Hurdles to India’s Economic Development 

India will have to overcome a number of stiff hurdles to become a developed nation by 2047 as envisaged by the present regime. To achieve the target, the country needs to maintain above a seven per cent growth rate for the next 20 to 30 years. A difficult task indeed, considering that due to various factors including wars, social unrest, and the climate crisis, the global economy is expected to grow merely three per cent for the next five years. In its vision document for 2047, the NITI Aayog has made it clear that the country’s per capita income should reach USD 18,000 by 2047 to be considered among the developed nations of the world. To reach this mark, the manufacturing sector’s contribution to the country’s GDP will have to increase to 34 per cent, which is 28 per cent at present. Moreover, India will have to achieve a 100 per cent literacy rate and increase women’s employment from the present 37 per cent to 77 per cent. It also requires a skilled, large workforce, which at present stands at a meagre 32 per cent. Thus, it is evident that India will have to ensure all-round development to fulfil its dream of becoming a developed nation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set ‘zero poverty’ as his government’s new goal. The country needs to create at least 78.5 lakh jobs annually to achieve this goal, as per recent economic surveys. Although the government has already announced several schemes to create a large number of jobs, there is still much more to be done to tackle the unemployment problem. In this endeavour, the biggest challenge is to create a skilled labour force as it becomes increasingly difficult to provide jobs to persons without skill sets. Hence, the nation will have to impart skills training to all from an early age to enable them to find suitable jobs in the future. It will require a complete overhaul of the Indian education system, which currently puts more stress on academics than on vocational training. Thus, the country will have to channel the current unskilled labour force to job training programmes to bring down the high unemployment rate.

Agriculture is an area that the country needs to focus on, as this sector’s contribution to the country’s GDP is estimated to be just 1.4 per cent in 2023–24, despite the fact that it employs more than 45 per cent of the country’s workforce. It is evident that unless the agricultural sector is revived, the country will not be able to effectively tackle the issue of poverty and unemployment in India. There are a number of sectors, such as connectivity and power, which should also get requisite importance to ensure that India becomes a global financial powerhouse. A comprehensive, multi-pronged approach tackling literacy rates, women’s empowerment, unemployment, and other crucial issues is necessary to tackle the obstacles blocking India’s 2047 development goal.