A DBS Report says India will be among the ten Asian Countries that would surpass the United States by 2030 – that is, in just 12 years. Does that excite you? Doesn’t it appear even better than the prediction of Adi Godrej in August last year that India will be the largest economy by 2050? Godrej is a multifaceted businessman but not a statistician, yet has figures to back him up. DBS presumably has several statisticians and economists in its employ to work out a real figure. How could these experts be wrong? Shouldn’t India rejoice?
But wait.
Read through the DBS report. It is uncharacteristically tongue-in-cheek. What it says is that ten Asian Countries including China will, on aggregate, attain a GDP that exceeds the GDP of the United States in the year 2030. The fact is, China, if it sustains a GDP growth rate of even 6%, and maintains its population growth of 0.5% as it does now, would have marginally exceeded the GDP of United States by 2029!
To say that China and other 9 countries of Asia would beat the US economy by 2030 is like saying a king cobra and 9 centipedes together could bite an elephant to death. Like the king cobra, China needs no centipedes to help in the task.
Here is a simple calculation. Use the formula for compound interest to check out the GDP in 2030.
China GDP Nominal in 2018 – 14.092 Trillion
China growth rate is, on the average, 6.7% a year. Let us assume that it goes down to a mean average of 6% during the next 12 years.
China’s GDP in 2030= 14.092*(1+6%)^12 = 28.355 Trillion
United States GDP Nominal in 2018 is 20.412 Trillion
At 2.2% growth rate, which is the stock growth rate of the Big Bully, GDP in 2030 would be at best 20.412*(1+2.2%)^12= 26.503 Trilion. Already 2 trillion less than the Chinese. There is little doubt that even at a slower rate of growth, China would be the largest economy in the world by 2030.
That India is the fastest growing economy is a brown lie. Ethiopia and Ghana fare much better, albeit rather erratically, often going up to 22.5% in some years. To be fair to ourselves, we have been far more consistent, We will qualify our claim by stating that India is the fastest growing economy in the Trillion group. Our GDP in 2018 is of the order of 2.1 Trillion US Dollars. At projected 7.36% growth, India appears to fare much better than China’s growth rate of 6.7%.
Now let us examine where India will be in 2030.
Our GDP in 2018 is claimed to be 2.134 Trillion.
Let us raise our hopes and presume that our government is right; India’s growth rate would further improve to a mean average of 8% (while China rots at 6% – some hope!) per annum
Using the same formula as above, in 2030. India would have grown to 5.374 Trillion – 20percent of China’s .
As a rule, when the GDP grows, growth rate will fall as a percentage. It is like you give a child 1 dollar and promise him a 100% raise every month. You give his older brother 10 dollars with a promise of only 50% more every subsequent month. The younger one would never catch up! As of now, US annual earning is ten times ours for a population is one-fourth. An American earns 40 times the average Indian. Is it any wonder that since everyone in America has a car, they are craving for a semi-automatic gun in every school kid’s hand while Indian can only aspire for a cheap mobile phone?
Yet let us be positive and say that Indian economy continues to grow at 8% and China would be doomed to crawl behind us at 6%.
Where will China be in 2100? It would have an annual earning of US$ 3370.626 Trillion.
Where would India stand? At US$ 2958.323 Trillion, we would still be falling short by more than a whole 412 Trillions! It might take us another 50 years to catch up. That is somewhere near the year 2150.
Will a citizen of China with 28 Trillion in the treasury better off than the American with 26 trillion? No. China’s population at 0.5% growth rate will be 1.483 billion; so each Chinese would get only US$ 17,300 to eat and dress up and drive around in automatic cars by 2030. In the United States, at 0.7 growth rate in population, there will be only 355 million Americans to spend their 26 Trillion. Each US citizen, white black or yellow, would earn more than 72,000 dollars in the year 2030, many of them booking a seat for the next space flight.
How much the Indian, who boasts of the fastest growth in the world would get in that year? A meagre 4550 dollars. Why? Because an average Indian woman delivers 1.2 babies every year while the Chinese brings forth just one baby for two fun-loving slit-eyed beauties.
To say that an average Indian woman delievers 1.2 babies is as misleading as saying that the average depth of Dal lake is 4.5 feet. If your boat overturns and you can’t swim, you’d drown. Most of the babies – nearly 2% close to Afghanistan’s rate – come from the Northern parts of India (known as the cow belt) while Kerala has already bested the Chinese record of 0.5% with 0.49%! For every 100 rupees tax that a Keralite pays to the centre, he gets back Rs. 32. A Biharman, with this high productivity rate in bed, gets back 239 and still needs more.
As long as the Chinese sticks to 0.5% population growth and Americans do not dwindle on producing 0.7% new humans every year, Chinaman will catch up in per capita income with the American by the end of the century. Indians are doomed to keep begging for job visas and be denied at every nation’s door since Artificial intelligence and autonomy would have taken over the affluent world with little need for cheap human labour that the poorest in the planet – among whom India is listed – alone can supply. Within India, the corporate sector already says that only 25% of engineering degree turnouts are employable and the rest are doomed to a life of misery.
So what is the solution? Stop the nonsensical call to Hindus to produce ten kids per couple to prevent Muslims from catching up – and Muslims hurrying to their shanties to make up with their wives before Hindus realize that nightmare. Devise a humane policy (the one destroyed by Indira Gandhi’s son, Sanjay Gandhi) and bring down our population growth – regardless of religion or economic status – to replacement rate – at least 0.5% per annum that China has achieved.
Indians much realize that a larger population would not mean greater power. Recall that India’s population was 155 million in the 11th and 12th centuries when a few thousand raiders came down through the crevices in Himalayas on horseback to conquer and rule over this vast nation. 9 million British – initially a mere limited company with hired military – similarly sent a few thousand of their corporate men – a couple of hundred at a time to once again conquer more than 233 million Indians and keep them under their rule for more than two centuries and a half. Even today, 5.9 million Jews, most of them self-proclaimed atheists or agnostics, cock a snook at 180 million pious Arabs and shoot four Palestinians in return to every stone thrown at them.
Huge populations have only been gun fodder for an efficient and ambitious few. A lean-and-mean population with technology for their tools of survival is what India needs. If India does not look sharp and realize that truth, instead of a great leap forward, its rivers will be swamp, there will be not enough food or water to drink, and only foul air to breathe by 2050 in this once blessed land.
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