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INDIA: CHALLENGES AHEAD IN BECOMING A
SUPERPOWER
Being a Superpower means dominating others by overshadowing
others. It’s economic, military, and cultural influence is far beyond one’s border. Where the world copies what you do and you set the standards for the world.
In 1998 APJ Abdul Kalam had co-authored a book titled INDIA 2020: A Vision of Millennium. It talked about India being a Superpower within the next two decades. As predictions go, this was extremely bold. However instead of being greeting with scepticism, Kalam’s extreme optimism was met with large adulation. The only problem in this is that Kalam was completely off the mark. India is not a superpower in 2020. Far from it, in fact. The year 2020 itself has been a disaster for India.
The US and China tend to dominate the conversation when it comes
to the strongest economies in the world. But India is starting to change up the focus based on their incredible economic growth over the past decade and their limitless potential to the future. In 2018, the economy of US grew only 2.9%, China’s grew by 6.5% and India had the fastest growing economy in the world with a 7.4% growth rate. While in 2019, India had a GDP of $2000 trillion. Despite some promising statistics and economic trajectories India will need to overcome a no. of challenges before it will be able to surpass both US and China. So, what is holding India back? Well, historically it was Britain today its population, rampant corruption, poverty and n no. of other challenges.
Economic Challenges According to International Monetary Fund, India is the sixth largest economy in the world. It contributes just 3.3% to world economy while the contribution of India in population is humongous i.e. 17%. From 370 million in 1950, India’s population has grown tremendously to billion and a half today. According to UNDP, four-fifth of India’s population has to sustain itself on less than two dollars a day. By 2025 India will become the most populous nation; majority of growth is taking place in 2 states: UP and Bihar, poorest region of the country.
India currently has the largest illiterate population in the world.
Illiteracy is one of the major causes of unemployment, it creates hurdle for major chunk of population from joining workforce or they work as unskilled labourers. And this leads to hunger and poverty. Furthermore, children of illiterate parents often do not receive the same education as children of educated parents and this continuous the poverty cycle.
The primary challenge is job growth, the flipside to India’s massive
young force is the hurdle of providing enough sufficiently paying jobs to sustain the population. India’s newest generation of workers in particular may struggle to find a job. Without jobs all these young people could drag the country down instead of pulling it up. They could become the curse for this country. This problem can be solved by creating more entrepreneurs which will need to more business, more jobs, more tax and more the tax paid by citizen better the economy.
Another issue is that 81% of India’s workforce is engaged in informal
work, this includes household help, street vendor, rickshaw drivers and others. The economy is not benefiting as much as it could from these type of business. The proportion of formally skilled workers in India is extremely low, at 4.69% of total workforce compared to other countries. There is a gap between required skilled and available skilled. As a result, the per capita income in our country is low.
The gap between rich and poor is increasing tremendously. This is
due to the low tax paid by rich people in the country of poor people. Rich are becoming more richer and poor becoming more poorer. It’s like a big stomach with thin hands and legs. This is devastatingly unhealthy growth.
Socio-Political Challenges Socio-Politically things were even worse in the recent time. It was an unlikely look for a potential superpower. India was seeing its largest ever protest movement, with demonstrations all over the country against a new law that, for the first time introduced religion as a factor in Indian citizenship. It led to a horrific communal rioting in Delhi. This reflected how shaky India’s social fabric as well as law and order system was. Indian democracy has often been seen as model for other developing nations because of its power to accommodate huge diversity of language, religion, and culture But India is losing its unity in diversity because of power politics played around the religion. Recently Uttar Pradesh government passed a draconian law that severely restricts marriage between a Muslim and Hindu woman.
Corruption has ruined India’s economy. In fact, it has risen to the
very top. In a recent notorious case, India’s finance minister was arrested on corruption charges and even after that he still is the member of parliament. There are many such parliamentarians who have faced criminal charges including rape, murder but they still command us. The government has spent thousands of crores of rupees in many five year plans and the welfare of the people of India. But hardly 10% of this money has been actually used for the purpose it was meant and rest went into the pockets of bureaucrats and politicians. It is a struggle to get a bureaucratic approval, birth certificate even death certificates as well! everyone in the system is asking for ”mujhe kya milega!” There is also the problem of our media being largely controlled by extremely corrupt politicians and industrialists who play a major role by misleading the public with incorrect information. A part of the problem is constant election too. So the government is always in election mode and not so much on growth mode which requires bitter pills like land and labour reforms.
Environmental Challenges How can a country ever be a superpower if it’s not able to protect the very essence of the world? Nature, environment. Currently India is facing major environmental issues. Air pollution, poor management of waste, growing water scarcity, falling groundwater level, biodiversity loss is some of the issues. Even sustainable development goals (SDG’s) has been set by UN in 2015and are intended to achieve by 2030. So, sustainable development is very essential to thrive in the superpower race.
Lastly, the idea of becoming a successful nation lies in empowering
the people, all else is but bluster. The government must work towards this and empowerment is not a goal to achieve, a footnote to publish, but a continuous process.
