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The
Shape of Things to Come
 Science
fiction? Some of these ideas are already on the drawing
board and the scientific principles or technologies for
much else exist.
- Superconductivity will transform power
engineering, in particular long distance
transmission and electric traction. A
subcontinental power and gas grid will have been
completed by 2025. The harnessing of Himalayan
hydro-resources will have significantly
progressed by 2050, and the foundation just laid
for the stupendous 70,000 mw hydro-project to tap
the enormous drop in the giant U-bend of the
Brahmaputra as it cascades down from Tibet to
Assam. Arunachal Pradesh will have become India's
richest state, living on a bountiful
hydro-dividend.
- Great national transformations will be effected
over the next half-century. The second green
revolution, a gift of biotechnology, will have
shaded into the third, based on advanced dry
farming, with meticulous land and water
management.
- The era of oil will have peaked. New fuels will
have come in the market. Cheap Himalayan
hydro-power will provide a base for hydrogen
fuels while high ash, "dirty" Indian
coals, will no longer be mined but gassified
underground and piped to consumption centres. The
problem of subsidence this might lead to will
have been partly tackled by dredging the large
storage dams and rivers and transporting silt
slurry by pipeline as filling material.
- Water, not energy, will become a prime concern.
By 2047, a national/SAARC water grid will be well
advanced with inter-basin transfers and carefully
designed regional water budgets, the framing of
which will be highly contentious. Deep fresh
water aquifers under the Ganga basin and Bengal
plain, will have been tapped after exploratory
drilling and careful modelling. Technologies
could have been developed to store the monsoon
discharges of major rivers as they meet the sea
in mammoth "envelopes", which would
then perhaps be towed to provide off-shore water
supply systems along the coast.
- The Rajasthan and Kutch deserts will have been
rolled back as a consequence of the Indira Gandhi
and Sardar Sarovar schemes and the Kalpsar
Project, entailing closure of the Gulf of
Khambhat to create a huge fresh-water lake, and
generate tidal power.
- Inland waterways and, more so, coastal shipping
will assume greater importance and inter-modal
transport will have become standard practice by
2025. Private vehicles will yield to public
transport and there will be less commuting.
- As a pioneer licensee for sea-bed mining, India
will begin exploiting such poly-metallic nodules
as are available in the Indian Ocean for
industrial development.
- The successful development of the Geo-Sationary
Launch Vehicle will make India a major satellite
and space platform launcher. It will be a founder
member of a possible United Nations global
stellar platform enterprise to conduct and
monitor outer space exploration, research and
colonisation. This will, however, not be without
political trials, with "regional
parties" strongly opposed to massive
resources being diverted to "wasteful"
expenditure on chimerical planetary outlays while
so much remains to be done at home.
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