No nation will likely challenge the magnitude of India for centuries. The country that was once known as the world’s largest democracy is now known simply as the world’s largest in every way.
More than any other country in the past generation, China has used its size to transform the globe. Will India continue to act in the same way in the future?
Source: Deccan Herald
India’s economic trajectory is the envy of ageing nations like China, but the country’s demographic future varies by location. At one point, India and China tried to slow down the rate of population expansion by cutting birthrates. That time period is long gone.
The many industrialised countries that are quickly ageing find the India’s mild slope of the demographic curve, which propelled it into first place, admirable. Indians are living longer, although the annual birth rate has not changed. India doesn’t experience a sharp decline in population and the associated economic and social risks, in contrast to China, which is still feeling the effects of its decades-long one-child policy. As China’s workforce ages and shrinks, it has a young, growing workforce.
India is a nation that is ready to work. Between the ages of 15 and 59, more than two thirds of all Indians reside. The proportion of children and retirees to persons of working age in the nation is exceptionally low.
The majority of individuals in India lack the resources necessary to be unemployed\u2014working but without a job. The risk that is more obvious is underemployment. According to a research by Delhi University economist Jean Dreze, wages have been stagnant for eight years. India’s already wildly uneven society becomes even more so as a result of economic expansion without a corresponding increase in jobs, increasing the likelihood of upheaval.
In India, just approximately 1 in 5 women are employed in official jobs, one of the lowest rates in the world. China has a rate that is nearly twice as high as the global average and greater than both. When so few women contribute, an economy cannot reach its full potential.
When China intensified market reforms in the early 1990s, it mostly adopted the East Asian region’s model. Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and other nations rose to prominence as export-driven manufacturing leaders. It developed an economy that is now more than five times larger than India’s.
Currently, Western nations are eager to accept India as a viable alternative to China. However, the challenges that have prevented India from implementing the same policy for the past 30 years still exist: poor governance, a lack of adequate infrastructure, inadequate spending on primary education and health care, and regulations that restrict the use of land and labour.
Source: Success Gyan
Even after eight years, the Make in India initiative supported by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not yet gained any traction. As worker prices increased, more work left China’s factory floors and was taken up by Vietnam and Bangladesh. Regardless of how things turn out, China’s economic tale will not be repeated in India. India can develop in numerous ways, especially now that industrial manufacturing no longer plays the same dominant role in the global economy as it once did.
The only thing that is definite about the new world superpower is that it will be unique from all others.
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