THE WORLD IN 2030

The policy implications are that India would have to maintain a strong link to a re-industrialising US but find a way to use Chinese capital and inputs

- SANJEEV SANYAL

AS WE TURN into the year 2025, we will be approaching the mid-point of the decade, and it is time to take a broader view of the world. The events of the first half of the decade were dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic and political aftermath. It also witnessed several important shifts in the technological and geopolitical spaces, many of which were in the making in the previous decades but came to fruition in recent years: The rise of China as a full-fledged global power and the spread of higher-order digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Some changes since the beginning of this decade have been so all-encompassing that many of us forget how recently they took place. The use of Zoom and similar video-conferencing platforms is now ubiquitous, but it was only during the Covid lockdown in 2020 that most people became fully comfortable with the daily use of videoconferencing. Similarly, in India at least, we witnessed a dramatic shift to digital payments. Many younger readers of this column will probably have little use for cash other than the token “emergency money” in their wallet.

So, what could we see in the second half of the decade? As they say, forecasting is difficult, especially when it comes to the future. At the risk of being mocked five years hence, here are some likely scenarios for 2030: