Viksit Bharat

Back in 2023, Narendra Modi launched his vision for India in 2047 called “Viksit Bharat” (which translates as “Developed India”), a programme that would see India become a high-income country with universal access to healthcare, education, and housing. While the devil is obviously in the details, its general focus on women, young people, and ending caste discrimination seems laudable, and so does India’s ambitious goal of expanding nuclear energy to 100 GW by 2047 to replace fossil energy.

Still, the vision may also be used to legitimize a maddening expansion of highways (with 35,000 km planned!), sprawling wind and solar projects that risk worsening carbon lock-in, and Hindu nationalism – not to mention autocratization in the name of “reducing political polarization”.

Nevertheless, compared to Sweden’s current vision of locking up 13-year-olds in maximum-security prisons and deporting as many immigrants as possible, it is not really as if we are the ones to judge. And remembering how much New Delhi had changed between my visits in 2010 (above) and 2015, the effects of compounded economic growth are not to be underestimated.