India

Ogni anno, 12 milioni di indiani si affacciano al mercato del lavoro. Oggi, sono 200 milioni gli indiani nella fascia di età compresa tra i 24 e i 35 anni. Entro il 2030, un terzo della popolazione mondiale in età lavorativa sarà indiana.

Nel 2017 l’export italiano verso l’Asia ha raggiunto i 51 miliardi di euro, in crescita di circa il 12% rispetto all’anno precedente. 39 miliardi sono frutto delle vendite verso le economie emergenti (escludendo quindi Australia, Giappone e Nuova Zelanda), di cui quasi 14 hanno raggiunto la Cina, primo mercato di destinazione nell’area.

“La globalizzazione è una realtà dei nostri tempi, e per stare al passo con questa realtà abbiamo bisogno di infrastrutture di altissima qualità”, ha spiegato lo scorso febbraio il premier indiano Narendra Modi durante la cerimonia per l’avvio dei lavori del nuovo aeroporto internazionale Navi Mumbai, il secondo della città.

"Indo-Pacific", originally a geographic concept that spans two regions of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, is not a new concept in itself. 10 years ago, Gurpreet s. Khurana, who used the word" Indo-Pacific Strategy" for the first time, was a marine strategist and executive director of the New Delhi National Marine Foundation. Recently, he wrote in the Washington Post that the new term has changed the new strategic mind map since China’s “reform and opening up” in the 1980s. “Asia Pacific” has shaped the image of a community of interests linking the United States and East Asia.

What were the big ideas of 2017? Some, inevitably, are the product of technological developments: blockchain (a distributed ledger to ensure secure transactions) and deep learning by machines (a more sophisticated form of artificial intelligence) have been around for some time as applied concepts, but have only recently become a part of popular consciousness. Other notions that have gained salience are political in nature, such as 'fake news'. Some are purely linguistic.

Australian policy makers and strategists have recently embraced the so-called "Indo-Pacific" as a geopolitical construct to guide foreign and security policy (sometimes referred to as "Indo-Pacific strategy" - IPS). The concept was outlined in both the 2016 Defence White Paper and 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper and has prominently featured in the speeches of policy makers and the accompanying think tank/academic discourse.

The "Indo-Pacific" is the geopolitical referent for the Trump administration’s foreign policy toward Asia – East, Southeast and South – and the Pacific. Since it was first articulated in November 2017, the concept has taken on a more normative tinge and is now an integral part of the larger "Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy”. As much is implicit in the phrase as is explicit, however, and those assumptions are perhaps even more important.

The "Indo-Pacific" is a strategic construct that arose at a time of a potential transition in the Asian security order.

For several years now, there has been a volcano of national aspirations waiting to breakdown the putrefying system of global governance and erupt out of control. The quest for peace through the creation of the United Nations (UN) is well past its use-by date. Religious violence has replaced nationalistic wars, the battlefield has shifted to shopping malls, streets and borders from strategic assets, citizens have substituted soldiers in death counts, economic violence has superseded physical violence.

Unless Prime Minister Narendra Modi calls them earlier, India’s next general elections will begin on Monday, 8 April 2019. Working backwards, the Code of Conduct under the Election Commission of India – under which the government cannot announce new projects, programmes, concessions or financial grants to prevent it from influencing voters – should be in force from Friday, 8 March 2019. As he begins the final lap of his tenure as Prime Minister, Modi has just about nine months to deliver new economic reforms and policies.

When Narendra Modi was elected Prime Minister of India in 2014, he promised to push through key reforms and bring about the massive economic development needed for the “world’s largest democracy” to win its place among global superpowers. With over 1.3 billion citizens, India is soon to become the world’s most populous country, and more than one quarter of the people joining global workforce during the next decade will be Indian. The poorest of the world’s 20 largest economies, India’s potential for catch-up growth is enormous.