Now, we are at the dawn of the third age in the history of the USIBC. There is a great opportunity here and we need to think hard about how we embrace it. That is what I want to concentrate on in the rest of my remarks today.
First, I want to describe the India I can see on the horizon. And then I want to discuss three obstacles that block the way. With our members from both the US and India, and our spirit of constructive engagement, I think we, the USIBC, can help to remove each one.
Let us reflect for a moment about what the future holds for India over the next 15 years.
I am picturing an India which is hugely prosperous and in which the rewards of growth have been evenly and justly spread. That India is still in the far distance.
It would be an India where the 380 million citizens who currently live on less than $1 a day would no longer go to bed hungry. The 35 percent of Indians who are illiterate would be able to read. And the gap between men and women would close. At the moment a quarter of men can't read but almost half of women can't.
India is a young country and her people are young too. More than half the population is under 25. India is the only country in the world where the size of the working population will grow and will exceed the number of dependent children and old people until at least 2025. So I see an India that has equipped its people for the future. Give the people the skills and income will grow, savings will grow, investment will grow.
I foresee an India, 15 years on, in which economic reforms have been accelerated and all come to understand that open markets are the best hope for Indians, rich and poor alike. A successful India, 15 years from now, will have grown without mortgaging the success of future generations. It will have grown without severe stress to its ecosystems. It will have improved its sewage systems, slowed the spread of diseases such as malaria, controlled deforestation, and grown more food per acre of land. In short it will have used the bounty of the earth in a more efficient way.
The road to the future is full of possibilities. And they all come so much closer if we can arrange the right partnership between those two great democracies, India and the United States. I can see, 15 years from now, an India which has taken its relationship with the US to a whole new level, which has created something special and enduring, to the great advantage of both nations.
It will be a relationship that is not buffeted by the ill winds of change, one that is not vulnerable to changes of government, that is a still point as other alliances and partnerships turn around. A partnership based on business links, on education and on a shared future.
Image: Customers at a newly opened Kolkata mall. Photograph: Deshakalyan Chowdhury/AFP/Getty Images
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