By Arun Kumar
New York, Sep 26 (IANS) India may look poised to become a major world player in the next few decades, but its ascendancy is by no means assured, says a panel of noted scholars, political figures and business leaders.
The panel hosted by the Yale Club of New York Monday identified areas in which India needs to make concrete improvements as they debated what must be done to keep India on the “right” track – and what precisely the right track is.
They examined the country’s trajectory in the panel on “India 2050: A Grand Strategy for India Rising” as part of the Incredible India@60 campaign sponsored by the Indian government and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
Education, infrastructure, economic development and the environment were named as some of the most important priorities for India in the coming years.
But even as India copes with its internal challenges, its rapidly growing economy – which economist Roopa Purushothaman projected will become the third largest in the world by 2050, after China and the US – and booming population mean the world needs to take note, panellists said.
“This is not about India in isolation, but about India becoming a global story,” said Purushothaman, the chief economist and strategist of the India-based Future Group.
On the education front, India is not doing enough to maintain the quality of its universities, said Indian historian and author Ramachandra Guha. He said the falling level of higher education in India has caused an exodus of young Indians to American universities like Yale and Harvard.
Yale President Richard Levin, who moderated the panel, said India’s decision to develop national universities in 30 states spread its resources too thin, unlike China, which has focused on seven universities. But improving education is vital for the economy’s long-term health, panellists agreed.
Purushothaman said flaws in the current educational system prevent India from redistributing its labour force away from agriculture and into more skilled sectors, a transfer she called India’s “biggest obstacle” in the coming decades.
Discussing India’s high economic growth – 9.4 percent of GDP in 2006, compared to 2.9 percent GDP growth in the US last year – the panellists engaged in a heated exchange about the reasons for India’s recent economic boom and whether foreign investment should be encouraged.
But former Mexican president and director of the Yale Centre for the Study of Globalisation Ernesto Zedillo said he thought the most important issue for the Indian economy was not foreign investment, but loosening the regulations governing Indian entrepreneurs.
“It’s not an issue of whether foreign investment is good or bad,” Zedillo said. “It’s an issue of whether the entrepreneur is really being allowed to flourish to the full extent. My answer is definitely not.”
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said when he looks at India and China, he sees two “six-lane superhighways”.
On China’s side of the road, Friedman said traffic is moving at 80 miles per hour on a nicely maintained, well-lit surface – but there’s a speed bump called political reform on the horizon that threatens to knock the wheels off China’s cars.
India’s highway, on the other hand, has a lot of potholes, and the sidewalks are cracked. Off in the distance, however, it appears to smooth out into a perfect, pothole-free stretch of asphalt. The question for India, Friedman said, is whether this is a mirage or a true oasis.
Turning the discussion to the environment, Levin noted a paradox exists in that as India modernises, it needs to provide food, water, electricity and transportation to its rapidly growing population, which increases its contributions to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
But at the same time, Levin said, the world cannot combat global warming unless India participates in greenhouse gas-cutting schemes.
Amid the discussions of India’s booming economy, Guha reminded the other panellists that many observers did not expect India to survive – much less prosper – when it became independent in 1947.
“Over the last 10 years, the success story is economics,” Guha said. “The bigger success story over the long haul is democracy.”
Other panel participants included Yale economics professor T.N. Srinivasan and Infosys Technologies Ltd. co-chairman Nandan Nilekani.