By Rahul Kumar
New Delhi, Sep 19: India made big news recently after a US news agency reported that India has overtaken the UK to reach the number five spot in global economy rankings. In other major news, economists predict that the world is staring at a possible recession as conflicts, pandemics and climate change stare at governments.
India may not be immune to some of these global upheavals and black swan events that are on the rise after the Covid-19 pandemic broke out from Wuhan, China, in late 2019.
Yet the booming and boisterous country of 1.3 billion people has inherent strengths that guarantee progress for future decades. In a wide-ranging interview to India Narrative, Manjeev Puri, former Indian ambassador to the UN, shares his optimism about India’s growing economy and narrates the twists and turns in the evolution of India’s foreign policy.
Excerpts from the interview:
IN: How do you see the future of the country?
MP: My understanding is that the future for India is bright-in relative global terms. In the coming years, India will become the largest country in terms of population. Many of us in India think our population numbers are a problem but riding on the back of these numbers, we will become the world’s third or fourth largest economy.
Here, I am not talking about the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). I am talking about the size of the economy. Of course, China will be the largest economy. But some projections say that in the next 20 years, the…
