Well researched and balanced article. At same time agree to valid points @steve hsu and @pricipia, @panini have highlighted.
Yes, India has largest young population and as per your projections may reach 1.6Bn people before population growth starts plateauing down; in figures al this looks great.
In reality your comparison on where and how developed countries differ from India on pollution, clean drinking water, public facilities, healthcare, right to better social-legal infrastructure as well opportunities should take center stage going ahead. Do not forget India is becoming home to larger Senior Citizen population too who are financially, socially and physically becoming more vulnerable due to lack of social securities, change of social-cultural practices due to urbanization and inflation-higher cost of living. Public infrastructure is crumbling under burden of explosive growth and is hardly keeping up with Todays demands forget Future ready. Even young to middle aged populations Health is already becoming an area which could pull much of growth story in future, we are already a capital of diabetes, hyper tensions/stress, blood pressure to cholesterol. it's becoming so common to read about people in their 30s 40s taking various medications and other health issues.
Yes, India has huge potential and investors to economists will highlight it as that is what Investors like to know and take benefit of. On the other hand, 1.4Bn+ population do bring some unimaginable and complex challenges which if not addressed properly poses threat of brining everything down to where it was few decades back.
I used to ask Indian physicists for their estimate of the "effective population size" (in rich world terms, see below) of India for producing high end STEM talent.
10y ago the answer was usually in the ~100M range. In other words, the smart, well-educated fraction in India was comparable to that produced by a rich Western country with population ~100M.
For example, does (France + UK) or India produce more top STEM people in total? They might be comparable.
I imagine the effective population in these terms could be quite a bit larger in 2022. The main issue, as identified by the commenter principia, is what fraction of this talent is *exported* -- on that measure India is probably off scale. But I'm not sure it's good for India (the country) as opposed to being good for talented Indians who move to the US, UK, EU.
Having said that I agree with the general thesis of the OP - India is bound to have a larger and larger impact on the world, and may even come close to dominating the Anglosphere (esp. internet aspects) in the coming decade or two.
I will follow this substack, because I've long listened to Shruti's excellent podcasts. That said, let me gently push back on a small detail.
> Indians will be the largest pool of global talent. Barring immigration restrictions or diversity quotas, in the next few decades, Indian students will form the single largest international student cohort at most top universities in the English-speaking world.
Indians might be the largest international source for Anglophone universities, but that does *not* mean that it's the same as "global talent". Steve Hsu has produced a few charts made by the German academic Gunnar Heinsohn, who in turned looked at PISA data (which India participated in during the 2009 cycle). Basically, India's talent pool is kind of shallow. It simply exports a very large share of its smart fraction.
The problems in India are political and social. Your average engineer, however smart he/she may be, is not equipped to overcome those, even if such people stay back in India in large numbers. So their moving to Silicon Valley and doing something useful is strictly a positive sum game, not just on the whole but for both India and Silicon Valley respectively too.
I think the early wave of engineers who left India for SV were beneficial because they got to learn from the best. But India now has a critical mass of talented entrepreneurs by itself and Bangalore is a great tech hub. So I question whether continued emigration does India any good these days. It was different in the 1980s, 1990s and arguably even up to the early 2000s.
Did these low PISA scores reflect the students' innate abilities or the poor quality of teaching (teachers + teaching infrastructure) they were provided? "Public/govt schools" in India used to be rife with absentee and neglectful teachers, last I had personal knowledge of them.
India has seen improvement in enrollment rates over the last few decades but education NGOs like Pratham (https://www.pratham.org/) have shown for years that education *outcomes* haven't improved materially.
Or as Lant Pritchett likes to say: schoolin' ain't learnin'.
What the root causes of this is and how to fix it is above my pay-grade. But I know about it and so should the readers when they read things like "India will be largest pool of global talent".
Offcourse grt article for the world to move next level and learn from Chinese mistakes. However india still struggling with highly corrupt environment with nasty Politicians and still suffering large population of middle class with no one looking at human side of things.....
I'd encourage everyone here who lives in the US to write to their congresspeople advocating for more US diplomatic missions (consulates) in India. It's not the political dealbreaker that proper immigration reform (unfortunately) is and could go a long way in alleviating visa wait-times. France has more US missions than India - that's dumb.
I'd like to see George Mason faculty advocate before Congress on the value of greater immigrant access from India to the USA. It seems like a win win situation to me.
This is a well researched article. But I felt important points are coming in the later half of the article. Learn to summarise things in a succinct manner and limit the number of words in your article. The way you have advised universities to be India centric, I also advise you to be mindful of the attention span of majority of the young Indians. Take this as a constructive feedback.
Everything is good and great insights with excellant facts.
I have few comments.
But lot of stuffs on Netflix show gory things about India. So may ne you should suggest a right place to know more about India thorough right Media. Also , Hindi is one of the language, people coming to India should understand it is hugely diverse country with different culture, language and belief, but all united by India!!
As an Indian expat based in Europe - I think we need to rationalise our thinking a bit. Here are five reasons why might have huge problems to tackle.
“Everyone should pay more attention to India…”: A counter-view
https://medium.com/@goforit/everyone-should-pay-more-attention-to-india-a-counter-view-8f5253e1af0e
Well researched and balanced article. At same time agree to valid points @steve hsu and @pricipia, @panini have highlighted.
Yes, India has largest young population and as per your projections may reach 1.6Bn people before population growth starts plateauing down; in figures al this looks great.
In reality your comparison on where and how developed countries differ from India on pollution, clean drinking water, public facilities, healthcare, right to better social-legal infrastructure as well opportunities should take center stage going ahead. Do not forget India is becoming home to larger Senior Citizen population too who are financially, socially and physically becoming more vulnerable due to lack of social securities, change of social-cultural practices due to urbanization and inflation-higher cost of living. Public infrastructure is crumbling under burden of explosive growth and is hardly keeping up with Todays demands forget Future ready. Even young to middle aged populations Health is already becoming an area which could pull much of growth story in future, we are already a capital of diabetes, hyper tensions/stress, blood pressure to cholesterol. it's becoming so common to read about people in their 30s 40s taking various medications and other health issues.
Yes, India has huge potential and investors to economists will highlight it as that is what Investors like to know and take benefit of. On the other hand, 1.4Bn+ population do bring some unimaginable and complex challenges which if not addressed properly poses threat of brining everything down to where it was few decades back.
Yes.
Indeed a nice explanation
Regards,
Manu
www.trupaisa.in
Yes.
Indeed a nice explanation
Regards,
Manu
I used to ask Indian physicists for their estimate of the "effective population size" (in rich world terms, see below) of India for producing high end STEM talent.
10y ago the answer was usually in the ~100M range. In other words, the smart, well-educated fraction in India was comparable to that produced by a rich Western country with population ~100M.
For example, does (France + UK) or India produce more top STEM people in total? They might be comparable.
I imagine the effective population in these terms could be quite a bit larger in 2022. The main issue, as identified by the commenter principia, is what fraction of this talent is *exported* -- on that measure India is probably off scale. But I'm not sure it's good for India (the country) as opposed to being good for talented Indians who move to the US, UK, EU.
Having said that I agree with the general thesis of the OP - India is bound to have a larger and larger impact on the world, and may even come close to dominating the Anglosphere (esp. internet aspects) in the coming decade or two.
These old posts might be of interest:
https://infoproc.blogspot.com/search?q=india
I will follow this substack, because I've long listened to Shruti's excellent podcasts. That said, let me gently push back on a small detail.
> Indians will be the largest pool of global talent. Barring immigration restrictions or diversity quotas, in the next few decades, Indian students will form the single largest international student cohort at most top universities in the English-speaking world.
Indians might be the largest international source for Anglophone universities, but that does *not* mean that it's the same as "global talent". Steve Hsu has produced a few charts made by the German academic Gunnar Heinsohn, who in turned looked at PISA data (which India participated in during the 2009 cycle). Basically, India's talent pool is kind of shallow. It simply exports a very large share of its smart fraction.
https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/12/ditchley-foundation-meeting-world-order.html
This is very good for the receiving countries. Silicon Valley is full of smart Indians. Whether it is so good for India is another question.
The problems in India are political and social. Your average engineer, however smart he/she may be, is not equipped to overcome those, even if such people stay back in India in large numbers. So their moving to Silicon Valley and doing something useful is strictly a positive sum game, not just on the whole but for both India and Silicon Valley respectively too.
I think the early wave of engineers who left India for SV were beneficial because they got to learn from the best. But India now has a critical mass of talented entrepreneurs by itself and Bangalore is a great tech hub. So I question whether continued emigration does India any good these days. It was different in the 1980s, 1990s and arguably even up to the early 2000s.
Did these low PISA scores reflect the students' innate abilities or the poor quality of teaching (teachers + teaching infrastructure) they were provided? "Public/govt schools" in India used to be rife with absentee and neglectful teachers, last I had personal knowledge of them.
India has seen improvement in enrollment rates over the last few decades but education NGOs like Pratham (https://www.pratham.org/) have shown for years that education *outcomes* haven't improved materially.
Or as Lant Pritchett likes to say: schoolin' ain't learnin'.
What the root causes of this is and how to fix it is above my pay-grade. But I know about it and so should the readers when they read things like "India will be largest pool of global talent".
Offcourse grt article for the world to move next level and learn from Chinese mistakes. However india still struggling with highly corrupt environment with nasty Politicians and still suffering large population of middle class with no one looking at human side of things.....
I'd encourage everyone here who lives in the US to write to their congresspeople advocating for more US diplomatic missions (consulates) in India. It's not the political dealbreaker that proper immigration reform (unfortunately) is and could go a long way in alleviating visa wait-times. France has more US missions than India - that's dumb.
People have looked to India for centuries.
Interesting stats and reasoning. I can't change my mind now!
The article or the msg conveyed by you is
good! The points substantially give importance for marketing Indians as well as India!
I'd like to see George Mason faculty advocate before Congress on the value of greater immigrant access from India to the USA. It seems like a win win situation to me.
>And even though India’s education system is broken, and basic literacy and numeracy levels are sliding post-covid
How much market share do Khan Academy and Coursera have there?
as an economist scholar , v we welcome ur advices for our people
This is a well researched article. But I felt important points are coming in the later half of the article. Learn to summarise things in a succinct manner and limit the number of words in your article. The way you have advised universities to be India centric, I also advise you to be mindful of the attention span of majority of the young Indians. Take this as a constructive feedback.
Everything is good and great insights with excellant facts.
I have few comments.
But lot of stuffs on Netflix show gory things about India. So may ne you should suggest a right place to know more about India thorough right Media. Also , Hindi is one of the language, people coming to India should understand it is hugely diverse country with different culture, language and belief, but all united by India!!
On Startup , yes massive innovation is happening.
Good article to be read by our young generation.
Great work Shruti! Not just next decade but the next century belongs to India!