In 35 years you and I will, going by the average age of newspaper readers and life expectancy in India, be dead. Let’s have a look at the country we are likely to leave behind in 2049. First, let’s deflate the optimists. In a 2011 report, Citigroup predicted India would be the world’s biggest economy before 2050. “We expect India’s real per capita GDP to grow at 6.4% pa over the 40-year period between 2010 and 2050 (7.2% pa over the next 10 years and at rates of 7.7% pa between 2020 and 2030 and 5.2% pa between 2030 and 2050). As a result, we expect India to become the largest economy in the world by 2050, overtaking China and the US in the process."

This leap would produce an Indian economy of $85 trillion (around ₹ 5,250 trillion) in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms (up from just under $4 trillion in 2010). Unfortunately, the study’s immediate prediction of Indian growth at 7.2% between 2010 and 2015 turned out to be wrong. And there’s no guarantee that its mapping further on is going to be any more accurate.

Four years ago, when we were growing at 9%, I wrote in Mint Lounge that India’s high growth could not be sustained. I don’t think this will change, irrespective of policy tweaking by Central governments.

The other thing is what the economy means to the average Indian. Net national income is today about ₹ 70,000 per person per year according to the Central Statistics Office.

India’s incomes are the lowest among Brics nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Median per capita income (meaning more than half the population) is only a little over ₹ 35,000.

This group will be only slightly better off in the next generation.

Second, our two major internal national security problems are Kashmir and the North-East. Both will be resolved in the sense that they will no longer be violent. My guess is that with both, there will be a compromise within the states because of India’s insistence on democracy. The economic migration of these states’ citizens in India is already blunting their secessionary spirit.

Third, there will still be servants. Reading some histories of the world wars recently, I was struck by how frequently the mention of servant shortages came up in reports from Great Britain. Their culture of servants ceased after World War I, because wages went up and modern equipment made household work simpler.

In India it isn’t a function of demand and supply and of economics and technology alone. It also has to do with privacy. In relatively small spaces, we are comfortable with the constant presence of the servant, and this will not change in the next generation.

Fourth, honour killings will be gone. The media has penetrated what was traditionally a closed caste space. Haryana’s Jats are feeling this glare. It is society that bestows honour on families that do honour killing, and as media pressure piled on, this honour has lost its sheen.

Fifth, the Baniya dominance of industry will end. Only some of the inheritors of today’s industrialists will continue to be on the list of India’s top billionaires. Many peripheral communities will break through. Business schools will produce more people with the ability to raise and manage capital than a handful of mercantile castes.

Sixth, we will see a shift in our identity. M.N. Srinivas wrote in his last essay for the Economic And Political Weekly that it was the introduction of currency that began to kill off caste. Barter is what kept it alive for centuries, locking the artisan into his trade. B.R. Ambedkar felt the city was the place that accelerated this process of losing caste. It is obvious that the Indian city dilutes tribal identities and caste will neither be understood nor felt by many and perhaps most of us by then.

Seventh, our cities will be less chaotic, with better public transport. This will come because the middle class will be so dominant politically that its demands will replace those of the abject poor. There will be middle-class state parties as there are caste-based ones today. Schools will be better, with less of a gap between the best and the worst than there is today.

Eighth, politically, we have already made a great success of democracy, and its next phase will be devolution. It is clear already that there will be a shift in the structure of power and the Centre will have less and less to say with states becoming more autonomous.

Ninth, if you have toddlers, they will be in their late 30s then. It’s likely they will absorb different social values from you than you did from your parents, because they have access to far more that is shaping them. If you have teenagers, they are already developed and you can observe in them the characteristics of the future middle-aged Indian.

Tenth, culturally it will be quite bad. We will see across India what we have today in our cities, a middle class that speaks no language correctly. The largest group of people will be those who use English as their first language, without really being able to wield it properly. Again, most people will be familiar with their mother tongue, but not regular readers in it. On the other hand, high culture—classical music and dance—will be better curated and nurtured than it is today.

Many things will be better. I think we will be less corrupt because of technology. Our tendency to riot is falling every decade and I don’t think we will be at one another’s throat over religion any longer. In these ways and a few more, we will be witness to shifts of the sort that we didn’t think possible today and will be pleased to have around as we go.

Also Read | Aakar’s previous Lounge columns

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