The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [65]
The success of this marketing strategy ensured that it was used again, and again. On the sixtieth anniversary of India’s independence, New York was overrun with glamorous concerts, galas, champagne receptions, and seminars celebrating the country’s cultural, political, and economic success. The slogan India@60 reflected the driving force behind it, India’s technology companies. The event contrasted markedly with the fiftieth-anniversary celebrations ten years earlier, which culminated in a dull reception at the Indian consulate—with fruit juice only, because of the Gandhian taboo on alcohol—and a speech extolling India’s diversity. Of course, today’s jazzy campaigns wouldn’t work if there were no substance behind them. Over the past fifteen years, India has been the second-fastest-growing country in the world, behind only China, and it seems on track to continue this high-octane growth for the next decade. Like China’s, its sheer size—one billion people—means that, once on the move, the country casts a long shadow across the globe.
While China’s rise is already here and palpable, India’s is still more a tale of the future. Its per capita GDP is still only $1,200.* But that future is coming into sharp focus. The Goldman Sachs BRIC study projects that, by 2017, India’s economy will be equal to the size of Italy’s and, by 2023, will have caught up to Britain’s. By 2040, India will boast the world’s third-largest economy. By 2050, its per capita income will have risen to twenty times its current level.1 Predictions like these are a treacherous business, and trends often peter out. But still, it’s worth noting that India’s current growth rate is much higher than the study assumes, and, crucially, the country has a promising demographic profile. As the industrial world ages, India will continue to have lots of young people—in other words, workers. China faces a youth gap because of its successful “one-child” policies; India faces a youth bulge because, ironically, its own family-planning policies of the past failed. (The lesson here is that all social engineering has unintended consequences.) If demography is destiny, India’s future is secure.
Even the here and now is impressive. India’s poverty rate is half what it was twenty years ago. Its private sector is astonishingly vibrant, posting gains of 15, 20, and 25 percent year after year. The private sector’s strength goes well beyond just outsourcing firms like Infosys, the main association of many in the United States with the Indian economy. The Tata Group is a far-flung conglomerate that makes everything from cars and steel to software and consulting systems. In 2006, its revenues rose from $17.8 billion to $22 billion, a 23 percent gain. The more dynamic Reliance Industries, India’s largest company, saw its profits double between 2004 and 2006, and nearly double again between 2006 and 2010. The total revenues of the auto-parts business, made up of hundreds of small companies, grew from under $6 billion in 2003 to more than $15 billion in 2007. General Motors alone imports hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Indian-made auto-parts a year.2 And India now has more billionaires than any other Asian country, and most of them are self-made.
Bottoms Up
At this point, anyone who has actually been to India will probably be puzzled. “India?” he or she would ask. “With its dilapidated airports, crumbling roads, vast slums and impoverished villages? Are you talking about that India?” Yes, that, too, is India. The country might have several Silicon Valleys, but it also has three Nigerias within it—that is, more than 300 million people living on less than