India 2047

Standing on the crossroads of a millennial opportunity, will India be able to make a leap -- let alone a great leap -- into the next century? Here is the big picture.

S O C I A L || E T H O S
A Great Churning

• There will be more empowerment of suppressed social classes. The tribal awakening will quicken, especially in the North-east and middle India.
• There is likely to be rapid movement towards gender equity in legal, economic and political terms, with a gradually rising sex ratio, universal female literacy and increasing female labour participation in non-traditional occupations.
• Secularism will come to mean modernisation rather than a mechanical balancing of religions. The concept of "minority" will not be exclusively focused on religious categories.

The dismantling of political and economic reservations will have started by 2020 and completed within the ensuing 25 years. Caste is steadily turning into class and the current turmoil over Mandalisation might, in retrospect, be seen as the dying throes of a fading social order. It will probably yield diminishing returns as Bharat increasingly becomes India, given universal literacy, increasing gender equality, enhanced mobility and growing economic opportunity. However, while individual rights will come to the fore, group rights will not altogether disappear.

There will be more empowerment of submerged or suppressed social classes. The tribal awakening will quicken, especially in the North-east and middle India. The larger Dalit assertion will seek equality, identity and self-determination within the Indian state. There will probably be a major political upheaval around 2005-10 on the issue of agrarian and social relations, particularly in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, as "stability" finally gives way to change.

Panchayati Raj, and the creation of smaller (even tribal) states will be the mechanisms of accommodation. The map will probably look very different by 2047 with more states and possibly fewer villages. Socially and economically unviable hamlets will tend to disappear or merge in a rurbanising India.

Spreading education and employment opportunities will greatly stimulate minority participation in all walks of life with the enhanced ability and space to compete. Secularism will come to mean modernisation rather than a mechanical balancing of religions even as the concept of "minority" will tend to get secularised and not be exclusively focused on religious categories. The notion of reviving separate electorates, mooted in certain quarters, will be an unacceptable throwback. While codified personal laws will continue, a common civil code with greater gender-equity at its heart will be legislated and find increasing acceptance.

India will probably be a more integrated society than at present. Globalisation will favour a modern concept of Indian-ness. The "mainstream" will be seen to lie in the intermingling of the rich and diverse, large and small traditions of India.

The pursuit of an "official language" has been divisive and ineffective. Debate on this has fortunately become less shrill, while the spread of communications and economic opportunity have begun to create linguistic markets through a process of natural selection. It is the language of the bazaar, popular literature, colloquial discourse and the television or film that will determine what the nation speaks. A Hindustani lingua franca is beginning to emerge. Yet English will be more widely used.

India must be and is becoming an achieving and aspiring society. Economic reform is putting in place a more dynamic engine for growth, though liberalisation could accentuate social, economic and regional disparities. Hence, state intervention will remain necessary through the transition for those yet outside the market.

The good news is that almost 80 per cent of Indians were born after 1947. And of them, more than half, apart from those yet unborn, will spend most of their lives in the 21st century. This fresh population, unfettered by the baggage of the past, will help promote change.

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