Rise of a Rajasic nation: Beyond G20, Bharat now has a permanent sheen

The Delhi Declaration has been dissected. Sceptical cynics carped about whether Bharat would be able to pull off such a summit without cascading complications and about whether there would be a clear consensus. Critics have been proved wrong on both counts. In the Asterix comics, there is Chief Vitalstatistix, constantly concerned about the sky falling on his head.Bharat has its share of naysayers and pessimists, often non-resident Indians, eternally hopeful about some calamity descending on the head of the Narendra Modi government, not theirs, since they chose to flee to more conducive climes. The Chief’s wife is Impedimenta and, indeed, for a country that is still relatively poor, there are impediments and constraints. The immediate afterglow of a successful G20 will pass, though many decisions taken will have implications that aren’t transient.Beyond G20, Bharat now has a permanent sheen, in large part, economic and political. Just about ten years ago, India was included in the fragile five club. Such errors in assessment are par for the course, especially since the rancid nature of rankings is rarely questioned. But, in fairness, naysayers in 2013 hadn’t expected the metamorphosis since 2014. Bharat and Bharat’s aspirations have been turned around and even as recently as the Covid-19 pandemic, the agility wasn’t expected, at least not in the rest of the world.Numbers and statistics speak for themselves — in terms of aggregate size of the economy (purchasing power parity or otherwise), per capita income, or percentage of population poor. There is no need to reiterate those improvements, regardless of metric used. In the past, there used to be a cliched remark — the Indian economy has a glorious past and a glorious future, but a bleak present. For the first time in independent India’s history, the