India aspires to be a Superpower but must overcome incompetence, bureaucracy and corruption

From NextBigFuture.com

Der Spiegel – Poverty is still rampant in India and chaos remains a defining characteristic. But the country is also a global leader in high tech, has become the world’s leading weapons importer and is planning a mission to Mars. On the way to superpower status, India must first overcome deep-seated corruption and internal division.

So long as India has massive illiteracy, India will not be able to develop that portion of the population in any meaningful way. An India that is 60% undeveloped will not be a superpower. This seems unlikely to be overcome in one generation. India will then have at best an active and significantly developed population of about 500 million and 1 billion still undeveloped in say 25 years. India also has to demonstrate that they will develop the needed infrastructure (energy and roads and cities) that will enable a fully developed economy. Until this happens India will not develop as fast or as far as China.

There is no doubt that India feels that it has arrived. Some of its politicians and business leaders believe it has reached a status as a third superpower, alongside the United States and China. On August 15, the country celebrated the 65th anniversary of its independence from British rule with elaborate parades. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, 79, promised: “No power in the world can stop our country from achieving new heights of progress and development.”

There is one India, the high-tech powerhouse of a rising global power, backed up by numbers and proof of its prowess. But then there is the other India: where one in three of the world’s malnourished children lives; where two-thirds of the population lives on less than $2 a day; where half the population has no access to toilets and 25 percent still cannot read and write. It’s also a country where the power supply is so scandalously unreliable that, in late July, almost 700 million people were without lights and electricity for two days, the railroads stopped running, factories stood idle and some hospitals were crippled.

Is India on the road to becoming a superpower? Or is it condemned to forever remain a developing-world power, on the outside looking in?

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