National Security Doctrine for Global Reach continues...

The next five positions are taken by the big four of Europe: Germany, UK, France and Italy. Brazil and Russia bring up the rear with their joint size less than that of India.

Before the end of the current decade, India’s economy will become larger than that of Japan, thus taking it to 3rd place behind the USA and China. China, India and the USA are already the three most populated countries of the globe.

The projected changes in the relative size of economies will have profound implications for global governance, the global balance of power and the stability of Asia as the Pakistani economist Shahid Burki has observed recently. The phenomenal change in the implied power structure will pose a major challenge to Europe, N. America, and even to Asia itself, that few seem to really comprehend or even appreciate today. There is confidence today that India can make it. Moreover, India after 2015 will be uniquely placed to harness ‘a
demographic dividend’ with a population of median age of 29 years compared to China (37 years) and Japan (48 years) .

There are several alternative scenarios on where India could be in the year 2020, which fall between two extremes. On one extreme is the optimistic scenario of India becoming a developed, united and secure nation, with adequate military power and a UN Security Council seat with a veto, a nation with no significant poverty, unemployment, environmental or health hazards. On the other extreme is a pessimistic scenario in which India collapses and balkanizes like the USSR, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, or fragments like Colombia into separate countries or areas with rampant terrorism, narcotic rackets & AIDS, stark poverty, and unemployment.

India has already been through the pessimistic scenario once in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The case of Yugoslavia and the USSR in the 20th century shows that we can do so again in the 21st century. Hence there is a “choice” for Indians to make: which route to take? Merely wishing to be a developed country by 2020 is not enough. We have to work for it.


to be continued....