Recently, a British think tank predicted that India will surpass Japan and Germany to become the world's third-largest economy by 2035. According to the consideration that India's growth rate in 2023 will be "the world's first", it is predicted that India will surpass China and the United States in 2080 to become the world's largest economy. India's prediction is really surprising, Western think tanks just "praised" India and predicted the situation for such a long time, while Indians are ashamed to say that they will surpass China and the United States and become the "world boss" in a few decades, which is really overconfident.
On December 27, the British "Times" quoted the annual forecast report released by the British think tank "Economic and Business Research Center" that as long as China maintains social stability, it will surpass the United States to become the world's largest economy in 2037, and it is expected that by 2026, Germany's third largest economy will give way to Japan, and by 2027, India will replace Germany as the fourth largest economy.
The British "Center for Economics and Business Research" also predicts that "India, with a capital of $10 trillion, will become the third largest economy in 2035", the United States may "overtake" sometime in 2050, and the world's largest economy will "change hands" in 2080, and India will take the lead, and the result will be a "global geopolitical shift". In other words, when the time comes, China, the United States and India will not be much different in terms of economic volume for a long time, and there is a high probability that there will be "three superpowers" in the world, and the three superpowers will be in three camps, which will also have an impact on global geopolitics.
The main arguments of the British think tank may not seem so convincing, but there is some plausibility. As India has a very large young population, has become the world's most populous country, will not enter an aging society in a short period of time, has sufficient labor and has a price advantage, coupled with India officially surpassed the United Kingdom last year to become the world's fifth largest economy, the Reserve Bank of India announced on December 8, 2023 that India's GDP growth forecast for fiscal year 2024 will be raised from 6.5% to 7%, and the International Monetary Fund also predicts that the Indian economy is expected to grow by 6.3% this year due to investment and strong domestic demand , leading among major countries in the world.
India is more confident internally than the likes of international institutions. In a speech to the US Congress in June 2023, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "When I visited the US for the first time as Prime Minister, India was the 10th largest economy in the world. Now India is the fifth largest economy, and we will soon be the third largest. ”
In fact, compared with the clamor of the Indian media and politicians, the discerning people in India know at a glance that they have not forgotten to pour a basin of cold water. Raghuram Rajan, former governor of India's central bank of India, believes that if India's GDP growth rate cannot exceed 6% in 2023, it will not be able to achieve the goal of "becoming a developed economy by 2047", and will even face problems such as "early arrival of population aging" and "economic development 'growing old before getting rich'". He also pointed out that India's economic development has fatal problems such as "low labor force participation rate" and "insufficient development momentum in the south, which is an economic powerhouse", and the Modi government should say less and do more about this.
The Indian government is overjoyed, boosted by the predictions of international organizations, coupled with the cheering of British think tanks, has long thrown the sense of crisis out of the clouds, and how can they listen to the opposite tunes sung by these sober-minded people in China. However, in the eyes of the general public, India may really be "a little hopeful" this time, and Western think tank elites rarely publish relevant reports in an eye-catching way, and this kind of operation is relatively accepted by Western society.
So, can India really get its wish and surpass China and the United States, especially China, which has a lot of energy to surpass in the next few decades, and become the "world leader"?
First, analysts have misjudged India's rise in the past. In the '90s, analysts trumpeted that India's growing young population would drive economic liberalization and create an "economic miracle." At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2006, India was hailed as "the world's fastest-growing free-market democracy," and India's trade minister said India's economy would soon surpass China's. While it is true that India's economy has grown, the reality is a slap in the face. It can be seen that it is not that the predictions of Western elites are "sacred", accurate or even unquestionable, but that they are full of errors about reality, just like the feelings of ordinary people.
Second, despite India's rapid growth over the past two years, India's economy is still much smaller than China's. Compared to China, India has no advantages in terms of land and labor. First, the difficulty of land acquisition in India is well known. In September 2015, the Modi government's land reform failed again, according to India's current Land Law, which requires the consent of 80% of affected households to acquire land for businesses. India is also a country where land is privatized, and the so-called "wind can enter, rain can enter, but the king cannot enter", and the prime minister cannot force farmers with only two acres of land.
Third, India's backward infrastructure has always been a bottleneck restricting the development of the manufacturing industry, and land is the bottleneck among the bottlenecks. For example, although India has the world's largest railway and road network, it has poor conditions and low capacity, which requires large-scale renovation and construction, which will inevitably involve cross-state land acquisition, which is more difficult.
Fourth, there is the issue of labor. Many people think that there are 1.3 billion fluent English-speaking workers in India, ready to be hired and willing to work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, but in fact, the small number of people who actually speak English and the "elite" who are concentrated in big cities are disdainful of doing these "low-end" jobs.
Finally, Indian society is very divided. To date, India has not yet achieved the "same text" that China's Qin Shi Huang did, and India has 180 languages, of which 15 are recognized by the constitution, nine more than the working languages of the United Nations, plus more than 700 dialects, which will greatly delay the pace of India's modernization. Recently, the Modi government also wants to carry out language reform, but it has encountered great resistance. The lack of a unified language is not a trivial problem, which shows that India lacks a minimum of cohesion, and it also cuts all aspects of India's state, society, economy, culture, and people's livelihood into a thousand gaps.
In addition, modern society has evolved to the point where technologies such as robotic systems and AI are gradually replacing human labor, covering the simple labor of the illiterate first, and then the complex labor of skilled workers, and so on. It is basically impossible for India to start and develop like the first pot of gold earned by "Made in China" in the 80s of the 20th century, and the times have long been different. China has relied on these funds to build a huge infrastructure, high-speed railways, highways, terminals, power grids, telecommunications networks, and then consciously promote industrial upgrading. And when it comes to developing AI, China is now the only global competitor of the United States, with top AI researchers mainly from China, the United States and Europe, and India not dominating. Therefore, the time, place, and people for the success of China's manufacturing industry are not available in India, let alone surpassing the current China.
Although India's self-confidence is bursting with rhetoric about surpassing China and the United States, in recent years, the gap between the rich and the poor in India has widened, resulting in "the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer". Rather than making a pointless assumption that China and the United States will catch up by 2080, India should spend more time on improving the standard of living for its people.