India's Viksat Bharat 2047: A Blueprint for Development and Job Creation

IOL News

23-07-2025

Dr Sheetal Bhoola is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Zululand, and the director at StellarMaths (Sunningdale).
The quest for equality, socio-economic development has been a global phenomenon, and a vision that many developing nations aspire to.
The journey to achieving overall development and improving the lives of all peoples residing in a country is a daunting and huge task. Kudos to India for implementing appropriate measures and strategically planning to meet these targets.
Viksat Bharat 2047 is a motion based on the government's vision to move India into being recognised and fully developed by 2047. The Consul General of India, Durban, Dr. Thelma john Davids recently hosted an event that specifically aimed to publicise and inform South Africans of the progression of this strategy.
Dr. Nageswaran, chief Economic Advisor Ministry of Finance, India was the guest of honour and informed the guests of the progression of the strategy. It was reported that over the last decade, India has created approximately 17 million jobs, and they have been focusing on labour that is skill intensive.
In the previous decade, it was recorded that 4.5 million jobs were created. The numbers have more than tripled and Indian citizens can enjoy a better way of life because they have a livelihood. India's population has escalated to 1.4 billion people and amidst this they still manage to sustain an unemployment rate of under 6% in recent years.
In comparison, South Africa has doubled their number of employed persons since 1994, and it has been recorded till date that approximately 16 million people are employed. Yet the unemployment rate in relevance to our population size is still almost 40% and it has been stagnating at that rate for a number of years.
An analysis can further investigate as to how accurate these developmental statistics are, but despite their capacity to be marginally or partially inaccurate, they give a clear benchmark of how progressive countries are in meeting their developmental goals.
The National Development Plan of 2030 is five years ahead of us, and we need to investigate avenues that will speed up the process of minimising unemployment to create a far more equal society which is less poverty-stricken than previously.
Employment in the agricultural and construction sector has been punted and the Minister clearly indicated that we must sell these career trajectories to our youth, because this is where the need and viability lies for employment and economic development in the near future.
The pace at which India has more than tripled their employment rates is admirable, and I do question what the methodology has been to achieve this. The minister at the event highlighted that many of the employment opportunities have been determined by needs and the need in India has been construction.
In the last 10 years, the country has built 88 airports in and around the country. To be precise, this is one airport completed in 40 days. These governmental projects have continued to contribute towards long-term employment for individuals in the arena of construction. In comparison, since 1994, King Shaka International Airport was the only airport that was built in 2010 and other airports such as Oliver Tambo International Airport were refurbished.
However, India's success today is also based on their economic workforce that has been integrated into the global economy through technological innovation and advancement. India has become a leading global player in the advancement of technological products and innovations.
This required Indians to become highly skilled and educated within the realms of sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics, which they have achieved.
Bengaluru, the South of India has been renowned to be similar to America's Silicon Valley in terms of technological innovation and the centralisation of these hubs that contribute effectively to employment.
The demand has now shifted, and India aligns their employment typology demands with global trends and current requirements. The world is grappling with the use of artificial intelligence which threatens many jobs, portfolios, and tasks in the corporate workspace across sectors.
India's stance has been to promote and encourage their youth to focus on labour intensive skill development in the arenas of construction and agriculture.
There has been plenty of banter about employment opportunities that may become redundant with the increased utilisation of artificial intelligence and related technological programs and platforms. These platforms have been enhancing many portfolios and tasks in the corporate sector but ultimately lack human judgement, emotional intelligence, contextual understanding and relevance as well as defined and specific applicability to a context, place, time-frame and need.
The question beckons as to what South Africans can learn from India in various ways. The onset of the G20 initiative is an avenue whereby countries can engage in interdependence and to foster global economic development and cooperation.
The primary aim is to achieve development through policy development and valued modification as well as coordination of strategies, systems, and the implication processes of development strategies.
The key players of the G20 Collaborative team include The African Union and European Union and 19 independent countries including South Africa namely; Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
One of the objects of the G20 platforms is measures to minimise the various forms of corruption in the above-mentioned countries. The development of strategy planning, frameworks and policies are merely not enough, but we need to investigate the various ways of applying these policies successfully.
The challenge has always been within South Africa's capacity to implement a program of change or a developmental program successfully. An impactful example is the continued challenges that we experience with The National Schools Nutrition Program, which has been continually criticised for tender rigging processes and poor service delivery to learners.
Yet this programme is fundamental to long-term effective development of society and addresses two of our main challenges, namely educational development and hunger and poverty.
The onus lies on South Africans to ensure that every programme runs to its best capacity, and we need to look to our vision of 2030 and beyond.
*The opinions expressed in this article does not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.
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