Rediff features a Business Standard article on India’s future, starting with some stats:
Today around 2 million new mobile connections are sold each month. That’s expected to climb to between 2.5 million and 3 million monthly by next year.
The auto industry should be making 1 million vehicles a year by 2005-06.
There will be over 70,000 bank branches and almost 200,000 ATMs by 2009.
By 2005 television sales should climb to about 9.5 million from the current 7.3 million.
BPO and software services should have a turnover of around $70 billion to $80 billion by 2007.
The production of motorcycles should climb to over 10 million from the current 3.2 million by 2011-12. “It’s so damn exciting,” says R A Mashelkar, the dynamic Director General, CSIR Council of Scientific & Industrial Research. “The change that is taking place is so huge. It’s a great time to be an Indian and to be in India.”
What will India be like in five years time? If everything goes according to plan — in India that’s an extremely big if — the Indian economy should have undergone a transformation.
At one level, the changes will be one of scale — the economy will simply be much bigger than it is currently. At another India should, truly, have become a knowledge economy and an even bigger player than it is today on the global stage.
