Washington : India will be the world’s fastest growing economy during the next five years, a top US intelligence think-tank has said while underlining that Pakistan, unable to match India’s economic prowess, will seek “other methods” to maintain even a semblance of balance.
[alert type=”e.g. warning, danger, success, info” title=””]“India will be the world’s fastest growing economy during the next five years as China’s economy cools and growth elsewhere sputters, but internal tensions over inequality and religion will complicate its expansion,” the report said.[/alert]
“Pakistan, unable to match India’s economic prowess, will seek other methods to maintain even a semblance of balance,” said the report ‘Global Trends’ of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which is the centre for mid-term and long-term strategic thinking within the US Intelligence Community.
“India will be the world’s fastest growing economy during the next five years as China’s economy cools and growth elsewhere sputters, but internal tensions over inequality and religion will complicate its expansion,” the report said.
NIC said India’s growing economic power and profile in the region will further complicate calculations, as New Delhi navigates relations with Beijing, Moscow, and Washington to protect its own expanding interests.
New Delhi, however, will continue to offer smaller South Asian countries a stake in India’s economic growth through development assistance and increased connectivity to India’s economy, contributing to India’s broader effort to assert its role as the predominant regional power, it added.
“Geopolitically, the South Asia’s greatest hope is India’s ability to use its economic and human potential to drive regional trade and development. At the same time, Afghanistan’s uncertain prospects, extremism and violence in Pakistan, and the ever-present risk of war between India and Pakistan probably represent the greatest challenge to unlocking the region’s potential,” it said.
“India is also an increasingly important factor in the region as geopolitical forces begin to reshape its importance to Asia, and the United States and India will grow closer than ever in their history,” it said.
New Delhi will be a victim of its own success as India’s growing prosperity complicates its environmental challenges. For example, providing electricity to 300 million citizens who now lack it will substantially increase India’s carbon footprint and boost pollution if done with coal-or gas-fired plants, it warned.
According to NIC, India probably has the greatest potential to boost global growth because of its size and the success of its technology sector, but it would have to improve its energy, transportation and manufacturing infrastructure to sustain high rates of growth. Infrastructure has improved in some locales but not in wide swaths of the country.
“Unlike China, India will benefit from 10 million new working-age residents per year during the coming decades, yet harnessing such a massive labour pool increase in ways that increase productivity and boost output has proven difficult,” it said. —PTI
