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| Aiming For A Better Life | | |
Eleven economists pen a mega book to find answers to issues that hinder India’s growth, says KUNAL MAJUMDER
WHERE WILL India be 30 years from now? Economist Harinder S Kohli is not into the prediction business but says he would be happy if someone could solve Mumbai’s rain problems. “If you want Mumbai to be like Barcelona, then we cannot have India’s biggest city under eight feet of water in the monsoons. We cannot have the types of trains that we have now and we cannot have 60 percent of Bombay living in slums,” says Kohli, who along with Anil Sood, a World Bank veteran, edited India 2039 for all the answers. Kohli, CEO of Centennial Group, a Washington-based advisory firm on emerging markets, says over the next three decades, nearly 90 percent of Indians will be middle class and the country’s per capita income will have crossed Rs 10 lakh. And if the government and civil society get that their act together, India could be transformed into an affluent society. There are 11 other economists — including former RBI boss Bimal Jalan and former director general of CSIR, RA Mashelkar — who agree.
The writers are unanimous that urbanisation will change what they call the country’s existing “pigeonholed” talents. “Already, such barriers are breaking down in urban institutions like armed services and centres for higher education like IITs and IIMs. The milliondollar question is how fast can this cover the whole country.”
The book also emphasises the need for a clean environment in an affluent society. The authors believe that the present establishment completely lacks a environmental vision. How can the State be taken seriously when it cannot even provide clean water to all its citizens? “Cleaning rivers has nothing to do with global warming?” Someone needs to answer. And act.
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