Can India unite for its biggest war?

India Today

a day ago

India is chasing the Viksit Bharat dream by 2047. High-income status, gleaming cities, and a per capita income that screams "developed nation". To get there, we need 7.5–8% GDP growth every year, no slacking, no excuses. Sounds like a Narendra Modi speech, but the script's stuck in 2014. Hark back to the 1990s.Our investment scene is limping at 33.5% of GDP, but it could dazzle brighter, especially when the world keeps chanting India as a bright spot till it's a worn-out cliche. India needs to crank it to 40% by 2035 with private and public cash flowing like the Ganga in the monsoon. The FDI policies are now pretty liberal, but take a closer look and you feel like decoding the Mahabharat's Chakravyuh on a deadline.advertisementThe sputtering MSMEs, our supposed growth engines, are begging for loans, not lectures. Offer them more than a babu's pregnant smile, like Rs 10-crore credit guarantees. China built factories; we're still building alibis and drowning in paperwork triplicates. At this stage, the growth we crave can ride only on manufacturing's back, like it did for China. Instead of manufacturing dissent and consent, we've got to manufacture stuff that the world actually wants.
Only 56.4% of us are working, and women, a pathetic 35.6%. Southeast Asia's ladies are bossing factories while ours are mired in cultural quicksand. Yes, we have moved forward a great deal in the last decades, but still far from the ideal. India must modernise labour laws, push more women and youth into manufacturing, hospitality, and care jobs, and skill them for the AI apocalypse. AI's challenge has started with the very ITES sector on which India grew for two decades. Our demographic dividend is morphing into a ticking liability. If India doesn't train millions into manufacturing muscle, she's toast. We're plunging into a world brimming with uncertainty.Prime Minister Modi promised to end the Licence Permit Raj. Ask any entrepreneur or industrialist, it's alive, kicking their asses harder than ever. Nondescript babus are still haunting businesses with red tape, sharp as ever. India needs an urgent overhaul of land, capital, and product markets to smash the compliance puzzle and turbocharge productivity. There's an immediate need to turn populous states like UP and Bihar into labour-intensive manufacturing hubs, while shifting forward states towards advanced industry that doesn't need as many hands. If "ease of doing business" is just a flashy slogan, we're polishing brass on a sinking ship.The New Education Policy has drowned in language wars while our kids memorise textbooks older than their parents' wedding albums. Build 100 National Centres of Excellence, roll out rural skilling bootcamps, and fix nutrition and healthcare pronto. AI's storming in, and we better master coding languages instead of squabbling over whether Kannada came first or Tamil did. Stop the Hindi vs English brawl and teach skills that pay the bills.The world's barrelling towards a job crisis as machines perform more tasks. In fact, the world as we know is already in the transition throes. What's coming is a brand-new civilisation, and it'll welcome only those who embrace it with open arms.advertisementIf India can pull off Bharatmala highways, Sagarmala ports, and so many Udaan airports, why did the less-ambitious Smart Cities project crash and burn like a dump rocket in Diwali? The bureaucracy torpedoed it even as the Prime Minister himself was all in. Our metros are urban jungles, and Tier 2 cities are forgotten cousins gathering dust. India needs to pour 10% of its GDP into reimagining and connecting urban centres in Tier 2 and Tier 3 spots, ensuring babus spend time building them beyond ribbon-cutting selfies. This will ease the load on metropolises and spread growth like butter on hot paratha.Trump's tariffs are a slap, yes, but a slap we needed to wake from our slumber. Slashing trade barriers is gold in the end. We need a relook at our trade policies and renegotiate treaties to burrow deeper into global value chains. If done deftly, this can supercharge exports with PLI schemes that actually deliver the goods. There are still jitters about opening up, three decades after cracking the economy wide. There are sectors starving for capital, no matter where it hails from. Southeast Asia's devouring our lunch because they trade smarter. The protectionist hide-and-seek looks cute but has proved a massive roadblock.advertisementAgriculture's chaining 45% of our workforce to low-yield misery. A move to reform it was dumped after the streets erupted against the equivocal mumblings from the helm. Once dumped, it's been forgotten like yesterday's news. If it was as critical as the government's hurry suggested, why's nobody itching to revive it? Address the gripes from pressure groups and hammer out a middle ground. Do the minor tweaks first and tackle the radical ones later.We are at war, whether we like it or not. This isn't about tanks or Brahmos missiles. A Viksit Bharat by 2047 where we're not just populous but prosperous is a dream worth battling for. PM Modi preaches "it's no era of war" but when push came to shove, he asked the armed forces to do whatever needed to eliminate the plotters of Pulwama.The economy is a battlefield too, and we're armed with half-baked reforms and a fractured polity. The Luddites wail "AI will steal our jobs!" while global tech giants are already snipping ours. Aapada mein avsar, the PM says. Well, AI's our Kargil, and we're still debating the ammo while the enemy scales the hilltops to occupy them.advertisementThey say every country gets three decades to fix itself. Since the 1990s reforms, we've underutilised three decades if not outright squandered them. In three decades, China became a fire-breathing dragon. We're a tiger with a limp. Farm bills, land acquisition bill — push, protest, pull back. Repeat.If Nishikant Dubey and Asaduddin Owaisi can join hands for India's diplomatic wins, Modi and Rahul Gandhi can shake hands for growth. Consensus isn't a cuss word. Opposition to a reform is as necessary as the reform, but it should trigger scrutiny, not sabotage. Its job is to steer it back on track, not derail it. Derailing is not scrutiny; it's straight-up sabotage.This war needs everyone. The BJP, Congress, Aam Aadmi, the aam aadmi, even the babu eyeing his next corner plot. In the last three decades, successive Congress- and BJP-led governments have lifted millions out of poverty. Now's the time to hoist India out of the middle-income morass, and the two can come together. The high-level lip service and low-level delivery have made people cynical and politics hate-worthy. Instead of letting this apathy fester, a better grasp of the economy can make politics great again. Ditch the drama, roll up our sleeves, and build a Bharat that's not just viksit but victorious. Let's make the world jealous, not just our neighbours.(Kamlesh Singh, a columnist and satirist, is Tau of the popular Teen Taal podcast)- Ends(Views expressed in this piece are those of the author)Must Watch