Recently, the United States political review website published an article by United States scholar Paul · Post, titled "India may not have the conditions to become a great power."
The article bluntly states that India is not yet a great power, let alone a new superpower. Paul · Post described India as a "sleeping giant", similar to the West's description of China as a "sleeping male lion" in the past. But the difference is that China is already a waking giant, and no one can guarantee that India will wake up in the future, which means that India may not be able to enter the ranks of great powers in the future.
As we all know, India is a country with the dream of a great power. Since Nehru, quite radical views have been expressed. He said that India will either become a "resounding" world power or disappear. This ambitious political goal demonstrates India's determination to shine on the global political stage, and successive generations of India's leaders have also worked for this goal.
Under this "guideline", the current Prime Minister of India Modi proposed to build India into a high-income country by 2047, fully meeting the standards of developed countries. However, the ideal is very plump, but the reality is very skinny. The chances of India becoming a developed country by 2047 are slim to none. The aesthetic scholar Paul · Post made an evaluation from three aspects in this article, and finally gave the conclusion that it is impossible.
What are the three aspects? Mainly from economic development, military construction, and national political influence.
For example, in terms of political influence, Paul · Post gave a high evaluation. Because India has demonstrated the ability to "play left and right" in the international community. On the one hand, India is a member of the SCO and BRICS, and maintains friendly relations with countries in the Global South. On the other hand, India plays a fairly active role in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. This shows that India is welcomed in both the East and the West. At the very least, neither side will deliberately make enemies of India.
This is India's greatest advantage in the international political arena. But it also means that India will lose some opportunities to take a stand. Because there is no position, it itself means that the ability to export influence to the outside world is not high, which is also a disadvantage of India's own positioning in the international community. Overall, however, India's foreign policy is still more good than bad.
But on the issue of economic development, India seems to be a little blindly optimistic. Although India's economy is still at a high rate, it is very likely to overtake Germany to become the world's third largest economy in the next few years. However, it should be emphasized that in the absence of complete industrialization in India, it is difficult to rely on the service industry and outsourcing business to promote the long-term stable and rapid development of the country's economy. In other words, if India cannot find new sources of economic growth, it is unlikely that India will want to build India into a developed country by 2047.
In addition, India's economic growth is largely dependent on the growth of the youth labor force. With an average age of 29 years old, India has one of the youngest countries in the world's workforce. However, it is worth mentioning that most young people in India do not have good employability skills, and even if this group of young people contributes a lot of economic growth to India, the quality of growth is low. As a result, India's economic growth is mainly driven by population growth, and its industrial growth has shown a downward trend over the past few years.
In the long run, this is completely detrimental to India's per capita income growth, and it will be a key indicator of whether India will enter the ranks of developed countries. From the current point of view, India is still a long way from raising India's per capita income level to the ranks of developed countries by 2047. And now until 2047, there are only 23 years, so the probability of India wanting to achieve its goals is very low.
Militarily speaking, India simply does not have the potential to become a superpower. Although India is well aware of the importance of military modernization, India has never really pushed for this goal. From the perspective of India's military industrial development, its domestic fighter "Guanghui" has been developed for more than 30 years, but it has still not been officially formed into the army, resulting in a situation that has just been put into service.
The same is true of the Arjun tank produced in India, which has been developed for more than 30 years, but even after taking so long, it still cannot meet the performance indicators of the design, and even the India Army is unwilling to accept this India domestic tank. And India's first domestically produced aircraft carrier Vikramaditya has been launched three times in history, and it will barely enter service in 2022, but until now, the aircraft carrier has faced structural defects in the hull design, nodding in navigation and other problems, and more importantly, it has no carrier-based aircraft available at all, which is simply the existence of a bare-rod commander.
Morty
The most important thing is that none of these three India military products, known as the "light of India", were completed independently by India itself, and it was more like collecting various subsystems around the world, and India was exerting their "creativity" to assemble them, so that they could not make mature military products.
In other words, apart from its diplomatic advantage in the international community, India now has almost no potential to make India a "resounding" power, and Modi's ambition of "realizing India's dream of becoming a superpower by 2047" is more like a braggart slogan.