world are citizens of India.

About 2.5 million people migrate abroad every year, including some highly educated and skilled people.

According to data from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, more and more Indians are choosing to live abroad indefinitely, including a large number of people relinquishing Indian citizenship.

Dual citizenship is not allowed in India. In the year 2022, more than 225,000 people canceled their Indian citizenship and acquired citizenship of other countries.

While the youth who are in the country are facing problems in getting jobs.

According to government data, the unemployment rate in India is 8% while in the US it is 3.8%.

In March, the International Labor Organization said 15- to 29-year-olds make up 83 percent of India's unemployed, the majority of whom have at least a secondary education.

Indian journalist and author Siddharth Deb says, "I often travel across India and talk to the youth." They are depressed.

"Economic growth has created new infrastructure like highways and airports and the number of billionaires has increased, but ordinary people in India are suffering," he says.

A deepening political divide

Political divisions in India are not new. Since the 19th century, there has been a debate whether it is a secular country or a Hindu nation, with 90% of the population being Hindu.

The debate intensified when Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist BJP won a landslide victory in 2014.

Since the party came to power, incidents of hate crimes against Muslims have increased, and in March both the United Nations and the US government expressed concern over the passage of a law that would have banned Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. It will make it easier for non-Muslim religious minorities to get Indian citizenship.

Author Devika Rege, who recently published Quarter Life, a controversial novel about India in the wake of the 2014 elections, believes her country is facing a wave of 'communal unrest'.

"Identity politics has been a reason for some people to vote, but the 2014 election has divided people even at the level of friends and family," she says.

'India's growth rate is hard to deny, but civil liberties have been compromised and communal unrest has increased. Such a fire, if left unchecked, will engulf everything.

India does not always cooperate with the West

For years, Western countries have been hoping that India will become a counterbalance to China's influence in Asia.

Apart from being a nuclear-armed state, it also has the second largest army in the world with a strength of 1.45 lakh personnel. But India does not always behave as the West wants.

Over the past two years, Russia has faced criticism for taking a neutral stance in the Ukraine conflict and for buying Russian oil at discounted prices despite Western sanctions against Moscow.

Sania Kulkarni, an international relations expert at the London School of Economics and Political Science, says the West can expect India to be "less difficult" than China.

"It would be wrong to expect India to act as an ambassador for the West in the region," she says.