Sustaining rapid growth is challenging

India's goal of Viksit 2047 requires both luck and clearly outlined plans and policies

- SHANKAR ACHARYA

In recent months, we have heard a great deal about India becoming a developed country by 2047 objective, which connotes not just economic development but many other dimensions of overall societal development. Even within the narrow dimension of economic development, there is much debate and ambiguity about what constitutes a developed economy. As a first approximation, some have taken this to mean a "high income country", as defined by contemporary World Bank categorisation of nations according to per capita income. From this perspective, it would mean nations with a minimum per capita income of about US$14,000 in today's prices and exchange rates.

It is important to understand and appreciate that for the vast majority of today's developing nations (by definition, low- and middle-income countries), the journey to the foothills of high-income nations is likely to be long and hard unless they are blessed with bountiful natural resources like oil or critical minerals. History tells us that. In the 74 years since 1950, leaving aside some oil-rich nations (mostly in West Asia), only a small number of countries have made the transition. They include a few well-off nations in Latin America (like Chile and Argentina) and in southern Europe (like Greece and Portugal) that were already close to being high income in 1950 and, of course, the development exemplars from East Asia, including South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and (on the threshold) Malaysia, and mighty China. It is this last category that has really demonstrated the capacity and tenacity for sustained, rapid economic development over two or three decades, which all other developing nations need to emulate.