By 2047, India should become the third superpower besides China and the US.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi thinks far ahead of the times, which is why he is aiming at Mission 2047, by which time India should become the third superpower besides China and the US. A few of the reforms needed to achieve this ambitious target are given in what follows. The first is tax reform, as the present tax structure stubbornly emulates the older pattern of having a low base of taxpayers. The reasons for such a situation are relatively steep rates combined with harsh penalties for non-compliance. Low rates, as the empirical evidence in multiple countries shows, lead to higher collections as a consequence of the tax base being expanded multiple times. As for harsh penalties, they are mostly ineffective in checking abuse while scaring away millions from entering the roster of taxpayers. The difficulty is compounded when officers of doubtful integrity continue in office. Some of them even register false cases of non-compliance in order to squeeze bribes from the taxpayer. Not just in the matter of taxes, but across the board, regulations are still too many and too cumbersome to create the ambience for the fast GDP growth that the country needs. Both foreign and domestic investment needs to rise sharply in India. At present net investment is sluggish, creating as a result substantial joblessness among the youth in particular. Being unemployed has a deleterious effect on the youths. Several react by keeping away from people known to them, for fear that the dread question will be asked: “What is your job?” Prolonged unemployment and under-employment lead to depression and even to the erosion of the cognitive abilities that have made people from India so welcome in advanced countries. Some lose hope and a few of these resort to suicide. According to Dr Sanjeev Bagai, who has studied this problem, several lakh youth in India commit suicide every year. He points out that the figures are of recorded suicides, leaving out the substantial number of youths whose suicides are passed off as “accidental death” or death from health conditions rather than suicide. The reason, says Dr Bagai, is that several doctors and hospitals are chary of recording suicides as such, for fear of getting involved in medico-legal cases as a consequence. Had it been any leader other than PM Narendra Modi running the Union Government, the rate of suicides would have been much more. PM Modi is an important factor in youth having hope for the future if they are in the overwhelming majority of young people who cannot afford to migrate to select countries for better prospects. Structural reforms in the matter of Ease of Business would reduce figures for the number of jobless youth considerably. PM Modi had the farsightedness to work on skilling the youth, and such efforts need to multiply and reflect not just present but likely future needs as well.
Healthcare is also a sector needing the personal attention of PM Narendra Modi. Where middle class non-officials are concerned, private health insurance is not just expensive but unavailable as well. In the US, pre-existing conditions are not legally acceptable as a reason for refusing to give an insurance policy. Yet such a clause is extensively used in India, making health insurance providers convert healthcare into (their own) wealthcare. Senior citizens are particularly badly off, with several being refused health insurance from private providers. Presidents Lyndon Baines Johnson and Barack Hussein Obama were successful in ensuring that insurance companies in effect do not run a system where profits are huge at the expense of society. Existing insurance policies should be automatically continued rather than stopped after a specified period. Senior citizens need to be given better access to health insurance.
Another matter of concern is the value of the Indian rupee compared to other currencies. A country with a large trade deficit would benefit from a rising rather than falling value of its currency. Among the measures Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal could consider would be to provide publicly a list of the top hundred of net foreign exchange spenders and a list of the top hundred companies in India that are net contributors to the foreign exchange flowing into the country. The banking system in India needs to set higher interest rates for borrowers who are net spenders of foreign exchange. Those who make fortunes by speculating against the rupee should be identified publicly. Still better would be to foil their plans by the rupee rising rather than falling. Much has been written about the nearly 60% of citizens who are young, described as the demographic dividend. Demography should not turn from dividend to disaster because of lack of employment. Judging by his last foreign visit, PM Modi is the most popular Head of Government in the world. As a consequence of such an image, efforts have been accelerated by those against India to let loose a cataclysm of protests by November in the cities. Through such efforts, they hope to slow down the high growth rates that the policies of PM Modi have created when what is needed is even higher rates. These enemies of India seek to repeat in India the mob violence in Bangladesh that resulted in a change of regime. Such plotters need to fail, and the way for that is to speed up reforms. It may not have been structural or pilot error that caused the Advanced Jet Trainer to crash soon after takeoff in the Dubai Air Show. The AJT may have been sabotaged by forces seeking to roll back the progress India is making. An “It can never happen here” is to be complacent. Take as an example the narcotics trade. Out of nearly four lakh drugs seizures in India, less than three hundred drug smugglers have been jailed. China was made chaotic by the spread of opium in the country. In this century, a similar effort by external predators is taking place in India. PM Narendra Modi and HM Amit Shah have the capacity to speed the country forward onto the Superpower India 2047 path, and wellwishers are looking forward to progress in this essential task, that of building a good future for the youth of India.
