The Race to a high per-capita GDP
Despite all our development, India is still behind every country in South America in terms of per capita GDP. Over the next 10 years we must overtake some of them. Lets understand this game.
A few years ago, I saw this race in which an athlete, Heather Dorniden, trips, gets up, and wins the 600-meter race in the 2008 Big Ten Indoor Track Championships.
Heather Dorniden reminds me of India. We, too, fell, got up, and are back running. We are getting closer to the other runners.
We will now compete with South America in terms of per capita GDP and must overtake them.
Importance of GDP and Per Capita GDP
The total national GDP reveals:
national capability - the different things i.e. breadth and depth, you can do
national capacity - in what volume you can do those different things
For instance, India, as the fifth largest economy, could make a sophisticated vaccine for COVID-19, manufacture it at scale and share it with the world.
Per capita GDP reveals the quality of life:
The condition of your infrastructure (roads, pavements, water logging etc.)
The condition of your natural resources (air, water, land, etc.)
Nutrition available to people
The physical well-being of the people
Community sense of people
Another important aspect of this is step and scale change. So when we move from $2000 per capita income to $5000, we will see a certain pace and type of change - say like Test cricket. But when we move from $5000 to $7000, you will see a faster and better pace - say like ODI. From $7000 to $10000 it will be like T20!
So what does this mean?
Over the next 10 years, as India climbs up the per capita GDP ladder, we will see:
improvements in the quality of our infrastructure (Vande Bharat is an example),
we will see cleaner rivers (Sabarmati and hopefully Yamuna and Ganga too),
greener cities, parks and green spaces (some gated communities have started developing this)
sports grounds and athletic facilities in cities (note how Indian cricket grounds have improved between the 1990s and today).
We will see more fit people and fewer fat people (consider Europe, not America, as the standard)
We will see people better styled and well-groomed.
We will see more community sense (traffic sense, cleanliness etc.)
In sum
Things will get better soon—and things will start getting even better even faster. That does not mean we can sit back and enjoy. It means we will also have to up our game. We will have to move from Test cricket mindset to ODI mindset and then to T20 mindset. It is us; we drive this change. Lets do it!