India 2025: What kind of superpower?

India is leaving the Third World so fast that it is almost possible to watch it happeneing. Many write off India as backward and poor. The reality is that its billion people have a booming economy, excellent education and limitless ambition – and they are ready to take over the world. America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East face a reversal of fortune that will astonish us and overpower us if we do not revise our rapidly dating assumptions and prejudices. Yes India still has poverty with the power to turn the stomach. Yes, there are still elephants striding nonchalantly through the boiling city traffic and cows on the loose in the heart of a megalopolis which crams the population half the size of Australia into fewer than 750 square kilometers. But heartbreaking as these images are, they are not a true indication of the new civilisation which is growing here in the world’s largest free country. In India, the amazing thing is that all the intelligent people are optimistic. The economists, the writers and the thinking classes in general, are full of an infectious patriotic delight at the way their mighty country is preparing for world power. No douby some unpredictable disaster could unhorse this new hope. A recent article in Forbes mentioned that India would have the maximum number of Billionaire’s in 10 years time.