India Superpower 2020: Tracing the brief history of a spectacularly incorrect prediction

Meanwhile, the other countries of South Asia are quietly moving past India, offering better living standards to their people.



for a brief period around the turn of the millennium, some people were convinced that 2020 would be the year India would become a superpower.

Given that we are now in 2020, we know this isn’t true – not by a long shot. Far from being a superpower, living standards in India are rather low compared to the rest of the world

the man who started it all was APJ Abdul Kalam.

In 1998, Kalam and YS Rajan, also a government scientist, co-authored a book called India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium.

The book had a simple message: “A developed India, by 2020 or even earlier is not a dream. It need not even be a mere aspiration in the minds of many Indians. It is a mission we can we can all take up­ and accomplish.”

Much of the book is a meandering set of wildly optimistic forecasts, powered more by an impressionable sense of patriotism than any relevant data. In many ways, the book’s style is a long-form precursor to the millions of patriotic WhatsApp messages that would flood smartphones two decades later.


Reality: 30% of world's poor live in India

In 2008, a decade after his book was published, Kalam brought forward India’s rendezvous date with superpowerdom to 2012. “Though I have envisioned India to become a superpower by 2020, the attitude and the confidence of the youth, to conquer everything in the right spirit, would make the country a global leader and super power within five years,”

Collective delusion

To make things even more surreal, this idea – the India was just around the corner to becoming a fully developed industrialised economy and superpower– entered policy and politics at the highest levels. In 2002, Prime Minister Vajpayee’s Independence Day speech argued that the aim of his government was to “make India a developed nation by 2020”.



As of today, India is very far away from being an upper-middle-income country (it would need to double its per capital gross national income to enter that bloc). Like its Raj siblings, Pakistan and Bangladesh, India is a lower-middle-income country. However, India’s small southern neighbour, Sri Lanka did quietly, unheralded by superpower prophecies, become an upper-middle-income country in 2019.

Unlike a Vietnam or Bangladesh, India was unable to develop mass manufacturing industries. In fact, the unemployment rate in 2017-’18 stood at a 45-year old high following the Modi government’s disastrous move to demonetise high value currency notes.




In spite of the fact that the original superpower 2020 prediction was widely off the mark, versions of it continue to survive (even if they pop up far less frequently now). During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP President Amit Shah promised voters that India would become a superpower by 2024 if Narendra Modi was voted back as prime minister. Earlier in 2018, Union minister Jitendra Singh claimed that Modi would fulfil Kalam’s “Vision 2020” – although, wisely he did not mention by which year.

In the first few decades after Independence, East and South East Asia raced past India. Now, experts such as economist Amartya Sen have flagged the fact that India is even losing out to its South Asian neighbours such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, who are being able to offer their people better standards of living.



Sauce: https://scroll.in/article/948319/india-supe...rect-prediction

This post has been edited by JoeK: Jan 17 2020, 09:17 AM

WinkyJr Jescon PaperClip224 ohman PrincZe

As requested yesterday

Credit where credit is due... They are of the few with nuclear power. Plus they did send something into space last year eventhough it crashed.

Misplaced priority. Hence why India can't developed similarly like China

yes. super power with import country and no toilet some more no clean water.

super power at their men bottom

if u work with yindia yindian u will know how they like to boast and argue

India wrong move, become USA loyal dog, blindly follow usa advice and democracy

This post has been edited by killeralta: Jan 17 2020, 09:47 AM

bobs and vegene

Yes. Together with pakistan and north korea.

Important questions is why India cannot similarly like China?

Both huge country with huge market

Its like asking why mexico cannot be like singapore.

Or why Philipines cannot be like japan.


For a country with billion people. Democracy is a dead end.

How do you please 1 billion voters?

You give them more than 20 official languages

North korea has nuke too. North korea has ICBM too, so they could send human into orbit if they didnt care about reentry lel


LMAO

LEL they really know how to make jokes.. tin kosong makes the loudest noise for sure

And he probably get that idea from thanos

no toilet how can be super power..

Own self say own self great.


Yindia is k/ poster ah?

India indians like to blow hot air and argue they are the best lol.
Same like some here in /k. Can't win argument, putar halim and play victim.

Like Vision/Wawasan 2020. Kek.

This post has been edited by zerozero00: Jan 17 2020, 12:33 PM

they have chitti

Bring in the memes guys

Parked

I already put some meme in the first post

I joined you in a sad cat gang

We malaysian already acknowledge that our wawasan 2020 has failed.

But yindia is adamant they can still be superpower. Even last year in 2019 they said they will be superpower by 2024 . That's crazy

North Korea managed to miniaturized their nukes to put in ICBM already?

I thought if want to put nukes in missiles, it needs to be small.

Got news recently, yindia said russian jet engine sucks - so they don't want to collaborate with russia for the new 5th gen fighter jets.

Like really topkek lol

Well it only happens if u have all the seven biji dragon Ball.

Ok, for the efforts, I rate it a B, B for bobs.

Try again next time.

thats what you get when you segregate your people by caste and religion instead of giving prosperity to all


not much different here

LOL, typical india indians. It's like a salesman telling his boss to give him his full bonus/commissions despite being far below the sales target and say, "I'm confident I can hit the same target in 4 years' time".

india is a joke. Only their population is big, so investors see huge market. That's all

Yindia punya putar halim already at superpower level, u dont play play.

Using their mouth already can transform yindia to superpower, see how many wimnin they rape every minute, they not yet superpower but already celebrate by raping their wimmins upside down

Using their mouth already can transform yindia to superpower.

Yup can see that in zakar naik.

Yup they still putar halim say wont charge zakar naik so yindian citizen will stop protest in kashmir..

Putar halimm!!

india is once great ancient civilisation


influencing south east asia... south asia.. even china itself

Sometimes if you put yourself into the minds of these countries with insanely huge population (China for example), there's really no other way to propel to word number 1 in such a short time other than communism or dictatorship. Like what the previous reply stated, how do you please more than 1 billion voters and stick to nation's goals every 4-5 years? Every time a country changes party in a democratic country, they have different agendas and policies to roll out. Unlike China, it takes 1 man/president/party to push a single goal all the way for many years. Democracy is not perfect, neither is communism.

superpower what rakyat merempat 2/3 live in poverty

how da hell US also with insane population grow?
i think they are looking at US...

+1

But that's not the answer we are looking for here

That's the least of it

With the kind of admin and direction they going now, is way worse

Haishhhh, I'm more concerned about our own Vision 2020 failure. So sad that we are regressing so much.

a) US is twice larger than India

b) even now US has less than 1/3 India pop

c) It took US democracy over 100 years to mature after it had industrialized (it's still very flawed)

So it's not a comparison at all.

Lol.... Malaysia and politic berpisah tiada, deswai never have any success

Oi.. you don't cb.

Yindia superpower okay

no not yet. it's there, but still needs testing.

they just successfully managed to testflight icbm and/or warhead with maneuvering capability. so up next in the agenda should be miniaturized nuc warhead.

US also not as superpower as before. I read somewhere in the aftermath of world war 2 and during cold war, USA produced 50% of the world's GDP. Truly superpower

Now not anymore

Their ICBM also fully functional? I thought always crash at sea of Japan?

USA is a 2 party system.

And its republic style.



China is 1 party system, also republic style.


If you believe real democracy (where you have have 20 parties) can get strong like China or US, you are dreaming.


The rest of the western countries got rich by colonizing and raping the world before ww2.

The only countries updated their life (from zero to hero) and status are


China
Japan( colonizing by US)
Korea (colonizing by US)
Germany (colonizing by US)


No other countries changed after ww2.

But i can list out a few countries from Hero to Zero after ww2.

They got missile.

Not ICBM.


They cant travel that far.

Super power is not looking at GDP la.


If use GDP,

can Japan consider super power and sit with US , China and Russia?

salahan Aryan migration

Not 2030 leh?

Super curry power

Kek

India now upgrade liaoo, bolehland bila lagi

Their bullet train project getting stalled and dragged thru local politics

Kesian japan got stuck

Meanwhile locally Kashmir railway 20 year plus still haven't completed. And most of the issue is not engineering related

China zero?

I thought China always superpower status

later they'll develop shit powered electric generator baru tahu

if they can build toilets AND use it considered success dy

Topkek

The real superpower of India.

The reason India so undevelop is due to misplace priority in development

Instead focus high labour manufacturing they focus on high capital industry

One thing I see is everything is so cheap in India, while everything is expensive in China..

A proper satisfying food in china might be around USD4 per meal, while in India around USD1 only, or maybe less..

Cheap cost of living drag average salary down

Lesser tax paid,

Lower country income..

But while lower salary benefits company operation cost, it still hurst as imported things like nuclear technology or machines are still expensive.

Thats what I casually see lah.

Wawasan 2020

Orang kite

Bro, don't forget that freaking red dot south of us....

Actually, I think Oman did quite decently as well. For a country that was incredibly backwards in the 1960s and has almost no natural resources....

Ya ya putar!

U have such great insights about India! Bravo! Bravo!