decency will not impose superpower status on india

As Mr. Birla pointed out, all major forecasts see the Indian economy grow by over 7% this year. And this is a significant growth rate, not only in a world of generalized economic anemia in a period that can be described as post-pandemic – the pandemic is gone but not quite, it is disrupting and scaring supply chains. There is enough for governments, even if not people, to completely normalize things.

Mr Birla took into account India’s reasonably strong macroeconomic conditions, foreign exchange reserves that could finance nine months’ worth of imports, important infrastructure investment plans drawn up by the government, new initiatives in manufacturing such as production Linked incentive schemes to a fleet of modern sectors such as electronics, and recent positive indicators of economic activity.

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While Mr. Birla is right to understand development ahead, it would be a mistake to take development lightly. India’s rise in the size ranking of the world’s economies as well as India’s gradual ascent, our aging working-age population and the benefits we will accrue from it, have a certain sense of inevitability in some circles. Successful countries make their own destiny, actively working for it; They don’t wait for him to descend upon him in dull anticipation.

The IMF has forecast a recession for the world economy in the wake of the Ukraine war, the resulting rise in energy and food prices, and uncertainty. High prices have forced central banks to raise rates to protect China. The increase in the federal funds rate to 2.25 percent in 2022 and the flight to protect US capital from around the world have caused the US dollar to appreciate sharply against most of the world’s currencies. Oil and gas prices are denominated in dollars, so oil-importing countries need to raise fuel prices by not only increasing the dollar price of crude, but also by another layer of rate depreciation of their currency against the dollar. Falls. As the world slows, India’s exports should suffer. So how can India expect strong growth when the rest of the world slows down?

India is buying subsidized crude oil from Russia in defiance of Western sanctions on Russian oil, and this gives India some relief on energy costs. Information technology services and information technology-enabled services are a major component of India’s exports. These are largely protected against moderate downturns. Right now, businesses are migrating to the cloud, which means they’re moving their data and the software used to manage that data to run companies in failed server farms. , which is used by the likes of Amazon Web Services. and Microsoft Azure. Indian IT companies hold their hand while transitioning. Soon, when 5G networks roll out and companies will adopt greater degree of automation, using machine-to-machine communication on leased 5G networks, Indian IT will once again step up with new equipment – Edge computing, which will process machine chatter locally without waiting for the cloud to relay information – to complement cloud services. Indian IT must keep growing even in recession.

Survival in a recession calls for cost-cutting, which makes Indian IT-enabled services more attractive than at a time when growth was high and ultra-low interest rates almost freed up cash.

A global recession would make materials, plant and machinery cheaper than before. This will help the Indian industry to increase capacity. Why would they expand capacity? Planned infrastructure projects will make this necessary.

As India inevitably urbanises, thousands of additional square kilometers of urban space will need to be built with power lines, telecommunication towers, sewerage and drinking water. New cities would be filled with homes, schools and hospitals, restaurants, shops and offices. All of these will need to be painted, furnished and polished.

And India’s demography favors rapid growth for the foreseeable future. If India’s own household savings needed to be continually supplemented with the current account deficit, the aging world created enough financial savings to provide India and other developing countries with the capital needed to build infrastructure Is.

India needs to focus on maintaining social unity and political stability, free from such internal conflicts that would result in a large community feeling that it cannot live with the majority with dignity. Then, there are policy wrinkles such as putting the power sector under constant financial pressure, taking away quality education, and making contracts harder to enforce. Undoubtedly, India will become an economic superpower, but if Indians assume that complacency will be imposed on them.

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