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.

P O L I T Y
A New India Emerges

• Many service activities performed by the state and needing bloated bureaucracies and palm-greasing will have been privatised and localised.
• Fifty or more states will come into being, with maybe 1,000 districts and 15,000 to 20,000 development blocks and tehsils.

The future is founded on the present which is not altogether exhilarating. With its stupendous problems of population, poverty, illiteracy, corruption, criminalisation and communalisation of politics, India 50 years from now will still be a nation, a civil society and a constitutional polity in the making. But the political mobilisation -- the sheer magnitude of elections -- and empowerment of deprived groups achieved so far, on a scale unprecedented in human history, is nothing compared to what will follow.

The state will steadily withdraw from less essential fields. Governance from Delhi will become less compelling even as a facilitator and infrastructure-provider. Many service activities performed by the state and necessitating bloated bureaucracies and palm-greasing will have been privatised and localised. Utilities, infrastructure, housing, broadcasting, and even certain aspects of security will have passed on to private or community enterprise. Even people's day to day problems will be handled more at local or district levels.

Gigantic states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh will break up. Yielding to various pressures and needs of development and better governability, a total of 50 or more states will come into being, with maybe 1,000 districts and 15,000 to 20,000 development blocks and tehsils.

The present Constitution will see many more amendments but its basic structure will survive. The polity will become more genuinely federal and multi-tier down to the grass roots. Elections may become more indirect, with direct elections possibly being confined to local bodies. The President will continue to be elected by an Electoral College, greatly enlarged by the inclusion of elected members of lower tiers of governance.

With near-universal education and a far higher threshold of poverty, caste and communal divides will have outlived their utility in the body politic. Wide access to information at all levels, and a growing practice of public hearings will ensure greater accountability.

There are likely to be no more than two or three major national parties with coalition, federal -- or similar -- characteristics, much like now. Similarly, there are likely to be two or three parties in each state with their local formations enjoying considerable autonomy and primacy in matters of policies and programmes.

Security factors and the reach of multinationals will possibly have a more potent role in aspects of governance, not necessarily directly, but through lobbies. Until reservations start fading some decades hence, the best professional talent may tend to move to reservation-free, multinational pastures. Lateral entry into government on short-term or contractual assignments will, however, ensure that there is no absolute flight of talent from government.

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