In last year’s Independence Day speech at the Red Fort in Delhi, Narendra Modi made a bold pledge: India would become a developed economy by 2047, when it celebrates 100 years since its founding. The country had three things in its favour, the prime minister declared: “demography, democracy and diversity”.
The vow would have seemed implausible a decade ago. In 2013, the year before Modi took power, India was identified by Morgan Stanley among a group of vulnerable emerging-market economies, dubbed the “Fragile Five” for their reliance on foreign capital to fuel their economies and, in many cases, big current account deficits.
Ten years later, Modi’s India is firmly in the sights of international investors, consultants and trading partners as one of the world’s fastest-growing big economies and a critical “China plus one” destination for companies seeking to reduce their exposure to political currents in Beijing.