CIA's Report on India:2015 AD

[Guest guest]

CIA's India prescription -- Future's bright, future's also rocky too

Chidanand Rajghatta

 

 

"Arguably the most prominent conclusion of the report is that China

and India will be the world's new military powers, based on sheer

numbers, growingeconomic might and technological capabilities."

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WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 20: Great future, rocky ride. That in essence is

the prognosis for India in a new CIA-backed U.S intelligence report

that offers a comprehensive analysis of what the world could look

like in 2015.

 

The 60-page intelligence estimate, released on Wednesday in

Washington, predicts that ``India will be the unrivaled regional

power with a large military -- including naval and nuclear

capabilities -- and a dynamic and growing economy.''

 

The country's growing prowess in new economy areas led by its high-

technology companies will be the key factor in this growth. Computer

software services and customised applications will continue to expand

asIndia strengthens economic ties to key international markets.

Indian industries such as pharmaceuticals and agro-processing also

will compete globally, the Global Trends 2015 report says.

 

But the glowing reviews for India are laced with some sobering

caveats, including a warning that such growth could end up being lop-

sided with the thriving service sector restricted to four key urban

centers -- Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai.

 

The widening gulf between ``have'' and ``have-not'' regions and

disagreements over the pace and nature of reforms will be a source of

domestic strife, the report says. Poorer northern states will

continue todrain resources in subsidies and social welfare benefits.

 

``Despite rapid economic growth, more than half a billion Indians

will remain in dire poverty. Harnessing technology to improve

agriculture will be India's main challenge in alleviating poverty in

2015,'' the report says.

 

The report is the result of a yearlong study involving all branches

of theU.S intelligence community as well as many of America's top

thinkers and analysts. Experts said it offers what is possibly the

most panoramic andincisive insight for an incoming administration

into the changing world equations.

 

Arguably the most prominent conclusion of the report is that China

and India will be the world's new military powers, based on sheer

numbers, growingeconomic might and technological capabilities.

 

The report also dwells on the widening strategic and economic gap

between India and Pakistan and its consequences for the region.

Predicting that the decisive shift in India's conventional military

advantage over Pakistan will widen as a result of India's superior

economic position, the report says this will potentially make the

region more volatile and unstable. Both India and Pakistan will see

weapons of mass destruction as a strategic imperative and will

continue to amass nuclear warheads and build missile delivery systems.

 

``The threat of major conflict between India and Pakistan will

overshadow all other regional issues during the next 15 years.

Continued turmoil inAfghanistan and Pakistan will spill over into

Kashmir and other areas of the subcontinent, prompting Indian leaders

to take more aggressive preemptive andretaliatory actions,'' the

report predicts.

 

The report also says, without elaboration, that India's rising

ambition will further strain its relations with China, as well as

complicate its tieswith Russia, Japan, and the West.

 

While painting a grim future for Pakistan -- ``more fractious,

isolated, and interdependent on international financial assistance''

-- the report saysthe country ``will not recover easily from decades

of political and economic mismanagement, divisive politics,

lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction.''

 

Nascent democratic reforms in Pakistan will produce little change in

the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical

Islamicparties. Further domestic decline would benefit Islamic

political activists, who may significantly increase their role in

national politics and alter the makeup and cohesion of the military.

 

In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the central government's

control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the

economic hub of Karachi, the report says.

 

Overall, the report is more sanguine about India's prospects, even in

the context of China's growth, arguing that numerous factors like its

Englishlanguage advantage, a reasonably strong education system, a

growing business-minded middle class, and large expatriate

population, provide India a competitive advantage in the global

economy.

 

Indian democracy will also remain strong, albeit more factionalised

by the secular-Hindu nationalist debate, growing differentials among

regions and the increase in competitive party politics, it says.

India's economy, ''long repressed by the heavy hand of regulation,''

is likely to achieve sustained growth to the degree reforms are

implemented.

 

Interestingly, while one section of the report talks about the

possible inequities lop-sided economic growth can cause, it argues

elsewhere that information technology ``need not be widespread to

produce important effects.'' The first information technology

``pioneers'' in each society will be the local economic and political

elites, multiplying the initial impact.

 

While some countries and populations will fail to benefit much from

the information revolution, ``ndia will remain in the forefront in

developing information technology, led by the growing class of high-

tech workers and entrepreneurs,'' it says.

 

The report identifies two key issues that could be disruptive to the

region. It says water will remain South Asia's most vital and most

contested naturalresource. Continued population and economic growth

and expansion of irrigated agriculture over the next 15 years will

increasingly stress water resources, and pollution of surface and

groundwater will be a seriouschallenge. In India, per capita water

availability is likely to drop by 50-75 percent. By 2015, a number of

developing countries, including India, may be unable to maintain

their levels of irrigated agriculture.

 

 

2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.