The IIHS working paper ‘India Vision: 2030’ presents a working draft of a vision of where India should be in the early part of the 21st century. India Vision 2030 seeks not only to project a picture of the country in 2030, but also anticipate potential trajectories of where India should be in the 21st century and the requisite systems, processes and interventions to get there. It envisages the potential challenges and opportunities in the economic, socio-political and environmental spheresover the next two decades.
India Vision 2030 argues that there are five broad desired objectives of India’s growth and development (meta-outcomes) that are critical for India to achieve:
- End of endemic poverty and reduction of inequality.
- Progress around social transformation.
- Initiation of a century-long environmental sustainability transition.
- Further political consolidation.
- Economic integration and regional geopolitical engagement.
These outcomes represent IIHS’ normative vision of where India should be in 2030.
The massive momentum of South Asian urbanisation will provide a powerful opportunity to explore alternatives to the ‘standard’ model of development that many countries, including China, seem to have adopted.
This will be more than just an economic transition: it will result in the transformation of Indian society, its culture, its politics, and the country’s natural and built environment. At the same time, it will also place an enormous strain on existing urban centres and the many new ones that will come into existence.
The future of India will hinge on urbanisation challenges being handled with the wisdom and alacrity needed to deal with burgeoning numbers and create a more equitable, sustainable, secure and prosperous nation.
The IIHS is therefore an important national development project that will seek to establish an institution of national importance.
The fundamental constraint to the orderly growth and transformation of urban India is neither capital nor perhaps technology. The chief impediment is the availability of sufficient number of well educated professionals committed to the common good who can play the role of change-makers and entrepreneurs.
Unfortunately, India’s higher education system has no professional programme built around interdisciplinary skills or the scale needed to educate enough learners for the satisfactory planning, development and management of India’s cities, towns and villages.
IIHS was incorporated to address this multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary challenge so that the country can respond with wise and timely solutions. IIHS aims to establish India’s first independently funded and managed National Innovation University focused on the challenges and opportunities of urbanisation. The University is intended to be a globally ranked institution at par with the celebrated Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).
