Twenty20 euphoria spills over to New York

But between the hype and the reality or, to put in another way, beyond the hyped up reality of cultural festivals of this kind, some tough questions about India’s growth trajectory presented themselves. A discussion presented jointly by Yale University and the Confederation of Indian Industry, with the rather wound-up title, India 2050: A Grand Strategy for India Rising, attempted some tentative answers. The panelists included historian Ramachandra Guha, columnist Thomas Friedman, Infosys co-chairman Nandan Nilekani, economists T.N. Srinivasan and Roopa Purushothaman and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.

They could very easily, if a trifle facilely, be divided into the two camps: the optimists and the sceptics. Nandan Nilekani belonged to the first group. He argued that there are many signs that bode well for India’s future: it has created space for entrepreneurs, leveraged technology effectively—whether in electronic voting machines, stock markets or railway reservations. It has, besides, a demographic advantage and ordinary people are increasingly realising the value of globalisation.

Roopa Purushothaman, who was one of the authors of what has now come to be referred to as the BRICs report, which predicted that Brazil, Russia, India and China would be among the world’s largest economies by 2050, believed India will be the world’s third largest economy on an average growth of 6.5 to 7 per cent. In fact, she said, according to her projections 2050 could see a monumental shift in world economies, with India accounting for 40 per cent of oil consumption.

Among the sceptics was T N Srinivasan, who argued that growth was not an intrinsic value, and it was necessary to ask whether the new growth levels will achieve the overarching objective of eradicating mass poverty. “We don’t want to be a flash in the pan,” he observed dryly. He also felt that it is necessary to ask whether the growth India currently enjoys was sustainable.

Ernesto Zedillo, a sceptic too, believed that the present growth levels cannot be sustained with the present “business as usual” approach. Human capital in India, he agreed, was big, but relative to the country’s population, clearly not adequate. More needed to be done in terms of health and education.

Ramchandra Guha and Thomas Friedman, in their different ways, saw India’s growth advantages as a mixed bag. Guha cited two threats which could rain on this parade: religious extremism of the Hindu right, which wants a Pakistani India, and a comparable threat on the Left from unbridled Maoism growing on the dissatisfactions of tribals robbed of their natural resource base by the processes of globalisation. Thomas Friedman says that India, to him, was nothing short of a miracle. It remains “one of the equilibrating forces in the world”. But he still will not hazard a guess whether the India story was an absolute reality or a mere mirage.

The message for India, both of today and of 2050, was clear: there can be no getting away from harsh social and economic inequalities, inadequate health and education inputs, sharp rises in unemployment and the environmental pitfalls of accelerating growth.