India: the most populous nation is fighting for a place in the world

In the shadow of the US-China tussle, a third global player is biding its time: India.

Somewhere in this country, so immense that perhaps it is better to speak of a subcontinent, the cry of the newborn baby will be heard these days, which will make it the most populous in the world, reaching 1,425,775,850 inhabitants and thus surpassing China .

Some projections consider that this milestone —scheduled for Friday, April 14, according to UN estimates, although other analyzes consider that it has already happened— will also mark a profound change in the coming decades: with that Indian baby, one more among thousands, somehow a new narrative of the 21st century also begins, with a power on the rise, with growing economic weight and in search of its place in the world.

The international context seems propitious: New Delhi offers something like a third way in a world in turmoil and headed for a new Cold War.

The country also monopolizes several sources, not only because of the population.

Among other things, he is serving in 2023 as president of the G-20, the forum in which the most relevant economies on the planet meet.

And it has the declared willingness of the Government to seize the opportunity to set the pace within and influence outside the country.

Narendra Modi, the prime minister, set the tone for that emerging geopolitical vector last year when the GDP of the former British colony surpassed that of the United Kingdom and became the fifth largest economy in the world: “We have left behind those who ruled us for 250 years ", said.

“We won't stop now,” he warned.

The expectations are high.

In a year marked by pessimism and with economies cracked by turbulence of all kinds, "India continues to be a bright spot," said Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, director of analysis at the IMF, when presenting the economic outlook for 2023. Together with China , India will be the locomotive of the planet this year: between them they will contribute 50% of world growth.

Giant corporations, such as Apple, have begun to move part of their production to the country.

The State Bank of India believes that the country will become the third largest economy on the planet in 2029. And there are those who go further: “Many have said that it is the decade of India.

I sincerely think it is India's century," Bob Sternfels, CEO of McKinsey, a multinational consulting firm, said in an interview last year.

Some Indian analysts consider that, indeed, the moment of the jump has arrived.

"While China is already facing a demographic crisis, India is reaping a demographic dividend," says Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research, one of the country's most prestigious think tanks, based in New Delhi.

The average age, he says, is around 28, making the country one of the youngest in the world.

This population "is driving rapid economic growth, contributing to the boom in consumption and driving innovation, as evidenced by the development of a world-class information economy," he says.

The process has been going on for some time.

Already before the pandemic, the best-selling historian Peter Frankopan gave an account of it in

(2018), a book that tries to make sense of the "complex networks that make up the world's central nervous system."

“The spectacular expansion of the Indian middle class over the past three decades continues today at an extraordinary rate.

Although some economists point out that the distribution of wealth in India is highly unequal and it is the rich who have benefited disproportionately, the fact that the number of households with a disposable income of more than $10,000 a year has increased by two million in 1990 to 50 million in 2014 is revealing”.

Those data are already old, but they are still significant.

There are others that are more up-to-date: final consumer spending has more than doubled in India since 2010, reaching 2.25 trillion dollars in 2021 (about 2.05 trillion euros), according to the World Bank.

“This is just the beginning of a radical transformation both in terms of its dimensions and its significance,” Frankopan pointed out.

To the purely economic aspect is added a dimension that brings the former colony closer to Western values, according to the analyst Chellaney: "Despite its immense cultural and ethnic diversity, India is the first developing economy that, from the beginning, has striving to modernize and prosper through a democratic system.

The challenge, he adds, is to "make the most of" relatively low labor costs and the growing interest of Western companies in shifting production from China to become "a manufacturing powerhouse."

This interest has been growing during the pandemic lethargy in which Beijing opted for a zero covid strategy that kept its borders practically sealed from the outside for three years;

to which are added the frictions with the United States and the fear of a conflict in Taiwan.

"Companies are not leaving the Asian giant, but they are diversifying: the investment that could go to China is going to other places like North America, India or Southeast Asia," says Bettina Schoen-Behanzin, vice president of the Chamber of Commerce of the European Union in China.

Key piece for the USA

The door that has been opened for India is not only economic but geopolitical;

the country is trying to position itself "as a bridge between rival powers," according to Chellaney.

New Delhi sails well between two, three or even more waters during this period of rough seas.

It has a historic alliance with Russia (it has never condemned the invasion of Ukraine; Moscow is its main supplier of arms and, after the invasion of Ukraine, its main source of oil);

At the same time, it forms part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in which it rubs shoulders, among others, with Russia, China (with which it maintains a still burning border conflict) and Pakistan (another of the countries with which it shares a long track record of hostility);

but at the same time, it has strengthened ties with the West, with whom it meets in the Quad security forum, focused on the Indo-Pacific,

The country's gap as a pivot is perhaps unique in a "geopolitically fluid world," adds Harsh V. Pant, vice president of Foreign Policy and Studies at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank.

"India is trying to project itself as a country that can fill certain spaces," he adds.

For the Indian Foreign Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the central idea is that his country no longer has to abide by the rules dictated until now: "We have been conditioned to think of the post-1945 world as the norm and to see any way out of this world as a detour”, says Jaishankar in his book

(2020).

"Indeed, our own complex and plural history underscores that the natural state of the world is multipolarity."

An artist gave the last touches on March 1 in New Delhi to a G-20 logo before the meeting of foreign affairs ministers. NurPhoto (EL PAÍS)

The so-called Jaishankar doctrine has a lot to do with population and the growing national pride fueled by Modi's rise to power.

“A younger demographic and greater awareness help to bolster [India's] self-confidence,” he recounts in the book.

"An aspirational India will inevitably give higher priority to achieving national goals and establishing a global presence."

Global dynamics are changing and so are Indian capabilities and ambitions.

The opportunity, he adds, cannot be missed: “Our ability to face internal challenges will determine India's place in the world.

At least now we are focused on the right issues: digitization, industrialization, urbanization, rural growth, infrastructure, skills.”

If the geopolitical theater is going to be a contested space with the Indo-Pacific at the center of gravity, analyst Pant adds, it will be necessary to involve his country.

"I think Indian policy makers recognize that this is a time they cannot miss, that they have to respond."

And he gives as an example the ambitious foreign trade policy launched last week, which has set a goal of reaching 2 trillion dollars (1.8 trillion euros) of exports in 2030, which would mean almost tripling the current figure.

Due to big announcements like this, there are those who consider that we are facing an “excess of enthusiasm”, which basically does the country a disservice.

"The reality on the ground is different," says Sushant Singh, also an analyst at the Center for Policy Research.

This ex-soldier (he served for two decades) and later a journalist (he was deputy director of

) paints a bleaker picture: India, he says, remains a very poor and very unequal country in which, if one wants to underline its relevance as the G-20 headquarters, one should also make it clear that it is the lowest-income per capita among those 20: just over 2,000 euros, below countries like Bangladesh or Ghana.

In absolute values, India's GDP is about $3.5 trillion, compared with China's $18.3 and the US's $25, according to IMF data.

The labor force, he continues, is not sufficiently trained to favor this change that many predict (46% of those over 25 have not finished primary school, according to the OECD).

Apple, he gives as an example, has difficulties in supplying parts that meet the standards, according to the

it continues to be an eminently agricultural country (the sector employs 45.5% of the workforce despite representing 20% ​​of the economy);

they are not an exporting economy (less than 2% of world merchandise exports, according to official data);

foreign direct investment fell 15% between April and December 2022;

the low unemployment figures, he assures, camouflage a vast informal economy, and it has one of the lowest rates in the world of incorporation of women into formal work.

There has been progress, true.

In India, according to the UN, some 415 million people have left "multidimensional poverty" in 15 years, a "historic" figure.

But there is still some way to go: five out of six people in poverty belong to the lowest tribes and castes.

And, according to Oxfam, 10% of the population holds 77% of the wealth.

"Can India become a major economy?" Singh wonders.

"Clear.

But not immediately."

He sees it as difficult for the country to enjoy the "demographic dividend", that moment that India is theoretically reaching, the same one that has allowed China to benefit from decades of development.

The concept, as defined by the UN in the same World Population Report in which it predicts India's rise as the most populous country on the planet by 2023, is "the opportunity to accelerate economic growth and social development" thanks to to the “increase in the proportion of the population of working age”.

Currently, 40% of the Indian population is under 25 years of age.

What's more: in the world, one in five people under the age of 25 is Indian, according to UN estimates cited by the Pew Research Center.

The median age of 28 years contrasts with 38 in the United States and 39 in China, the other two most populous countries, with higher aging rates.

In India, those over 65 represent 7% (they are 14% in China and 18% in the United States);

Passengers on a New Delhi bus on November 14.

Anadolu Agency (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

That is the demographic dividend: the phase in which the dependency ratios decrease, which allows more resources to be available to increase investments in education, health, employment, social protection and pensions, "thus promoting economic growth and well-being in the short term." and medium term”, explains the Population Report.

But for that, "countries must invest in the development of their human capital, guaranteeing access to health care and quality education at all ages and promoting opportunities for productive employment and decent work."

illiberal drift

For this reason, Singh prefers to call the Indian case "the demographic disaster."

And he points to other serious problems facing the country, such as the illiberal turn taken since Modi came to power in 2014. At the head of the Bharatiya Janata party, a Hindu nationalist party, his critics denounce the growing intolerant drift towards other religions and minorities, and an excessive concentration of power.

In January, the Indian government invoked emergency laws to block viewing of a BBC documentary examining Modi's role during riots in Gujarat in 2002, when he was chief minister of that state: around a thousand people, the majority Muslims.

The Swedish organization V-Dem, in its report on global democratic health, describes India as an "electoral autocracy" and one of the states that has gotten worse in the last decade.

Singh adds the growing difficulty in exercising some freedoms, such as the right to information: Reporters Without Borders ranks the country in 150th place for press freedom, between Turkey and Sudan.

And it makes a message clear: no one in the country is celebrating or will think of celebrating the arrival of that boy or girl who will make it the most populous country on earth.

"The country is not proud of its population."

The evolution of India contrasts with that of China, which in January announced its first population decline in the last six decades, the consequence of a historic drop in the birth rate and the accelerated aging of society.

The number of inhabitants fell by about 850,000 people in 2022, standing at 1,411.75 million inhabitants.

Demographic experts see in this data far-reaching implications for the Asian giant's economic growth, which is also slowing down.

The population decline in China is the result, to a large extent, of the one-child policy that governed between 1980 and 2015 with the aim of artificially curbing the explosive population boom.

Since 2021, the Government has even allowed married couples to have up to three children and has encouraged procreation to moderate the trend, but the pandemic and the change in lifestyle caused by development have slowed it down.

By 2050, China will have lost nearly 100 million more people, according to UN projections cited by the Pew Research Center.

In 2100, the population will be less than 800 million.

"In the future, China will face the same [economic growth] problem as EU countries," says Yi Fuxian, a medical researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States and author of Big Country With an Empty Nest

(2007), in which he advocated an end to the one-child policy in his home country.

The problems will be similar, with rising pension and health care costs, and less dynamic production: "The workforce is the backbone of the economy."

He believes that such a decline will most likely make India the world's leading economy, forcing a reshuffle in international relations.

Poonam Mutreja, executive director of the Population Foundation of India, a woman with more than 30 years of experience in the social development sector, says that demographers and economists have long "assumed or wanted to believe" that because of the fact By having a huge young population the country [India] could enjoy a demographic advantage.

"But we have all realized, and I think the Government of India has too, that the demographic dividend is not an automatic phenomenon."

We must invest in young people, in their education and health, in the development of their capacities.

“Qualification is needed for employability.

That is the challenge that India is going to have”.

Along the way, Mutreja thinks that they could forge alliances with other countries that need qualified labor, as has already been done with Japan.

India is famous: it has workers in cutting-edge sectors all over the world;

several of the CEOs of large corporations (Microsoft, Google, IBM and, until recently, Twitter and Mastercard) are of Indian origin.

But there has also been, he says, a brain drain, so an interesting formula for other countries could be to "invest in the qualification" of the Indian labor force with a view to its mobility.

Mutreja recognizes that there is still a lot of work to be done, especially in what has to do with sexual education, reproductive planning, gender equality and the labor incorporation of women in a "patriarchal" society.

But she looks to the years ahead with optimism: she is confident that we will see more Indians around the world and the country will gradually become a manufacturing center;

the Government is working hard on infrastructure, she adds;

there is a potentially "huge" market and an expanding middle class and the G-20, moreover, is allowing the Executive to develop a "brilliant job of diplomatic relations".

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