india in 2040 essay

India in 2040: A Vision of Progress and Transformation

India, a nation of diverse cultures, rich history, and immense potential, is on the cusp of transformative changes. By 2040, the country is expected to undergo significant advancements in various sectors, from technology and infrastructure to education and healthcare. This blog delves into the potential future of India, envisioning a nation that has embraced progress while maintaining its unique heritage.

Table of Contents

1. introduction.

As we look towards 2040, India stands at a pivotal juncture, balancing its rich traditions with rapid modernization. The next two decades promise significant changes, driven by technological innovation, economic reforms, and a focus on sustainable development. This vision of India in 2040 aims to capture the essence of these transformations, highlighting the nation’s potential to emerge as a global leader while ensuring inclusive growth for all its citizens.

2. Technological Advancements

Artificial Intelligence and Automation

By 2040, India is expected to be a global hub for artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. These technologies will revolutionize industries, from manufacturing to services, driving efficiency and productivity. AI-driven solutions will enhance decision-making processes, optimize supply chains, and improve customer experiences. Automation will reduce the need for manual labor in repetitive tasks, allowing the workforce to focus on more creative and strategic roles.

The Rise of Smart Cities

Smart cities will be a hallmark of India’s urban development. Leveraging IoT (Internet of Things) and AI, these cities will offer improved infrastructure, better resource management, and enhanced quality of life for residents. Smart grids, intelligent transportation systems, and efficient waste management will be standard features. Public services will be digitized, making them more accessible and transparent. Cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore are likely to lead this transformation, setting benchmarks for urban living.

3. Economic Growth and Development

Emerging industries.

The Indian economy is set to diversify, with emerging industries playing a crucial role in driving growth. Biotechnology, renewable energy, and space exploration are expected to be at the forefront. The biotechnology sector will witness breakthroughs in healthcare, agriculture, and environmental protection. Renewable energy will become a major contributor to the national grid, reducing dependence on fossil fuels and promoting sustainability. India’s space program will achieve new milestones, fostering innovation and international collaboration.

Sustainable Development

Sustainable development will be a guiding principle for India’s economic policies. The focus will be on balancing economic growth with environmental conservation. Green technologies, eco-friendly practices, and sustainable business models will be encouraged. Public and private sectors will collaborate to create a circular economy, where resources are reused, recycled, and minimized. This approach will not only protect the environment but also create new opportunities for businesses and communities.

4. Healthcare and Well-being

Advances in medical technology.

India’s healthcare system will undergo a major transformation, driven by advances in medical technology. Telemedicine, personalized medicine, and robotic surgery will become mainstream. Telemedicine will bridge the gap between urban and rural healthcare, providing access to quality medical services across the country. Personalized medicine will offer tailored treatments based on genetic profiles, improving patient outcomes. Robotic surgery will enhance precision and reduce recovery times, making complex procedures safer and more effective.

Public Health Initiatives

Public health initiatives will focus on preventive care and holistic well-being. Nationwide vaccination programs, health education campaigns, and community health centers will play a vital role in promoting health and preventing diseases. The government will invest in improving sanitation, clean drinking water, and nutrition, particularly in rural areas. Mental health will receive greater attention, with efforts to destigmatize mental illnesses and provide accessible support services.

5. Education and Skill Development

Digital learning platforms.

Education in India will be transformed by digital learning platforms. Online courses, virtual classrooms, and interactive learning tools will make education more accessible and engaging. Students from remote areas will have access to quality education, reducing regional disparities. Adaptive learning technologies will tailor educational content to individual needs, enhancing learning outcomes. Collaboration between educational institutions and tech companies will drive innovation in curriculum design and delivery.

Vocational Training and Employment

Vocational training will be a key focus to address the evolving job market. Skill development programs will equip the workforce with the necessary skills for emerging industries. Partnerships between industry and academia will ensure that training programs are aligned with market needs. Apprenticeships, internships, and on-the-job training will provide practical experience and improve employability. The gig economy will offer flexible work opportunities, catering to diverse preferences and lifestyles.

6. Social and Cultural Evolution

The role of women in 2040.

The role of women in India will see significant progress by 2040. Gender equality will be prioritized, with policies promoting women’s education, employment, and political participation. Women will occupy leadership positions in various sectors, contributing to economic and social development. Support systems, such as affordable childcare and maternity benefits, will enable women to balance work and family responsibilities. Grassroots movements and advocacy groups will continue to challenge societal norms and promote gender justice.

Preservation of Cultural Heritage

India’s cultural heritage will be preserved and celebrated, even as the country embraces modernization. Digital archives, virtual museums, and cultural festivals will play a crucial role in keeping traditions alive. Efforts will be made to document and protect intangible heritage, such as languages, folklore, and traditional arts. Educational programs will promote cultural awareness and appreciation among the younger generation. International collaborations will showcase India’s rich cultural diversity on the global stage.

7. Environmental Sustainability

Renewable energy solutions.

Renewable energy will be a cornerstone of India’s sustainable development strategy. Solar, wind, and hydroelectric power will constitute a significant portion of the energy mix. Investments in renewable energy infrastructure will reduce carbon emissions and dependence on fossil fuels. Decentralized energy solutions, such as rooftop solar panels and microgrids, will provide energy access to remote and underserved areas. Research and innovation in energy storage technologies will enhance the reliability and efficiency of renewable energy systems.

Conservation Efforts

Conservation efforts will focus on protecting India’s rich biodiversity and natural resources. National parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and marine reserves will be expanded and effectively managed. Community-led conservation initiatives will involve local populations in protecting their natural heritage. Sustainable agriculture and forestry practices will promote ecological balance and enhance rural livelihoods. Education and awareness campaigns will foster a culture of environmental stewardship among citizens.

8. India on the Global Stage

Diplomatic relations and foreign policy.

By 2040, India will play a prominent role in global diplomacy and international relations. The country’s foreign policy will emphasize multilateralism, regional cooperation, and sustainable development. Strategic partnerships with major powers, such as the United States, China, and the European Union, will be balanced with strong ties to neighboring countries in South Asia. India will actively participate in international organizations, such as the United Nations, G20, and BRICS, advocating for global peace, security, and equitable growth.

Contributions to Global Innovation

India’s contributions to global innovation will be significant, driven by its thriving tech industry and research institutions. Indian scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs will be at the forefront of breakthroughs in various fields, from information technology and biotechnology to space exploration and clean energy. Collaborative research projects with international partners will foster knowledge exchange and innovation. India’s diaspora will continue to play a crucial role in bridging cultures and driving economic and technological progress.

9. Challenges and Opportunities

Bridging the urban-rural divide.

Bridging the urban-rural divide will be a critical challenge for India in 2040. Ensuring equitable access to education, healthcare, and economic opportunities will require concerted efforts from the government, private sector, and civil society. Infrastructure development, such as roads, telecommunications, and utilities, will be essential to connect rural areas to urban centers. Capacity-building programs and decentralized governance will empower rural communities to participate in the nation’s growth story.

Addressing Social Inequality

Addressing social inequality will be imperative to achieve inclusive growth. Affirmative action policies, social welfare programs, and economic reforms will aim to uplift marginalized communities. Education and skill development will be key to breaking the cycle of poverty and enabling upward mobility. Legal and institutional reforms will strengthen the protection of human rights and promote social justice. Civil society organizations and grassroots movements will play a crucial role in advocating for the rights of the disadvantaged.

10. Conclusion

As we envision India in 2040, it is clear that the nation is poised for a transformative journey. Technological advancements, economic growth, and social progress will drive India’s development, while sustainable practices and cultural preservation will ensure a balanced approach. The challenges of bridging divides and addressing inequalities will require innovative solutions and collaborative efforts. With its rich heritage and dynamic population, India has the potential to emerge as a global leader, setting an example of inclusive and sustainable growth. The vision of India in 2040 is not just a dream but a roadmap for the future, inspiring generations to come.

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Vision India@2047: Transforming the Nation's Future

• 03 Nov 2023
• 14 min read
• GS Paper - 3
• Growth & Development
• GS Paper - 2
• Government Policies & Interventions

This editorial is based on “Virtues of planning: On the Vision India@2047 plan ” which was published in The Hindu on 02/11/2023. It discusses the government’s blueprint to develop India by 2047, which is expected to be unveiled by the Prime Minister in early 2024.

For Prelims: Vision India@2047, NITI Aayog , PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) , Nominal GDP , Demographic dividend , Middle Income Trap, Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) , Labor force participation rate (LFPR) , Production-linked incentive scheme , National infrastructure pipeline

For Mains: Vision India@2047, Factors that may Contribute to India’s Economic Growth, Challenges before India’s 30 tn Dollar Economy Vision and Way Forward

In early 2024, the Prime Minister is expected to unveil a road map to transform the country into a developed nation with a USD 30 trillion economy by the time it completes 100 years of Independence.

The Vision India@2047 plan, as it is officially named, has been in the works for nearly two years with officials across ministries brainstorming on how to take the country from its current level of development to where it aspires to be.

The NITI Aayog , in the process of giving this vision document a final shape, will soon run its central ideas and goals past top minds across sectors, including World Bank President Ajay Banga, Apple chief Tim Cook, as well as Indian industrialists and thought leaders, to finetune them and factor in any blind spots. Coming ahead of the Lok Sabha election, the plan may well be viewed as the government’s policy playbook promise for prospective voters.

What is Vision India@2047?

• Vision India@2047 is a project initiated by the NITI Aayog , the apex policy think tank of India, to create a blueprint for India’s development in the next 25 years.
• The project aims to make India a global leader in innovation and technology , a model of human development and social welfare, and a champion of environmental sustainability.
• Achieving a USD 30 trillion economy with a per-capita income of USD 18,000-20,000 and strong public finances and a robust financial sector.
• Building world-class infrastructure and facilities in both rural and urban areas.
• Eliminating unnecessary interference by the government in the lives of citizens and promoting digital economy and governance.
• Developing 3-4 global champions in every sector by merger or restructuring and boosting indigenous industry and innovation.
• Becoming self-reliant in defence and space sectors and enhancing India’s role in the world.
• Fostering green growth and climate action by increasing renewable energy capacity and reducing carbon emissions.
• Empowering the youth with skills and education and creating more employment opportunities.
• Partnering with foreign R&D organizations to build top 10 labs in the country and bringing at least 10 Indian institutions among the top 100 globally.

What is the Current Status and Future Prospects of the Indian Economy?

• India is currently estimated to be the fifth largest economy in Nominal terms and 3rd largest in PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) terms.
• By 2022, the size of Indian GDP had already become larger than the GDP of the UK and also France.
• Ratings agency S&P estimates that India's nominal GDP will rise from USD 3.4 trillion in 2022 to USD 7.3 trillion by 2030.
• This rapid pace of economic expansion would result in the size of the Indian GDP making India the second largest economy in the Asia-Pacific region.
• India’s exports will be valued at USD 8.67 trillion in 2047 while its imports will be valued at USD 12.12 trillion.
• India’s average life expectancy will jump to 71.8 from 67.2 in 2021 and its literacy rate to 89.8% from 77.8% in 2021.

What are the Factors that may Contribute to India’s Economic Growth?

• According to reports, India has a population of over 1.4 billion people, with more than 40% below the age of 25. This provides a huge demographic dividend for economic growth.
• Growth of the Middle Class: India’s middle class is projected to expand from about 50 million in 2023 to over 500 million by 2050, creating a huge domestic market and demand for goods and services.
• These sectors have the potential to create new jobs, improve efficiency, and increase access to services.
• Sustainability-Focused Economy: India has been investing in renewable energy , green infrastructure , and climate resilience, aiming to reduce its carbon footprint and enhance its environmental quality. These initiatives can also create new opportunities for growth and development.

What are the Challenges before India’s 30 tn Dollar Economy Vision?

• According to the World Bank definition, the middle-income trap "refers to a situation whereby a middle-income country is failing to transition to a high-income economy due to rising costs and declining competitiveness".
• This means that India will have to deal with the challenges of an ageing population, such as rising health care costs, pension liabilities, and labor shortages.
• Moreover, various estimates show that the Indian Economy will grow at 7% for the next 10 years.
• While the preliminary numbers provided by the Niti Aayog, estimates show that the economy will need to post an annual average economic growth of 9.2% between 2030-2040, 8.8% between 2040-2047 and 9% between 2030 to 2047.
• The Rupee-Dollar Conundrum: India’s GDP in dollar terms is also a function of the rupee-dollar exchange rate, which is influenced by various factors such as inflation, trade balance, capital flows, and monetary policy.
• Geopolitics and regional integration: India faces a complex and dynamic geopolitical environment, with rising tensions with China, Pakistan, and other neighbors, and changing relations with the US, Russia, and other major powers.
• Stagnated Agriculture and Manufacturing sectors: Improving the productivity and competitiveness of the agriculture sector, which employs more than half of the workforce but accounts for just 17% of the GDP, and revitalizing the stagnated manufacturing sector, which has maintained a 15% GDP share for decades, while simultaneously generating employment opportunities for the expanding population.
• Lower Labor Force Participation : According to the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Annual Report 2022-2023, India’s labor force participation rate (LFPR) was 40.4% in 2022-2023, which is lower than the global average of 61.4%. Moreover, India’s LFPR has been declining over the years, especially for women.

What More Needs to be Done?

• Aim for Greater, Faster Divestitures: India has a large public sector that often suffers from inefficiencies, corruption, and losses. By divesting or privatizing some of these enterprises, India could raise funds, improve productivity, and attract foreign investment.
• Boost the Middle Class: India’s middle class is a key driver of consumption and growth, but it is also burdened by high taxes and low savings. By cutting tax rates or abolishing personal income tax and replacing it with a consumption tax, India could increase the disposable income and spending power of its middle class, while also simplifying the tax system and reducing evasion.
• Initiatives like New Education Policy and Skill India Mission are the right steps towards this.
• India has announced a Rs 100 lakh crore-plus National infrastructure pipeline, but it needs to speed up its execution and financing.
• India needs to further improve its ease of doing business, labor laws, and skill development to attract more domestic and foreign investment.
• Boost Private Investment: India needs to attract more foreign direct investment and encourage domestic companies to invest in the economy. The government can incentivize private investment by offering support for infrastructure projects and manufacturing.
• Implement Structural Reforms : India needs to undertake targeted reforms to raise productivity and competitiveness. McKinsey has identified six areas of targeted reform that can help raise productivity and competitiveness, including financial-sector reforms, urban planning, and e-commerce.
• Increase Capital Accumulation: Investment as a proportion of GDP needs to increase to achieve the goal of becoming a USD 30 trillion economy. The government can play a key role in boosting investment by offering substantial support for infrastructure projects and by incentivizing manufacturing.

UPSC Civil Services Examination, Previous Year Questions (PYQs)

Q1. Define potential GDP and explain its determinants. What are the factors that have been inhibiting India from realizing its potential GDP? (2020)

Thursday, August 15, 2024 EXPLORE THE FUTURE

india predictions for 2040

• Country Forecast

Read 23 predictions about India in 2040, a year that will see this country experience significant change in its politics, economics, technology, culture, and environment. It’s your future, discover what you’re in for.

Quantumrun Foresight prepared this list; A trend intelligence consulting firm that uses strategic foresight to help companies thrive from future trends in foresight . This is just one of many possible futures society may experience.

International relations predictions for India in 2040

International relations predictions to impact India in 2040 include:

Politics predictions for India in 2040

Politics related predictions to impact India in 2040 include:

Government predictions for India in 2040

Government related predictions to impact India in 2040 include:

Economy predictions for India in 2040

Economy related predictions to impact India in 2040 include:

• India holds 4% of global aircraft movements, third only to the US (23%) and China (16%). Likelihood: 80% 1
• India's energy consumption has reached 607 million metric tonnes of oil and gas; it has nearly tripled since 2017 with 202 MMT. Likelihood: 80% 1
• India's energy consumption to nearly triple by 2040. Link
• India to become third largest air passenger market by 2040. Link

Technology predictions for India in 2040

Technology related predictions to impact India in 2040 include:

Culture predictions for India in 2040

Culture related predictions to impact India in 2040 include:

• India raises the retirement age as the number of people over the age of 60 balloons to 239 million, up from 104 million in 2011. Likelihood: 70% 1
• There are now 77,000 judges in India's legal system, up from 23,700 since December 2018. Likelihood: 70% 1
• India would need 75,000 to 80,000 judges by 2040, says report. Link
• Indian population aging fast, warns govt report. Link

Defense predictions for in 2040

Defense related predictions to impact India in 2040 include:

Infrastructure predictions for India in 2040

Infrastructure related predictions to impact India in 2040 include:

• India faces a USD 526 billion infrastructure investment gap. The country needs a total of USD 4.5 trillion to finish projects in sectors like power, road, railways, shipping, and telecom. Likelihood: 90% 1
• India's air passenger traffic grows to over 1 billion. The country had just 187 million passengers (to, from and within India) in 2017-18. Likelihood: 80% 1
• Electricity demand in India reaches 5,271 terawatts per hour (TWh), a fourfold increase from 2019. India now uses more power than the US. Likelihood: 80% 1
• Diesel demand in India grows from 513 million tonnes of oil equivalent (MTOE) in 2015 to 1,320 MTOE today. Likelihood: 80% 1
• Diesel demand may grow threefold by 2040. Link
• India will have 200 operational airports by 2040 . Link
• India to face $526 billion infrastructure investment gap by 2040: Economic Survey. Link

Environment predictions for India in 2040

Environment related predictions to impact India in 2040 include:

• Temperatures rise another 1.5 degrees Celcius throughout India. This new heat increases heat stress, high air pollution levels, and salt-water intrusion in coastal areas triggered by rising sea levels. Likelihood: 70% 1
• France to uphold ban on sale of fossil fuel cars by 2040. Link
• Freak weather to rise in India over two decades, cataclysmic fallout likely by 2040. Link

Science predictions for India in 2040

Science related predictions to impact India in 2040 include:

• India lands its first local astronaut on the Moon. Likelihood: 65 percent. 1

Health predictions for India in 2040

Health related predictions to impact India in 2040 include:

• Cancer rates in India double from 1.2 million in 2018 to 2 million today. Reasons include increased population and increased life expectancy. Likelihood: 70% 1
• The number of cancer cases needing first-line chemotherapy treatment increases from 9.8 million in 2018 to 15 million today, representing a 53% increase. Likelihood: 90% 1
• India will need 7,300 cancer doctors by 2040 as chemotherapy need and cancer cases rise. Link
• Cancer rates in India set to double by 2040. Link

More predictions from 2040

Read the top global predictions from 2040 - click here

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January 7, 2022. Last updated January 7, 2020.

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Is India the World’s Next Great Economic Power?

• Bhaskar Chakravorti
• Gaurav Dalmia

Historically, the country’s expected rise has remained elusive. Here’s a look at what’s different now.

Is India’s economic rise inevitable? There’s good reason to think that this latest round of Indo-optimism might be different than previous iterations, but the country still has major challenges to address to make good on this promise. In terms of drivers, demand — in the form of a consumer boom, context appropriate innovation, and a green transition — and supply — in the form of a demographic dividend, access to finance, and major infrastructure upgrades — are helping to push the country forward. This is facilitated by policy reforms, geopolitical positioning, and a diaspora dividend. Even so, the country faces barriers to success, including unbalanced growth, unrealized demographic potential, and unrealized ease-of-business and innovation potential.

In 2002, India’s government launched a ubiquitous international tourism campaign known as “Incredible India.” Were it to launch a similar campaign today, it might as well be called “Inevitable India.” Not just enthusiasts within the country, but a chorus of global analysts, have declared India as the next great economic power: Goldman Sachs has predicted it will become the world’s second-largest economy by 2075, and the FT’s Martin Wolf suggests that by 2050, its purchasing power will be 30% larger than that of the U.S.

• Bhaskar Chakravorti is the Dean of Global Business at The Fletcher School at Tufts University and founding Executive Director of Fletcher’s Institute for Business in the Global Context . He is the author of The Slow Pace of Fast Change .
• Gaurav Dalmia is the Chairman of Dalmia Group Holdings, an Indian holding company for business and financial assets.

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Imagining India in 2040: A Vision of Incredible Possibilities

As we look towards the future, it is natural to wonder how countries will evolve and transform. In this blog, we will take a leap forward to the year 2040 and explore how India might shape itself to become a thriving nation with boundless possibilities . Join us as we embark on a journey of imagination and envision the future of India.

Intelligent Infrastructure:

By 2040, India will have transformed its infrastructure dramatically. Smart cities equipped with advanced technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, and renewable energy sources will redefine urban living. Automated transportation systems will ease traffic congestion, while sustainable architecture will prioritize environmental consciousness.

Digital Inclusion:

Green revolution:, emerging technologies:, entrepreneurial spirit:, education revolution:, social progress:, 1 thought on “imagining india in 2040: a vision of incredible possibilities”.

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India Wide Open – Transforming India Now for 2040

India today is at an inflection point. Following two decades of reform and growth, the cracks in the current economic and political system have become visible. Given the country’s expected population growth, India will need to fundamentally transform itself in order to feed, clothe, educate, gainfully employ and turn into productive agents its population of 1.6 billion by 2040. To do so it will need to, among other things, create a transparent government, secure the resources required for growth and create a system of entrepreneurship to allow the private sector to take a leading position in India’s transformation. Doing all of these things will require an India Wide Open policy, bucking the regulation-and-taxation-heavy government model that is being embraced by fearful governments around the world. The cumulative effects of such a policy that successfully meets the challenges outlined above would be significant, with Indian GDP growth accelerating to over 11% through 2025 and continuing at nearly 9% through 2040. An India Wide Open in 2040 would look very different to today’s India, as the world’s second largest economy, with widely distributed economic participation and wealth creation. The following represents an initial attempt to define and quantify the implications of an India Wide Open strategy. We will follow up with more detailed analysis in due course.

For much of its existence as an independent nation, India has lived inside closed borders and pursued a socialist economic policy, which has stalled its progress and stifled development. In 1991, following a balance-of-payments crisis, India began to liberalise various sectors and initiated other free market-oriented reforms. This was the first phase. A decade later, in the next phase, India’s entrepreneurs exercised their freedoms to scale and to go global and the country’s growth accelerated significantly and India emerged as a significant contributor to the world economy and therefore a credible international investment destination. However, in 2011, much was revealed, India was shaken by corruption scandals which hit at the heart of how the country actually works, its capital market was revealed to be shallow, over-sensitive and too small to absorb the large quantities of capital required to drive India’s growth, and its leaders posed a stark contrast to what, at least for now, looks like a much better managed China. The India Story looks like it needs to be re-thought. It is time for Phase III.

The Election Manifesto of the Winning Party in the Next General Election of India

• Indians to rise to be the most educated workforce of any scaled economy. 200 million educated and skilled for the New India within five years. Open education using all domestic and global providers with no restrictions
• India to become a Food Superpower. Farmers and landowners permitted to become shareholders in Industrial Agricultural conglomerates to feed India and feed the world
• India to become the world’s “Special Economic Zone”. India to open for all foreign and domestic business and employment at the most competitive tax rates in the world
• India to become the world’s manufacturing hub, with scaled capabilities in both light and heavy industries driven by a highly skilled and low cost workforce
• India to Scale as a global export hub. For all industries, exporters from Indian soil to be given tax free status for three years and 10% taxes for the next seven.
• India to inject IT into every industry. Government incentive package for the IT sector to inject IT into every industry in the form of VAT exemptions for domestic revenues.
• India to become a global innovation and R&D leader. India to increase R&D spending to 2% of GDP by providing corporate tax breaks to companies spending more than 5% of revenues on R&D

India today is the world’s second most populous country, behind China. By 2025, India’s population is expected to overtake China’s with both hosting just under 1.4 billion people each. However, by 2040, India’s population is expected to grow to 1.6 billion while China’s is expected to have peaked at 1.4 billion and declining. More importantly, India’s population will be significantly younger than China’s and it will be one of the biggest drivers of net additions to the global labour force: out of the 1.3bn net additions to the global labour force in the next four decades, more than a quarter will be in India – while the labour forces in China and Europe will begin to shrink sizeably. 1 There is widespread sentiment among investors and economists that India’s large population will be an important asset that has the potential to give the country a long-term competitive advantage. If this sentiment holds true, India would become a powerful global economic force during the second quarter of this century. However, such a large population can be a huge liability rather than an asset unless that population is well fed, educated, employed and empowered.

India is already staggering under the weight of its 1.2 billion population and its government, bureaucracy, soft and hard infrastructure are strained. Given the sheer scale of India’s population increase, the country will need to see significant change to face significant challenges in maintaining social and political stability. Specifically, it will need to ensure that it can (a) gainfully employ its vast population, (b) provide the infrastructure, resources, and basic services such as education and healthcare which are essential for improving living standards, and (c) make its political system and institutions efficient and transparent such that this population feels it is being treated fairly. If the country fails to do these things, not only will India’s economic ascendance be in jeopardy, India’s leaders will need to consider whether they can rely on a docile and patient population. India is not China and cannot pursue a directive policy of top-down change. There are four open policies that can push India along the path and one that makes India truly wide-open, namely:

• Open the People: Unlocking Human Potential. The “India Shining” story took pride in the rapid growth of certain sectors such as IT services, wireless telecommunication, and financial services. However, India is not currently generating sufficient and sufficiently high quality employment to capitalise on its demographic dividend. Overall labour participation in India is low at 38%, 2 compared with rates of over 60% and over 70% in the EU and US, respectively. This is partially due to the lack of workforce participation by women in India, where female participation is 23%, significantly lower than the EU average of 57%, which incidentally is higher than male participation in India. Another critical factor is the structure of employment, with over 66% of workers in India employed in the agricultural sector, more than 10x the EU average and still twice as high as China’s, the world’s largest producer of foodstuffs. Tied closely to this is the informal structure of the labour market in India, with only 7% of the workforce employed in the formal (organised) sector 3 and the vast bulk of employment in the unorganised or informal sector which includes self and casual employment as well as contract labour. India today has neither the labour force nor the job quality required and it will need to expand employment aggressively to deliver on its promises of prosperity. The Chinese aim was to add 20 million people a year to the “new prosperity”, an aim that it delivered on in most years during the reform era in the 1980s and 1990s. 4The number of people India can employ in delivering IT services is not the question; clearly it is too few. However, the Indian IT services capability presents the opportunity to inject IT into every industry and this will increasingly matter for the competitiveness of Indian industry. To deliver the level of productive labour to transform the country, India would need to became a multi-hub nation: a first grade manufacturing hub for the world providing an “alternative-to-China” destination to international manufacturers, an R&D hub for healthcare and multiple knowledge industries, the destination for the implementation of alternative energies and materials, a professional services hub and an entertainment and tourism hub leveraging the diverse and rich culture of the country to become the number one tourist destination. None of this is possible unless the country has the ability to educate 25 to 50 million more people every year for decades to come. It is only through such diverse and ambitious initiatives that India can generate the high quality employment on the scale required to fully realise the demographic dividend. If India were to increase its workforce by c.20 million people every year through 2025, its work participation ratio would equal Brazil’s. Assuming India could also increase its worker productivity to say that of the Philippines’ (ranked 125th in GDP/Capita vs. India’s 135th position) the GDP impact would be substantial, rising from US$1.7 trillion today to US$4.2 trillion by 2025. If India could add 30 million jobs annually, real GDP 5 would expand to over US$5 trillion. However, to self-generate 260 million, much less 400 million, high quality jobs would require an Indian government that can manage large scale micro-managed change, something few governments (in India or elsewhere) have proven themselves to be capable of in the past.
• Open Government: Creating a Modern Transparent Meritocracy. Travelling from China to India, travelers do not get the impression that they have arrived in a country with effective government. Post-independence it was easy to blame the British, democracy, life, the weather or the gods. However, some time after the first decade post-independence there was no one to blame but oneself. If people were not gainfully employed building roads, schools, factories and so forth, there was no one to blame but India. India urgently needs to create an efficient, transparent, and meritocratic government in order to become a truly open, free and fair society. Today India ranks 95th out of 178 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index and studies report that more than 55% of Indians have first-hand experience of paying bribes or using influence to get jobs done by public servants. 6 It is estimated that over US$18bn, or 1.26% of annual GDP, is paid annually to India’s public officials. 7 Tied to public corruption is a large underground or informal economy – most recently estimated at 50% of GDP. 8 Clearly, corruption is a human phenomenon and the numbers in even higher-ranking nations outstrip India and others below India in the corruption index. Individual frauds such as Madoff in the United States may outstrip individual ones in India. The challenge for Indians is that India’s corruption has a depth and breadth that touches just about every business and the “ordinary man on the street” in a way that undermines trust and meritocracy and threatens to bleed India’s potential through a thousand cuts. The sheer audacity of the recent scandals, including the arbitrary allocation of 2G wireless licenses in 2008, which led to a shortfall in government revenues estimated at up to US$40bn by some sources, has led to a level of public outrage which may well mark the turning point in the Indian public’s acceptance of endemic corruption. 9 Despite the initial successes of activists who with nationwide protests, moved the government to agree to enact new anti-corruption legislation this past summer, it is apparent that freeing India from this crippling corruption will be a long and drawn out process, of which only the first tiny steps have been taken. The men and women that rallied to Gandhi’s call could not be proud of this. This requires a revolution in thinking; another independence movement, another Quit India campaign, wider than individual protesters. As most Indians will tell you, without a revolution, which they deem highly unlikely if not impossible, this will not change. The price India is paying today is significant: we estimate that the direct impact of reduced corruption to be an additional 1.7% on 2025 GDP, and up to 3.5% of 2040 GDP. However, the indirect impact will be much more significant, providing the governance framework for the implementation of sector deregulation and liberalization, transparent privatisations and other policies designed to create the new jobs, rise to the productivity, encourage the sector development and entrepreneurship and efficiently exploit the resources required to create India Wide Open.
• Open Resources: Securing the Resources for Growth. India will need to access substantial resources including energy, food and water in order to fuel rapid economic growth and create the industrial scale required to employ the country’s vast potential labour force. At first glance, the simple mathematics of finance would suggest India cannot compete against resource-hungry and richer nations and secure enough to build and grow its nation. India simply lacks the financial resources to compete against China, America, Europe or Japan for the resources these richer countries also require. In spite of overseas resource acquisitions by large Indian corporates, including government-owned companies, India has no sovereign wealth fund, no mutual fund in the top 25 worldwide by size and no private investing institution with over US$20 billion in assets under management.However, India has significant domestic resource potential which is still relatively unexplored. The discovery of an additional 30 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Krishna Godavari basin by ONGC and Reliance Industries will double the size of India’s natural gas reserves once fully developed, and potentially reduce India’s oil imports by up to US$9 billion annually. India’s North East can be in resource terms what Tibet is becoming for China, without the conflict issues, with untapped hydropower resources worth over US$35 billion annually at current electricity prices as well as uranium, oil and coal. India also has the second biggest stock of arable and permanent cropland in the world after America, although agriculture today is highly fragmented and inefficient with a high percentage of peasant subsistence farming. Turning this into a world asset is both one of the biggest opportunities as well as challenges facing India today. The resource revolution requires: (1), the industrialization of agriculture and this in turn will create a new generation of billionaire entrepreneurs with the power to feed not just India but the world, (2) strategic natural resource development of India’s Northeast and Western states, and (3) strategic acquisition of resources worldwide in a China style resource acquisition endeavour. The third factor alone would require US$300bn acquisitions between now and 2025, assuming India adopts China’s 2011 pace of natural resource and energy outbound FDI. However, reaching Chinese levels of agricultural output efficiency could create an incremental US$1 trillion in annual GDP output by 2025 and significantly more by 2040, when increased resourced exploitation could reduce energy imports by over US$55bn annually. The changes implied by the policies are clearly necessary but, once again, they require an India that can manage large-scale domestic and foreign endeavours.

Each of these aspects of opening India is necessary and each seems to be onerous and revolutionary in its own right. Each requires an Indian political leadership that does not exist, perhaps cannot exist, given the scale of the challenges, the nature of the assets required to overcome them and the level of resources available to government. Rather than pursue four revolutions, it seems that India might pursue one revolution that could solve all four. Hence, the fifth answer is as follows:

• India Wide Open: India Becomes a Global Platform and So, an Engine of Demand and Supply. As we noted earlier, India must first conceive of a nation that is, given its size, at once the world’s manufacturing hub, R&D hub, alternative energy and materials centre, professional services hub and number one tourist destination. How will this be achieved? The Chinese answer is not the Indian answer: India is a slowly functioning democracy. India is, however, gradually becoming an entrepreneur factory and given its chaos it is breeding a highly adaptive entrepreneur. Three to five decades into the twenty-first century India may well have enough entrepreneurs to attempt this level of change. That may be too late given the rate of development of China and its hunger for resources that may well leave India without means the fuel its needs for growth. The challenge is to do this in the next decade not in the next five. No government in a democracy of great size has ever managed this level and rate of change. There is no road map for this level of change and no one to follow.

India will need to chart its own course. “Letting go”, as India’s spiritual teachers, have often said, is one of the most difficult of tasks. India will need to buck the regulation-and-taxation-heavy government model that is being embraced by fearful governments around the world. The way for India’s leaders to achieve what seems unachievable is to provide land at virtually no cost, set its taxes to a negligible rate, make the inward migration policies for the talented and for entrepreneurs as easy as possible, provide its people with as much education as they can muster through radical liberalization, implement dispute laws to be as rapidly enforceable as the best in the world, simplify regulations and reduce the bureaucracy to the lowest level in the world, provide co-finance for strategic projects through fixed period tax breaks in return for equity ownership, consolidate land for industrial agriculture, provide rapid and massive redevelopment for slums, en masse prepare its roads for building on and its streets for cleaning by entrepreneurs. The result will be that India will find that its problems will be solved by the smartest people in the world, both Indian and foreign. These opportunities will need to be offered to everyone in the world with the ideas, capital and energy to come to India and get rich making a difference.

For this strategy, India would abandon the plan that is creating a “narrow opening” and implement an “India Wide Open” strategy. India will need to launch a twenty-first century revolution. Will India cope with such a large influx of foreign capital and talent? Indians have seen waves of foreigners – Aryans, Persians, Greeks, Chinese, Mongols, Afghans, Arabs, Portuguese, British and others – come to their land and have coped just fine. Today’s Indians will be fine too. India Wide Open requires confidence and a real conviction in the power of its people and its democracy.

Revolutions by nature are volatile creations and history has shown that they are difficult to control. In order to do so India will need to adopt a series of enablers to bring about the scale of change required. India Wide Open would need to be achieved through three resolutions implemented in one revolutionary shift over one decade. This would create the momentum for India to break the shackles of its own situation. The three resolutions are:

• Land Resolution. India would offer agricultural, industrial and commercial government land for a token cost to all employers, domestic or foreign, creating employment for more than 100 people in their initial investment.
• Education Resolution. India would dismantle all restrictions on the establishment of private educational institutions and allow the public to decide. Taxes on private sector educational and training enterprises would be a maximum of 5% in the first five years and 10% for the next ten years.
• Business Resolution. India’s major advantage is that it already has a convertible currency and no restrictions on the repatriation of profits. The Business Resolution would open all sectors to foreign and domestic participation with the government focused on creating regulatory frameworks for competition, with an efficient judiciary enforcing fairness, regulatory standards and the transparency of business practices.

Will the incumbent political elite unleash this revolution? Fortunately, for India – and the world – it takes a small group of brave visionaries or a very deep crisis to turn an entire country in a new direction, as the events of 1991 demonstrated. What are the triggers one should look towards to determine whether India is adopting this radical path or, perhaps more importantly, what are the catalysts that will accelerate its adoption and progress? Continued political unrest, further revelations of corruption, the government’s continued inability to deliver on promised infrastructure improvements, or even a clear victory in India’s next national elections could all accelerate India’s movement to adopting a Wide Open position.

Conclusion. The cumulative impact of a successful India Wide Open strategy would have a significant effect on India’s growth, with annualised GDP growth rates of up to 11.2%, through 2025, reducing to 8.6% from 2025 to 2040, on par with China during the period of its fastest expansion. A Wide Open India in 2040 would look very different from India today. GDP/capita would be at US$17,700 or larger than Brazil or Russia’s today. India’s workforce would have expanded from 480 million today to over 950 million, with significantly increased female participation in the workforce. Literacy rates would increase from 75% currently to 85% or above. India’s economy and capital markets would be fundamentally transformed with manufacturing output rising over twenty-fold from US$200 billion to US$4.5 trillion and the total market capitalisation of the equity market would increase 16-fold (assuming current market capitalisation to GDP ratios).

The smartest dictators will be those that overthrow themselves. India’s political class is smart and resilient and will learn this lesson faster than others. Given the size of the challenge and the opportunity, we believe India has no choice but to pursue an India Wide Open strategy. India Wide Open is not an option for an India that will have 1.6 billion people very soon. It is not an option also to imagine that one can micro-manage this level of change. The risk to India failing to deliver on even the 7% annual growth being currently assumed is very real given the challenges India faces today. The role of government as enabler will be a massive transition for a nation with the world’s biggest bureaucracy. The traditional values of the country support the principle of “duty” as leadership. It seems time to put these values to the fore. Power without purpose and principle will not move India forward.

1 : United Nations Population Fund (www.unfpa.org)

2 : International Labour Organization (www.ilo.org)

3 : Ministry of Labour, Government of India

4 : Joint Economic Committee, United States Congress

5 : In 2010 equivalent dollars

6 : Transparency International Survey 2010

7 : Debroy/Bhandari “Corruption in India: The DNA and RNA” Konark 2011

8 : Global Financial Integrity: “The Drivers and Dynamics of Illicit Financial Flows from India: 1948-2008″ 2010

9 : Comptroller and Auditor General of India

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• 05 November 2021

Scientists cheer India’s ambitious carbon-zero climate pledge

• Gayathri Vaidyanathan

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India, the world’s third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, has pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2070. The ambitious commitment, made on 1 November at the high-stakes COP26 climate meeting in Glasgow, UK, brings India in line with other big emitters, including the United States, China, Saudi Arabia and the European Union, which have made similar promises.

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• Developed India: Vision & Progress Towards 2047

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In 2021 Independence Day speech, the Hon’ble Prime Minister paid homage to the freedom fighters and shared his vision for Amrit Kaal and 2047, when the country would celebrate 100 years of independence. He mentioned that the goal of 'Amrit Kaal' is to create an India where the level of facilities is not dividing the village and the city; where the government does not interfere unnecessarily in the lives of citizens; where there is world’s every modern infrastructure. To achieve these goals, he gave the slogan, “SabkaSaath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas, and SabkaPrayas.” 

The PM, in his 2022 Independence Day speech, mentioned how the entire country celebrated Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav and shared Panch Pran of Amrit Kaal: Goal of developed India, to remove any trace of the colonial mindset, take pride in our roots, unity and a sense of duty among citizens. He urged the citizens to nurture new possibilities, realize new resolutions and move ahead with confidence. He also underlined collective efforts and teamwork to take the country forward.  

Roadmap 

Expounding on the PM’s vision, the Union Finance Minister, in her Union Budget FY 2022-2023 speech , shared that during the Amrit Kaal (India at 75 to India at 100), the government aims to 

• Complement the macro-economic level growth focus with a micro-economic level all-inclusive welfare focus.
• Promote digital economy & fintech, technology-enabled development, energy transition, and climate action.
• Rely on virtuous cycle starting from private investment with public capital investment helping to crowd-in private investment. 

Elaborating more on the goals for 2047, the union budget for 2023-2024, the first budget in the Amrit Kaal, envisioned India as a technology-driven and knowledge-based economy with strong public finances and a robust financial sector. It reemphasised that Jan Bhagidari through Sabka Saath, Sabka Prayas is essential and delineated the Saptarishi principles: Inclusive Development; Reaching the Last Mile; Infrastructure and Investment; Unleashing the Potential; Green Growth; Youth Power; Financial Sector. 

In line with the above-mentioned futuristic and inclusive vision, the government has taken several steps, like focusing on women's development, health, education, skill development, science and technology advancement, infrastructure creation, employment, agriculture, increasing manufacturing, industrial production, innovation, boosting indigenous industry etc. 

Keeping in mind the impact of climate change, special focus will be given to green growth as per the Panchamrit policy. The government is committed to increasing its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030; meeting 50% of its energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030; reducing the total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes by 2030; reducing the carbon intensity of its economy by less than 45%; achieving the target of Net Zero by 2070.  The government is already implementing various programs for green fuel, green energy, green farming, green mobility, green buildings, and green equipment, and policies for efficient use of energy across various economic sectors.  Similarly, the Government is also focussing on critical and emerging technologies like blockchain, AI, IoT etc. 

To boost the economy, employment, innovation and industrial output, various policies on skill development, ease of doing business, and schemes like PM Gati-Shakti, PLI are already in place. Similarly, the Competitiveness Roadmap for India@100 emphasises productivity as a driver of sustained prosperity through sector-specific and region-specific policies based on the ‘ 4 S ’ principles. The 4S principles stress the need for prosperity growth to be matched by social progress , to be  shared across all regions within India, to be environmentally sustainable , and to be solid in the face of external shocks.  

India is well on the path to becoming one of the two largest economies in the world by 2047.  Hon’ble Commerce and Industries Minister has also predicted that by 2047 India will be a global powerhouse with the size of economy around $ 35 trillion.  The vision document for the same is already being prepared in consultation with a wide-range of stakeholders across all sectors.  

The seeds we sow today will define the fruits reaped in future. To achieve the above-mentioned transformational objectives of Viksit Bharat envisioned for 2047, the country must continue to focus on “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas, and Sabka Prayas.” This Independence Day, let us pledge to make efforts, individually and collectively.    

• https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1746062#:~:text=I%20can%20be%20proud%20that,the%20heart%20of%20all%20Indians
• https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1852024#:~:text=Compliments%20to%20my%20dear%20countrymen,who%20love%20their%20country%20immensely.
• https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/doc/bspeech/bs202223.pdf
• https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/doc/budget_speech.pdf
• https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetail.aspx?PRID=1768712
• https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1895313
• https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1855437
• https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2019-01/Strategy_for_New_India_2.pdf
• https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1902288

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Essay on My Vision for India in 600+ Words

• Updated on  
• Apr 10, 2024

Essay on My Vision for India: India, that is, Bharat, is the largest democracy in the world. Up until 1947, India was a British colony. On August 15th, 1947, a new India was born. Though drained and divided, India was desperate to make it on its own. Today, India has the 5th largest economy, the 4th largest military strength, and is home to over 1.4 billion people. 

Recently, the Indian Government launched Vision @2047 to make India a global economic power by 2047. The tagline for this scheme was ‘BRINGING CITIZENS AND GOVERNMENT CLOSER’. 

Table of Contents

• 1 Economic Development in India
• 2 India’s Geopolitical Relations
• 3 Technology
• 4 Conclusion

Quick Read: English Essay Topics

Economic Development in India

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released in its 2023 report that India, along with China is likely to drive half of global growth in the coming years. This will be in stark contrast to just a tenth of the growth for the USA and Europe combined. It means India and China will together pave the way for a global economic rebound. 

In 2023, the Indian economy will retain its crown as a bright spot, and it will remain the fastest-growing economy in the world. The American economy, on the other hand, grew by just 1.4% and that of China by 5.2%.

In the post-pandemic period, the Indian economy’s growth projection was 6.1%. This is a little less than what it was in 2022, 6.8%, but India is still the fastest-growing economy in the world, and the Indian Prime Minister is determined to make India the 3rd largest economy in the next 4 to 5 years. 

India’s Geopolitical Relations

Right after WWII, the world was divided into two blocs; the Capitalist and the Socialist. However, India successfully navigated the Cold War and became a political force for decolonization. India liberated Bangladesh in 1971, reached out to Africa, successfully dehydrated Israel and Palestine, and struck strategic partnerships with the Gulf.

Today, world powers see India as an important partner, a leading voice in multilateral forums. India has become the face of peace and the loudest cheerleader of counter-terrorism. 

Today’s India is capable of standing for itself. India has taught the world tolerance and universal acceptance. During the nationalist movements in the 1920s and 1930s, India was raising the banner of Swaraj, or Self-Government. However, Winston Churchill, the former British PM, dismissed India’s experience with self-government, believing India was socially diverse. 

He said, ‘India is merely a geographical expression. It is no more a single country than the equator.’ He was convinced that independent India wouldn’t be able to stay together. Well, Churchill was wrong. India remains united and grows stronger. India’s success as a secular state has surprised many.

Quick Read: Essay on Digital India

Just 17 years after Independence, India decided to go into space. The Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCO SPAR) was set up, and in 1963, India launched its first rocket from a town called Thumba, Kerala. The rocket parts were transported on bicycles and bullock carts.

On August 23, 2023, Indian space programs reached a new height with the successful landing of Chandryaan 3 on the lunar surface. Today, India is a well-established space power, it has reached the Red Planet and is unfurling the tri-color in space to mark its 75 years of independence. 

India was also the first country outside the UNSC permanent members to successfully test a nuclear bomb. And India did this despite the world’s best efforts. The American secret agency was spying on us using a satellite, and they even killed an Indian scientist to roadblock the mission. On May 18, 1974, India took the world by surprise. It became a nuclear power by successfully testing its first nuclear bomb. The operation was named ‘Smiling Buddha’.

This is today’s India, and my vision for India is far from done. India has achieved a lot in its 75 years since independence, all thanks to education and democracy. For India, its next milestone is even greater than before, as our Prime Minister aims to make India a global economic power. It can be done only when the government and the people come together with just one goal in mind; Making India great.

Quick Read: Essay on Viksit Bharat

Ans: India, that is, Bharat, is the largest democracy in the world. Up until 1947, India was a British colony. On August 15, 1947, a new India was born. Though drained and divided, India was desperate to make it on its own. Today, India has the 5th largest economy, the 4th largest military strength, and is home to over 1.4 billion people.  Recently, the Indian Government launched Vision @2047 to make India a global economic power by 2047. The tagline for this scheme was ‘BRINGING CITIZENS AND GOVERNMENT CLOSER’. 

Ans: On August 23, 2023, Indian space programmes reached a new height, with the successful landing of Chandryaan 3 on the lunar surface. Today, India is a well-established space power, it has reached the Red Planet and is unfurling the tri-color in space to mark its 75 years of independence. The Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCO SPAR) was set up and in 1963, India launched its first rocket from a town called Thumba, Kerala. The rocket parts were transported on bicycles and bullock carts.

Ans: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released in its 2023 report that India, along with China is likely to drive half of global growth in the coming years. This will be in stark contrast to just a tenth of the growth for the USA and Europe combined. It means India and China will together pave the way for a global economic rebound.  In 2023, the Indian economy will retain its crown as a bright spot, and it will remain the fastest-growing economy in the world. The American economy, on the other hand, grew by just 1.4% and that of China, by 5.2%.

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Shiva Tyagi

With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

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India in 2040: The Future Demographic

From 2021-2040, population growth in India will be driven by positive natural change, despite the falling birth rate. While ageing will accelerate and impact consumer trends, the country will continue to have a relatively young median age. While urbanisation will rise, over half the population will live in rural areas in 2040. A vast consumer base and economic growth will increase India's consumer appeal; however, inequality and poverty will remain key challenges for the nation.

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The Future Demographic reports provide insights on key population themes and how these are set to change over time. Track demographic trends, shifts in consumer profiles and gain an understanding of countries that offer the best prospects. Explore and make the most of the consumer markets of the future.

The Consumers in India report includes:

• Snapshot of the population
• Analysis of changing population structures
• A look at the diversity of the population
• Breakdown of the biggest cities by population size
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• How is the population set to change over time?
• What is the overall health of the population?
• Do we need to broaden our consumer base?
• Will our target market continue to grow?
• Are there opportunities to explore untapped potential?

Key Findings (1)

Key findings (2), india and the world in 2040, population past, present and future, men and women, marriage and divorce, births and fertility, life expectancy and deaths, urbanisation, population segmentation, buy future demographic report to:.

• Understand the population structure of the consumer market and workforce
• Track long-term demographic shifts which will impact consumer demand
• Realise growth potential of the biggest cities
• Identify target markets by diversity, age and sex

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Independence Day 2024 Essay Tips: Celebrated annually on August 15th, India's Independence Day in 2024 marks 77 years since gaining freedom from British rule in 1947. The day features flag hoisting, patriotic songs, and cultural performances. Schools and public institutions commemorate the event, highlighting the contributions of freedom fighters and fostering national pride.

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Continuity and Change in the New Cycle of Central Asian Consultative Meetings

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Crossroads asia  |  diplomacy  |  central asia.

What are the key takeaways from the sixth consultative meeting of Central Asia’s presidents? And where is Central Asian regionalism heading?

On August 9, the sixth consultative meeting of the heads of state of Central Asia was held in Astana, Kazakhstan. The meeting, which saw Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev again present as a guest of honor, together with the United Nations Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia Representative Kaha Imnadze, marked the beginning of a new cycle of consultative meetings after the first five were successfully held starting in 2018, with only one interruption in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The sixth consultative meeting in Astana featured several positive aspects, not the least of which was the continuation of such gatherings among the Central Asian presidents. But despite expectations of a qualitative evolution in the format, and the proposals and documents approved , there were no fundamental or radical changes in what seems to be, for the time being, a consolidated format.

During the meeting, the presidential speeches all featured the usual pattern of advancing very general proposals in several fields, such as agriculture, industry, connectivity, and energy, together with very specific, and innovative, suggestions. 

The new ideas ranged from the creation of a Central Asian TV channel or a news internet portal, as Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev emphasized , to developing new effective forms of cooperation in the field of security, although admittedly in a very vague form, as proposed by Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. 

The idea of Central Asia’s image and identity was, for the first time, on the table. Tokayev spoke of “a new image of Central Asia” in international politics, while Mirziyoyev, nodding to Tokayev’s article , “Renaissance of Central Asia: On the Path to Sustainable Development and Prosperity,” made a reference to “the beginning of the formation of a pan-regional identity in Central Asia.” Mirziyoyev argued that “the time has come to jointly consider issues of further improving our format of the Consultative Meeting to deepen regional integration and fill the agenda of long-term partnership.” 

Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov made unusually strong remarks about the purpose of the meetings, which now have the status of “a tradition” but “should be of consultative nature, a platform for political communication without strictly regulating rules and procedures.”

Seen in an evolutionary perspective, the sixth consultative meeting was the natural product of the previous five, which were tasked to find common normative ground, viable rules of engagement, a flexible and non-sensitive legal framework for interactions, and trust-building mechanisms. The fact that the “Concept for the Development of Cooperation until 2040” has been signed by all parties demonstrates that there is now enough trust and mutual understanding to plan coordination and cooperation in the mid- and long-term.

In the first meeting in Astana in 2018, the idea of “historical responsibility” for the stability and survival of the region was adopted and embraced. In the second meeting in Tashkent in 2019, procedural rules of the consultative meetings were approved, together with an affirmation of mutual respect for sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the regional countries and the first mention of a Treaty of Friendship and Good-Neighborliness in the 21st Century. In the third meeting in 2021 in Avaza, Turkmenistan, the meetings started including scientific diplomacy, inter-regional dialogue, women diplomacy, and humanitarian cooperation more consistently. In the fourth meeting, in 2022 in Kyrgyzstan’s Cholpon-Ata, the friendship treaty was proposed, although only Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan signed it. In the fifth meeting in Dushanbe last year, guidelines on national coordinators were approved, agreements on youth policy and transport were adopted, and a push was given to shared educational and humanitarian projects. 

So, what are the main takeaways of the sixth meeting? 

The first, and most important, is that the task for the years ahead will have to be finding a common ground on the issue of institutionalization and regional identity . Taking Mirziyoyev’s remarks and Tokayev’s article together and juxtaposing them to the other three speeches and positions, especially Berdimuhamedov’s, it seems that there are some divergences in how to proceed in terms of formalizing and deepening cooperation. 

While Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan all consider the current trends irreversible and beneficial, on their side there is – at present – less emphasis on the search for a common identity and the creation of a supranational structure. This, of course, does not mean that there is no interest or open disagreements. But the priorities and sensitivities of all the regional states will have to be fully taken into account and interwoven. Too often considered as an undifferentiated monolith, Central Asia features a complex array of political, social, ethnic, and cultural differences.

It is significant that Tokayev was the only president among the five to refer to the Treaty of Friendship during the meeting. The proposals on identity, image-building, and integration seemed to have been built on the bilateral meeting between Tokayev and Mirziyoyev the day before the consultative meeting. Most likely, for the time being there will continue to be “umbrella proposals” that need to be worked out by state agencies, national coordinators, and at the bilateral level, yet with the purpose of keeping momentum, political imagination, and agency alive. The role of the youth and other actors on the ground will be vital in developing these ideas and avoiding artificiality.

Second, it is important to reflect on the fact that, for all its light-touch approach, the consultative meetings have managed to create a firm and clear-cut set of fundamental norms and principles that define Central Asia and its denser intra-regional interactions. These include the increasing number of ministerial, expert, and inter-parliamentary gatherings, such as the meeting of regional heads of security councils on May 16 and in the Birlestik-2024 military exercises in July, both of which took place in Kazakhstan. 

Stability, sustainable development, equality, respect, pluralism and diversity, consensus – these are, on top of the norms enshrined in the U.N. Charter, some of the defining normative features of Central Asia. One can see them codified in the meetings, if not always displayed in practice. This bundle of principles gives the region what Tokayev has recently called “subjectivity” and agency at the international level. In addition, thanks to the constant process of defining rules of engagement and norms of behavior, significant results have been achieved. Over the years, for example, Turkmenistan has become a full participant in the meetings at all levels; difficult border situations have been smoothened behind closed doors; and economic and development indicators have gone up consistently, with intra-regional trade having increased by 73.4 percent (from $5.8 to $10 billion) between 2018 and 2022.

Third, and finally, there are significant similarities with the 1990s. While those were different times, and expertise, resources, and actors were different, several of the projects that are being sponsored at the meetings – especially in the cultural-humanitarian, media, scientific, and environmental domains – are directly linked to proposals and efforts carried out when the Central Asian Union and the Central Asian Economic Cooperation were active. The idea of a magazine called “Central Asia: Problems of Integration” was first proposed in 1996, and the idea of a regional system of security for the five Central Asian states is as old as 1992, when the newly independent states had to coordinate their positioning within the CIS, and materialized in the regional battalion CentrAsBat in 1996. 

As I have been told by senior diplomats, one of the roles of the national coordinators of consultative meetings is to review these previous experiences to build on the positives and avoid the negatives. The regional states have more diplomatic and institutional experience now, as well as a younger, more active, and imaginative population who do believe, as the recent Olympics demonstrated , in an idea of regional “togetherness.” To avoid a back-to-the-future scenario, continuity and change, as well as top-down and bottom-up approaches, will have to go hand in hand.

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Talent is scarce. Yet many countries spurn it

There is growing competition for the best and the brightest migrants.

Z eke Hernandez was worried. His 12-year-old son, Lucas, had not grown for two years. The family paediatrician told him to eat more, but it didn’t work. Eventually, after a battery of tests, another doctor diagnosed Lucas with celiac disease, which was damaging his small intestine. The solution was to stop eating wheat.

Mr Hernandez, who teaches at Wharton business school, tells this story to illustrate a point about immigration. His (now healthy) son owes a debt to Alessio Fasano, an Italian-born doctor who helped improve understanding of gluten intolerance in America. Dr Fasano migrated from a country where celiac disease is common (Italy) to one where it was thought to be rare (America). Having grown up surrounded by sufferers, he wondered if the condition was really so uncommon in his new homeland, or simply underdiagnosed. In a landmark study in 2003, he proved that celiac disease afflicts Americans just as much as Europeans. Diagnosis and treatment have now markedly improved.

Clever immigrants like Dr Fasano bring huge benefits to the countries where they relocate. Yet many governments make it hard for them to settle or turn them away outright. Even governments receptive to skilled immigrants often bungle the job of attracting them. Some, however, do it ruthlessly and reap big rewards.

Brain germane

When brainy immigrants arrive in a country, they do not just bring their brains. They bring fresh ways of looking at things. They know things that locals don’t, and can tap foreign-language sources that locals can’t. So in a variety of fields, from business to science, their skills are likely to be unusually beneficial. “Immigrants are different in useful ways,” argues Mr Hernandez in “The Truth about Immigration”, a new book.

A study by Shai Bernstein of Harvard University and others found an original way to measure this. They looked at what happens to scientists when a colleague with whom they have collaborated dies prematurely (before the age of 60). Naturally, any such tragedy makes the surviving scientists less productive. But intriguingly, the death of an immigrant colleague hurts more. The number of patents subsequently received by the surviving scientists falls by nearly twice as much (17% versus 9%).

“Immigrant inventors are more likely to rely on foreign technologies, to collaborate with foreign inventors, and to be cited in foreign markets, thus contributing to the… diffusion of ideas across borders,” the authors conclude. Immigrants are 14% of the population in America, 16% of inventors and directly produce over 23% of innovation, measured by patents, patent citations and the economic value of those patents, the authors estimate. Taking into account how they make their native-born collaborators more productive, they are responsible for a staggering 36% of total innovation.

Given the advantages that highly skilled immigrants bring, you might think that countries would compete as vigorously to attract the best and brightest as companies do. Many governments say they want to lure the world’s top talent. China’s ruling party recently vowed to “improve the support mechanisms for recruiting talent from overseas”, perhaps by allowing foreign scientists permanent residence. In America Joe Biden’s administration has promised to streamline the process for admitting talented foreigners, especially those with skills in AI . Donald Trump has said that anyone who graduates from an American college should “automatically” get a green card (ie, permanent residence).

The smartest people are highly mobile. Only 3.6% of the world’s population are migrants. But of the 1,000 people with the highest scores in the entrance exam for India’s elite institutes of technology, 36% migrate after graduation. Among the top 100, 62% do. Among the top 20% of AI researchers in the world, 42% work abroad, according to MacroPolo, a think-tank in Chicago.

Yet few governments think systematically about luring talent, as a corporate recruiter would. Many have schemes to attract people with specific skills, in medicine or AI , say, but these are often piecemeal and bureaucratic. China’s “Thousand Talents” programme, which involved big cash gifts to lure academics from abroad, enrolled only 8,000 scientists and engineers between 2008 and 2018, mostly of Chinese origin. In many countries, far more political energy is expended keeping out the huddled masses than enticing the excellent. Indeed, though some governments fight fiercely for footloose talent, others actively harm their own cause. Consider how America treated Deedy Das, a young AI whizz.

Mr Das, a Cornell graduate, has worked for Google (on search) and was part of the founding team at Glean, a startup that created an AI assistant and is now worth over $2bn. He is precisely the kind of immigrant that both Mr Biden and Mr Trump say they want.

Yet when he wanted permanent residence, he faced a snag. America mandates that no country may receive more than 7% of green cards in a given year. This is tricky for applicants from populous countries, such as the Indian-born Mr Das. A typical Indian applicant can expect to wait 134 years for approval, estimates the Cato Institute, a think-tank. That the system is still paper-based, when even much poorer countries such as Pakistan and Zambia have shifted to digital, does not help.

So Mr Das applied for what is colloquially known as the “genius visa”. He had to send 926 pages detailing his technical and commercial accomplishments to bureaucrats who struggled to understand either. He was rejected on what he calls “nonsensical” grounds: for failing to provide evidence he had, in fact, provided. He appealed and was eventually granted a visa.

The process “stifles innovation”, he says. Certainly, it repels talent. A hefty 73% of foreign graduates of American universities say they would stay in the country if a visa were readily available. But it often isn’t, so only 41% actually stay, according to the Economic Innovation Group, a think-tank. This may also be why, although American universities are widely considered the world’s best, America has been losing market share to Australia and Canada over the past two decades.

Brain retain

Contrast this with how Dubai welcomed Simon Williams, a British banker with HSBC . It took him a week and minimal hassle to get a residency visa. The United Arab Emirates (of which Dubai is part) almost never allows foreigners to become citizens, but work permits for well-paid professionals are straightforward. Anyone who earns more than 50,000 dirhams ($13,600) a month is eligible for a “golden visa”, valid for up to ten years, as are scientists, inventors and even some artists.

Settling in is simple, too. Mr Williams says it took him only a week to obtain a local ID , driving licence, phone number, bank account, credit card and a licence to buy alcohol, which devout locals shun. A “super-efficient” airport helps. Mr Williams contrasts “the dreaded 90-minute queue at a US airport to deal with an immigration officer who rarely seems pleased you’ve come to visit” with the UAE ’s high-tech system. Arriving in Dubai, “My passport stays in my pocket, the camera recognises me, the screen says, ‘Hello Simon J. Williams’ and the gate opens.” He feels both more welcome and more secure.

To estimate how much footloose talent countries might gain if they were more open to it, The Economist analysed data from the Gallup World Poll. This is an annual survey of nearly 200,000 people from more than 150 countries and territories. Among other things, it asks people whether they would like to move abroad permanently if they had the chance and if so, where? As a proxy for talent, we considered only respondents who said they had completed an undergraduate degree. Using data from 2010-23 (excluding 2019 and 2020, when few surveys were conducted), we estimated how many graduates each country could expect to gain and lose if moving were easy.

Three big, rich, English-speaking countries are the most powerful magnets (see chart 1). If there were no barriers to entry, 23m graduates would move to America, 17m to Canada and 9m to Australia, we estimate. Taking account of the number who would consider leaving these countries, global free movement for graduates would raise the number of them in the US by 7% (see chart 2). Canada, Australia and Switzerland would see their graduate populations rise by a factor of around 2.5; New Zealand by over fourfold.

At the other end of the scale, China and India would lose the largest number of graduates in absolute terms (14m and 12m respectively). In relative terms, however, places like Iran, Ecuador and the Democratic Republic of Congo would see the biggest net outflows. The UAE would see only a modest inflow. A port in the desert is not inherently attractive—it is policy that makes it so.

Many things that make a country attractive are beyond a government’s control. Belgium cannot aspire to New Zealand’s scenic beauty, nor New Zealand to Belgium’s location. The most important pull factor—the quality of job opportunities—is hard to change in the short run.

Places where talent clusters have an enormous advantage, since high-flyers like to work with other high-flyers in the same field. This is why, for example, 57% of the top 20% of AI researchers worked in America in 2022. China is catching up fast, largely because it trains a huge number of AI experts at home. But more than half of elite Chinese AI researchers work outside China, whereas America hosts nearly twice as many elite AI researchers as it trains.

Still, whatever their starting-point, there are plenty of things governments can do to make their countries more appealing to foreign talent. They can simplify the processes by which highly skilled workers enter the country, and foreign graduates of local universities enter the workplace. They can treat foreigners with respect. They can adapt to changes in global labour markets, such as the rise of digital nomads. And they can make it easier to build infrastructure to accommodate newcomers.

Portugal is something of a model in this respect. Only a decade and a half ago, it was considered a backwater. By The Economist ’s calculations, using survey data from 2010-12, if all graduates who had wanted to move there had done so, its graduate population would have increased by just 1%. But repeating the calculation using survey data from 2021-23, its graduate population swells by 140%.

In some ways, the global financial crisis helped. The country was so broke it needed a bail-out. The government had to sell the national airline, and the new private owners initiated many more flights to the United States, putting Portugal on the map for many Americans. More broadly, the Portuguese government had to think harder about how to foster growth, and opted to open up to talented and rich immigrants. “It has made a real effort to make it easier to get visas [for skilled workers],” says André Filipe of Critical TechWorks, a Portuguese firm that designs software for BMW . “There’s much less red tape.”

Portugal is also adept at integrating skilled newcomers into the labour force. A study by Lighthouse Reports found that college-educated migrants in Portugal were more likely than those in other EU countries to be doing jobs that matched their skills. Many governments do not recognise qualifications earned abroad, or make the process difficult. As covid-19 was spreading, Jeanne Balatova and Michael Fix of the Migration Policy Institute estimated that there were 165,000 foreign-trained nurses and doctors in America whose skills were being wasted.

Portugal has made shrewd use of other advantages, too, such as a mild climate and tasty but healthy cuisine. For example, NOVA , a business school, relocated from the centre of Lisbon to a new campus by the beach in 2018. It entices foreign students not only with instruction in English and a rigorous curriculum, but also because “It’s nice to live here,” as Pedro Oliveira, the dean, puts it. Overlooking the main concourse is a jaunty, turquoise statue of an executive in a business suit, barefoot and carrying a surfboard. A walkway leads to the sea. Half the staff and 70% of master’s students are foreign, with Germans and Italians forming the largest contingents. The diversity of perspectives in the classroom enriches debate, says Mr Oliveira.

Portugal’s population of legal immigrants has shot up, from fewer than 400,000 in 2015 to more than 1m today. On June 3rd the new prime minister, Luis Montenegro, came to NOVA to unveil a new immigration policy that aims to make Portugal even more alluring to young, highly skilled migrants.

Brain campaign

Lowering barriers is more effective than offering carrots. Raj Choudhury of Harvard Business School and others used a data set of work-related migration reforms in 15 countries over 26 years and found that policies discouraging inventors from moving had a large negative effect on patenting by multinational firms. Policies designed to encourage such mobility had a positive but much smaller effect.

In some countries, such as Canada, Sweden and the UAE , getting a work visa is relatively easy for the highly skilled. Some places make it easy for foreign students to enter the workplace, too: graduates of Danish universities automatically get a three-year work permit, for instance. Simple, objective rules speed things up: allowing in anyone who earns more than a certain sum, for example, or giving applicants points for such things as youth, qualifications or linguistic proficiency.

Giving bureaucrats too much discretion tends to have the opposite effect. Whereas Finland uses AI to issue residence permits to students who meet certain criteria, reserving human immigration officials only for difficult cases, Italy has a government commission to decide which startups are innovative enough to merit an investor visa. “It’s insane,” says Chris Kaelin of Henley and Partners, a consultancy. “Governments are no good at judging business plans. It would be much better to say, ‘Invest 500,000 euros and you’re in.’”

Fragomen, a law firm, compiles indices on more than 100 countries’ immigration systems. On its index of “restrictive practices”, America is rated second-worst, after Iraq. Another measure looks at how long it takes, on average, to obtain a visa for a foreign employee. The range in rich countries is astonishingly wide, from 34 days in Israel to 232 in Italy.

Delays deter not only jobseekers but also potential employers, notes Mr Hernandez. Suppose a firm in America has a crucial vacancy that needs filling right now, and has found the perfect candidate. Alas, she is foreign, so she needs an H -1 B visa (for highly skilled workers). The firm must apply to the Department of Labour, showing it has tried to find an American citizen and will not undercut local wages. If the Labour Department approves, the firm must then apply to the immigration authorities, which will sit on the application until the following April, when they hold a lottery. At this stage three-quarters of applications—all for professionals with firm job offers, on average pay of $130,000 a year—are rejected. If the firm is unlucky, which it will not know until May, it has paid an immigration lawyer serious cash for no result.

If the company wins the lottery, it must wait until the following October to fill the post. Even then, the visa is valid for only three years, and renewing it is complicated. “[G]iven the choice between a prostate exam and sponsoring a work visa, hiring managers will probably choose the former,” suggests Mr Hernandez. An analysis by the Washington Post found that it would be easier for a skilled worker to get a work permit by crossing the border illegally and claiming asylum.

The randomness of the lottery does at least make it easier to study its baleful effects. Jun Chen of Renmin University and others looked at 17,000 startups based in America and backed by venture capital between 2003 and 2016. Over a third petitioned for at least one H -1 B visa, but on average they were granted barely half the visas they wanted. By comparing firms that won the lottery with those that didn’t, Mr Chen and his co-authors found that getting more visas improved a firm’s “financial performance, likelihood of going public, and quantity and quality of innovation”.

Many high-flyers do not fly alone. To woo them, countries need to consider their families, too. In Dubai holders of a golden visa can sponsor their spouses for a work visa, as well as an “unlimited” number of domestic staff. “It was only two hours’ work to get our nanny a visa,” gushes one expat. Add cheaper property and zero income tax and his family is much more comfortable in the UAE than they were in London, he says.

Brain disdain

In America, in contrast, skilled migrants may find that their children are deported when they reach adulthood and are no longer deemed dependants. Fedora Castelino, for instance, moved to the US at the age of six. In 2015 her father, who works for a life-sciences firm, applied for a green card, which would grant permanent residence to him and his dependants. But like Mr Das, he is an Indian citizen, so the wait could be excruciating. In November, when Ms Castelino turns 21, she may have to leave the country she calls home and pursue her career—she hopes to be a doctor—elsewhere. She is considering Canada.

Treating foreigners with respect ought to be easy. But many governments are so obsessed with security that they fail. China under Xi Jinping has become far more prickly. Expats have to register with the police every time they leave and come back. Hotels must alert the authorities when a foreigner checks in; many small ones simply turn foreigners away to avoid the hassle, as your correspondent discovered when half a dozen refused him a bed on a snowy night in Hebei province. Official campaigns warn Chinese women that their foreign boyfriends could be spies.

China’s reputation as a land of opportunity for expats is “long gone”, says Jens Eskelund of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. “Ten years ago, you needed to have China on your CV . [Now] people will ask, ‘Why are you in China, couldn’t you find anything better?’ [There’s a] perception that it’s difficult to live [here], and that is exacerbated when you arrive at the airport and you cannot pay for anything unless you have a Chinese app…You cannot even buy a cup of coffee.”

There is little public appetite for immigration. In 2020 a proposal to ease the path to residency for rich or skilled foreigners faced a populist backlash, with men promising to protect Chinese women from immigrants. The head of a think-tank which promoted the scheme was vilified online as a traitor. Small wonder that, as a study by MERICS , a think-tank, concluded, China “has not been very successful” in attracting talent that does not already have strong ties to the country.

Even Hong Kong, the most open part of China, has lost much of its appeal for expats. A banker who was in Hong Kong during the pandemic recalls the misery of ultra-strict lockdowns, homeschooling three children in his flat and being forced to wear a mask indoors or risk being reported by his neighbours. He contrasts Hong Kong’s “atmosphere of mistrust” with Dubai, where he now lives. “You talk to any Emirati and they say ‘Do you like it here? What can we do make you like it better?’”

Helal al-Marri, the director-general of Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism, offers a trivial but revealing example. Some expats complained that a local rule barred them from walking their dogs on beaches. Emirati officials had thought the rule uncontroversial (and many Muslims consider dogs unclean). But on realising that it bothered foreigners, they reached a compromise. Some beaches are now dedicated to dog-walkers.

Since covid-19 revealed that many white-collar jobs could be done remotely, many countries have tried to attract digital nomads. Dozens offer remote-worker visas. Growth in the number of American digital nomads has slowed since the height of the pandemic, according to MBO Partners, a consultancy, but a hefty 11% of American workers describe themselves as such. They tend to be younger than average, and happier with their work.

The places that lure them best often have low taxes or a pleasant lifestyle and relatively easy entry requirements. Vivek Shankar, a content marketing strategist for financial firms, has been a digital nomad since 2019. He tried living in Dubai but found it “very consumerist”. “The minute you land you are bombarded with messages saying you need to buy this or that, and …need to have a certain income or you’re not worth much.” So he moved to Portugal, which is “more normal”. There are places to hang out and meet people without spending money, he says. And he can surf in his spare time.

Places that compete for digital nomads typically hope to persuade them to stick around. This can be hard. A study of nomads in America found that they stay on average only 71 days in a city. However, a study of a scheme to attract such people to Tulsa, Oklahoma found that it helps to make them feel part of a community, for example by helping them with office space and encouraging them to join school boards. Three-quarters of the participants stayed at least two years.

One problem with migrants is that they need somewhere to live. If lots of well-heeled ones arrive in a place where housing supply is limited, they can drive up prices, infuriating locals and creating a backlash. This has happened in many places, from Sydney to Singapore. It is especially likely if governments offer visas to those who simply buy a property, as happens in Greece, Hungary and Malta. Such schemes have recently been scrapped in Ireland, Spain and Portugal.

House-price inflation is one reason why Australia and Canada, previously welcoming places, have recently sought to curb the inflow of immigrants. However, house prices can be kept in check by allowing more construction. Dubai has far less land than Australia or Canada, but its government is confident that it can cope with the population more than doubling by 2040.

This year is the biggest election year in history, with countries that are home to 4.2bn people holding ballots. That bodes ill for talent mobility, says Julia Onslow-Cole of Fragomen. Candidates for office often promise to tighten immigration policies, sometimes using rhetoric that puts off top talent from abroad. The first promise of Mr Trump’s manifesto is to “SEAL THE BORDER”. “We’re gaming what a second Trump administration might look like and it’s bleak on legal immigration,” says Ms Onslow-Cole.

Which hardly sounds like a recipe for making America great again. To adapt Damon Runyan, the race is not always to the swift nor the greatest success to the country that attracts the most human capital—but that’s how the smart money bets. ■

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The Battle Over Blocking the Sun

Why the world needs rules for solar geoengineering, by craig martin and scott moore.

The global community’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are faltering and the world is getting hotter. On its current trajectory, the world is unlikely to meet the limits it set for itself in the 2015 Paris Agreement to halt global warming. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, average global temperatures have already increased by 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) relative to preindustrial levels, are likely to exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) Paris goal by as soon as 2040, and could reach an increase of between 3 and 4 degrees Celsius by 2100. That level of warming would be catastrophic.

As this reality sets in, once fringe ideas about how to artificially cool the planet are gaining traction. One such idea is lowering global temperatures by effectively shading the planet, a process known as solar geoengineering. Recent reports from major players in the policy world, including the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the U.S. director of national intelligence, and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have all considered this controversial technique to combat global warming, at least as an interim measure until greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere can be reduced. As usual, however, policy trails practice: in 2022, a California-based startup called Make Sunsets began launching balloons filled with sulphate particles high into the atmosphere where, in theory, they would cool the planet by reflecting incoming sunlight.

This approach, known as stratospheric aerosol injection, is behind much of the recent surge in attention paid to solar geoengineering because it is widely believed to be among the cheapest and least complex approaches. But SAI is still intensely controversial: public opposition has forced the cancellation of several planned experiments, and the UN Environment Assembly rejected a modest proposal to form a solar geoengineering study group at its meeting earlier this year.

It is not hard to understand the source of the controversy. Although SAI might help counteract some of the temperature increase from climate change, it could also disrupt global weather and climate patterns, creating risky, unintended consequences for the entire planet. That makes it especially worrying that there is little in the way of international law or global governance currently in place to prevent unilateral SAI efforts on the part of individual countries or even nonstate actors, perhaps including radical environmental groups or ambitious tech startups. Unilateral SAI efforts could even become a trigger for armed conflict, as countries resort to military force to prevent what they see as dangerous tinkering with the world’s climate.

To prevent such developments, the world urgently needs to establish stronger rules to govern SAI. Regulating these technologies does not necessarily mean entirely prohibiting research into solar geoengineering or even deploying it. There may be future scenarios in which some form of it, including SAI, may be deemed necessary as a temporary emergency measure in conjunction with other efforts to mitigate the causes of climate change. But any solar geoengineering initiative should be collectively governed rather than unilaterally imposed on the planet.

NO QUICK FIXES

The basic idea of SAI draws inspiration from volcanic eruptions that cause temporary global cooling by blowing sulfate particles high into the atmosphere. These particles then act as nuclei for cloud formation, in turn reflecting heat back into space. The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines , for instance, lowered global temperatures by about 0.5 degrees Celsius for over a year by injecting 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Proponents of SAI argue that it is possible to replicate this cooling effect through the deliberate injection of reflective aerosols that partially block incoming solar radiation, preventing it from contributing to the warming of the earth’s surface and lower atmosphere.

With the world already experiencing devastating heat waves, floods, and other extreme weather events, and with far worse consequences looming, SAI promises a cheap and relatively straightforward way to blunt global warming by quickly turning down the thermostat while the difficult work of transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy continues. Some estimates have suggested that injecting just one million tons of sulfur dioxide annually could offset one degree Celsius of warming at a cost of tens of billions of dollars per year, a fraction of the trillions of dollars required for rapid decarbonization. Moreover, SAI would not require radical new technology. Most SAI proposals envision using high-altitude aircraft to seed the upper atmosphere with particulate matter, usually a sulfate. Purpose-designed aircraft would likely be within the technical and financial capabilities of many large economies, and alternative delivery mechanisms such as modified existing aircraft or high-altitude balloons could likely be deployed by companies and other nonstate entities, and even some very wealthy individuals.

Once fringe ideas about how to artificially cool the planet are gaining traction.

If a quick fix to climate change sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is. Large-scale SAI would likely disrupt climate and weather patterns in unpredictable ways, including shifting monsoons and potentially causing severe droughts in some regions while flooding others, imperiling food security and habitability across entire regions in the process. These negative consequences have been observed before: global rainfall in the year following the 1991 Pinatubo eruption was roughly half the normal amount. SAI efforts could also damage the ozone layer, accelerate ocean acidification, and destroy entire ecosystems. Worse, once started, SAI efforts would have to be maintained indefinitely, or only gradually ended, as suddenly discontinuing the injections would lead to rapid warming, particularly if greenhouse gas emissions have continued unabated. This risk, known evocatively as “termination shock,” would effectively unleash the collective effect of years of accumulated emissions all at once, making it even more difficult for humans and ecosystems to adapt. There are also serious concerns that relying on SAI could undermine the global push to address the actual causes of climate change, either by diverting attention and resources from the efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or by giving political cover to climate action laggards to slow roll or stall decarbonization.

But the biggest risk posed by SAI is that it could easily be undertaken unilaterally, with little or no consultation with affected parties. The relatively low cost and technical feasibility of SAI, which could make it appealing to anyone seeking a quick, albeit deeply flawed, fix to climate change, combined with the fact that its risks and harms are widely distributed, could create a scenario in which there are strong incentives for individual actors to take unilateral action that affects everyone (what economists call a “free-driver problem”). It is easy to envision how this might happen. A brutal sequence of climate disasters might induce a government to respond to public pressure by turning to the quick climate fix promised by SAI. Alternatively, a major foundation, an environmental group, or even a wealthy individual could be tempted to try to save the planet by undertaking SAI on its own. Even limited SAI interventions, which would be well within the means of such actors, and which could be undertaken on the bet that other countries would then be forced to join the effort, could produce a range of negative consequences, such as reduced rainfall and food insecurity at planetary scales. Despite these risks, policymakers have given little attention to the potential dangers of unilateral SAI. And what is more, none of the treaties and customary international law that comprise the international climate change and environmental law regimes provide for any meaningful constraints or any specific regulation of SAI or solar geoengineering more generally.

CLIMATE WARS

It is high time for serious and open discussion of the risks posed by SAI and action to develop new rules and institutions to govern it—before it leads to geopolitical strife, or even warfare. If done without coordination, SAI has the potential to cause serious climatic effects in some regions, affecting food and water security and even human habitability. The risk of such catastrophic consequences may be perceived by a state as such a threat to its national security that it justifies using military force to prevent another state from engaging in the actions that would cause such harm. States have viewed foreign interference with water and food security as an act that justifies war from earliest history, and the 1977 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques reflects the extent to which states have more recently viewed climate modification as a potential threat to national security. The defense and intelligence establishments of the United States and many of its allies already characterize the similar consequences of climate change as threats to national security, and a likely cause of increased incidence of armed conflict. Moreover, a range of national and international institutions, including the White House and the IPCC, have identified unilateral SAI as creating the risk of geopolitical instability, including the risk of war.

The international law regime governing the use of force would provide only a modest constraint on states that perceived their vital interests to be at stake, as events in Ukraine and elsewhere over the last few decades have tragically illustrated. International law prohibits countries from using force against other states, with only two exceptions: when authorized by the UN Security Council or when used as an act of self-defense in response to an armed attack. Given deep divisions among the Security Council’s permanent members, it would be highly unlikely that anyone could obtain a consensus to authorize a use of force to stop unilateral SAI. Nor would a use of force in response to the threat of unilateral SAI efforts come within the traditional doctrine of self-defense. But we may predict that states would either try to expand the doctrine or create new exceptions to the prohibition on the use of force.

In recent decades, some countries, notably the United States , have pushed for an expanded interpretation of the doctrine of self-defense in response to perceived new threats to national security, such as transnational terrorism, the development of weapons of mass destruction, and potential cyberattacks. Unilateral SAI could become the latest justification added to this list. Similarly, there have been efforts to create new exceptions, such as “humanitarian intervention” for purposes of dealing with other threats to international peace and security. Regardless of whether such arguments might succeed in expanding the legal exceptions to accommodate the threat of SAI, today’s international law regime is not sufficient to deter states from resorting to force if they feel sufficiently imperiled by such a threat. Thus, a much more robust set of international rules and governance structures is needed to regulate and constrain the development of SAI efforts.

BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

Ultimately, stopping states from launching SAI efforts on their own will require a new multilateral treaty with the primary purpose of prohibiting unauthorized deployment and establishing a collective decision-making process for approving and governing any potential future use. Given the planetary implications of SAI, such an agreement must be truly multilateral, with fair representation for countries most vulnerable to climate change effects. Such a treaty would also oblige states to prevent nonstate actors from engaging in SAI efforts from within their territory or under their jurisdiction, just as the Montreal Protocol, for instance, requires states to prevent corporations from producing or using ozone-depleting chemicals within their territory. The United Nations may not be able to stop Elon Musk or Make Sunsets from undertaking SAI—but the U.S. government certainly could.

Such an agreement would need to address specific aspects of SAI, including requirements for broad information sharing on SAI-related research and development, international decision-making procedures for authorizing any SAI deployment, monitoring and verification mechanisms, and measures for dispute resolution and enforcement in the case of noncompliance. An agreement should also include certain exceptions and safeguards for SAI research in support of possible multilateral deployment.

A new agreement is, admittedly, a tall order for an international system groaning under the weight of multiple ongoing crises. Fortunately, there are existing international institutions that could potentially serve as forums for negotiating such an agreement relatively quickly. The Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances provides one promising model. It has near-universal membership, an established institutional secretariat, and a strong track record of success, and it has already been expanded to address certain climate change issues through the Kigali Amendment on hydrofluorocarbons. An SAI governance treaty could potentially be negotiated as a new protocol or amendment under this framework.

The biggest risk posed by SAI is that it could easily be undertaken unilaterally.

Alternatively, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Conference of the Parties could provide an institutional home for SAI governance negotiations. Although addressing SAI under the UNFCCC is controversial, SAI clearly implicates the convention’s core purpose of preventing “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” and arguably is already within the mandate of the treaty. A new agreement on SAI could be developed as a new protocol to this existing treaty. Negotiating such a protocol, whether under the Montreal Protocol or the UNFCCC, would be far easier and faster than trying to establish an entirely new treaty and develop a new set of governance mechanisms and institutions.

To be sure, no matter where discussions of SAI governance take place, they are likely to remain intensely controversial. But major powers are becoming more open to the idea of talks. Although the U.S. government has historically taken a dim view of solar geoengineering in international climate talks, a high-level U.S. State Department advisory panel included a recommendation to initiate multilateral dialogues on geoengineering governance in its March 2024 report. In private, Chinese negotiators have also signaled that they may be receptive to broad-based efforts to prevent unilateral SAI. At the same time, major players such as the IPCC, the UN Environmental Program, and the U.S. intelligence community now acknowledge that unilateral SAI poses considerable geopolitical risk. If nothing else, these shifts suggest a growing openness to discussion on the issue of geoengineering governance.

What is certain is that, as the climate crisis intensifies, the temptation to deploy technologies to artificially shade the planet will only grow stronger. Guardrails must be put in place before a solar geoengineering experiment or unilateral deployment destabilizes the world’s climate patterns. A robust governance regime is needed not only to mitigate the direct risks of unilateral SAI but also to reduce the chances of armed conflict in response to such interventions. By establishing clear rules, decision-making processes, and enforcement mechanisms regarding SAI, states can help ensure that any future solar geoengineering efforts happen cooperatively under international oversight rather than chaotically and perilously through unilateral action. The stability of the global climate—and potentially international peace and security—may depend on it.

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• CRAIG MARTIN is Professor of Law at Washburn University School of Law.
• SCOTT MOORE is Practice Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
• They are the authors of “Geoengineering Wars and Atmospheric Governance,” a forthcoming article in the Harvard International Law Journal , from which this essay draws.
• More By Craig Martin
• More By Scott Moore

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Where Tim Walz Stands on the Issues

As governor of Minnesota, he has enacted policies to secure abortion protections, provide free meals for schoolchildren, allow recreational marijuana and set renewable energy goals.

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By Maggie Astor

• Aug. 6, 2024

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the newly announced running mate to Vice President Kamala Harris, has worked with his state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature to enact an ambitious agenda of liberal policies: free college tuition for low-income students, free meals for schoolchildren, legal recreational marijuana and protections for transgender people.

“You don’t win elections to bank political capital,” Mr. Walz wrote last year about his approach to governing. “You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”

Republicans have slammed these policies as big-government liberalism and accused Mr. Walz of taking a hard left turn since he represented a politically divided district in Congress years ago.

Here is an overview of where Mr. Walz stands on some key issues.

Mr. Walz signed a bill last year that guaranteed Minnesotans a “fundamental right to make autonomous decisions” about reproductive health care on issues such as abortion, contraception and fertility treatments.

Abortion was already protected by a Minnesota Supreme Court decision, but the new law guarded against a future court reversing that precedent as the U.S. Supreme Court did with Roe v. Wade, and Mr. Walz said this year that he was also open to an amendment to the state’s Constitution that would codify abortion rights.

Another bill he signed legally shields patients, and their medical providers, if they receive an abortion in Minnesota after traveling from a state where abortion is banned.

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