The World In 20 Years

Context: Global Trends Report by United States National Intelligence Council had identified the four structural forces that are likely to shape the world and the possible challenges related to these forces.

Structural forces likely to shape the world: Demographics, Environment, Economics, and Technology.

Concerns for India: as given in the report related to the above structural forces.

• In demographics: India’s population is likely to overtake that of China by 2027.
  • Growing population: may lead to large-scale social breakdowns if India fails to ensure the growing young population with adequate nutrition, healthcare and education.
  • According to World Bank, as many as 75 million people have already slipped back into extreme poverty in India because of the pandemic.
• Environmental Issues: Social and political unrest due to the uneven impact of climate change.
• Governance issues: India is considered as ‘electoral autocracy’ in South Asian region, which hold free and fair multiparty elections, and guarantee freedom of speech and expression, ‘but do not uphold the rule of law and/or do not have constraints on the executive.’
• Challenges posed by technology: 
  • Increased global competition for ‘core elements of technological supremacy’: which includes competition for talent, knowledge, markets, could lead to a new crop of tech hegemons.
  • Aggravate societal disruption: by manipulating information or job displacement; Artificial Intelligence (AI), biotechnology, smart materials and manufacturing, and ‘hyper connectivity will have a transformative effect on the world in the next 20 years.

Implication of the above concerns:

• Constraints India’s global role: India faces ‘serious governance, societal, environmental and defence challenges’ that will constrain how much it can invest in developing military and diplomatic capability.
• Disruptions in international order: Growing competition between United States (US) and China may result in reshaping today’s alliances, international organisations and the norms and rules. 
  • This competitive environment makes the risk of conflict more likely and deterrence more difficult.

Going Forward: Looking at the future, the report rolls out five alternative scenarios —

1. A renaissance of democracies with the US in the lead,
2. A world which is adrift where China is a leading, but not the dominant state,
3. Competitive coexistence where China and the US compete for leadership,
4. Separate silos where globalisation and countries are divided into ‘aatmanirbhar’ security and economic blocs.
5. The possibility of ‘tragedy and mobilisation’ where a devastating global environmental crises and collapse leads to a bottom-up change.