THREE CRITICAL ISSUES FACING INDIA: TERROR AS ONE, FORETOLD INDIA 2020 (Extract from the talk Change and Change Agents delivered at World Academy of Art and Science: General Assembly 2008, 17-20 October 2008, Hyderabad)

 INDIA NOW AND 2020

Almost every statement told about India will be partly true. It will be an exercise in listing dialectical opposites or trying to resolve paradoxes.

Blandly put, India is now growing at a rapid rate in its GDP. Though most of its firms and most S&T institutions are yet laggards or followers in global terms, the desire to catch up through follower mode, is increasing.

When the major national exercise for Technology Vision for India 2020 was undertaken by Technology, Information & Forecasting Council (TIFAC) during 1994-1995 and when the exercise resulted in reports during first quarter of 1996, many Indian establishment elites were still skeptical about India’s growth. This was partly because of the earlier decades of very slow planned growth (during which time population however grew nearly four fold !) and also due to the global financial crises during 1995. There was a general gloom or pessimism.

Therefore the projections of Indian GDP and its growth as can be seen from the book by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Y.S. Rajan “India 2020 : A vision for a new millennium” (Ref.8) reflected figures which have been far exceeded now. World GDP also has grown much more speedily then projected.

In many sectors India has performed much better than envisaged in the Vision exercise and therefore in the book. Steel sector has grown in a totally unanticipated manner. The book projected Indian production figures. While growth in domestic production is not as rapid, Indian companies have emerged as global giants by purchasing foreign steel companies.

Indian agricultural growth has been nearly stagnant or very slow. The book had recommended multiple measures. Especially the measures recommended for a large number of marginal farmers (which were also practically demonstrated in fairly large communities of farmers in Bihar, UP, Uttarakhand etc during 1998 – 2003) were not taken up in a sustained manner by the governments and public institutions.

Similarly manufacturing sector including small and medium enterprises were neglected as the establishment elites were more obsessed with IT enabled and financial services as prime movers of wealth generation. As a result while real estate emerged as a major growth area, generation of employment for large number of Indian youth and the income of marginal farmer families took a severe beating.

The current author who used to believe in pushing ahead with projects (big and small) to effect changes, is now much more deeply aware of the issues of evolutionary changes in institutions, especially given the constitutional framework India has inherited for governance. Indian systems have some inherent time-constraints, which the current author had termed as Indian time-rate-of-interaction (Reg.9).

Projections therefore towards 2020 will have certain caveats. The projection of about 8% continual growth for 12 more years can show that utter poverty can be removed. Current push for elementary education through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan may remove illiteracy. Public health system may improve.

The major concern is that the skill levels of most of the economically active population will be fragile given the push of global changes. This means a continuing anxiety of economic insecurity for a large number of Indians. Even now the percentage of those employed in organized sector is going down during the past two decades and it is 6% now.

Another concern to sustain rapid growth would depend on the ability of Indian firms and S&T institutions to create new knowledge capital at the global levels; to own Intellectual Property Rights (IPR’s). It is very low currently. The current author with three other co-authors has elaborated on it in a recent paper submitted to Forum for Global Knowledge Sharing. (Ref.10).

The third major concern is about the governance; due to identity politics and large scale corruption of public institutions and individuals who run them, India has become a very soft state prone to terrorist attacks. The “liberal” elites have paralysed the Govt. institutions thus preventing them from taking actions to pre-empt or eliminate such attacks on people. This has long term implications as the domestic and foreign investors may choose other safer destinations like China etc.

Why is India mentioned in this paper? It is but an example of a large chunk human population. It is about 16% of world population and is likely to be of similar percentage during 2020 as well. Though the population by and large is much less desirous of change (evolutionarily perhaps more conservative!), a push towards speedy changes has begun and is likely to continue to gather momentum. Given the extensive coverage of modern media with about 100 TV channels including foreign ones competing to bombard Indian population with visuals and messages in local languages, the messages of ‘change’ are rapidly spreading. That is the reason one finds various forms of protests and violence.

The right to better living and equality etc, as well as the higher concepts of human evolutionary concepts and group behaviour, are trying to find ways to come into practice. No doubt various forms of ‘tribalisms” domestic and foreign are also at work. We have mentioned about the terrorist networks in India, earlier.

If India can effect the ‘changes’ which are more or less fully demonstrated by the earlier evolution of other human beings in the developed and some advanced developing world, fairly peacefully and without any major disasters, it will be a good example for many others and will also increase humanity’s hope.

(Extract from the talk

Change and Change Agents delivered at

World Academy of Art and Science: General Assembly 2008,

17-20 October 2008, Hyderabad)