Viksit Bharat : INIDIA @2047

Aditya Pittie’s Viksit Bharat: India @2047 presents itself as a comprehensive blueprint for India’s developmental trajectory over the next two decades. At over 700 pages, the volume ambitiously attempts to chart a course for transforming India into a $30 trillion economy by the centenary of its independence. Structured across twenty chapters, the book is data-heavy and wide-ranging, addressing themes from infrastructure and governance to digital innovation and foreign policy.

The book is like India’s own version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: huge, ambitious, and absolutely convinced it’s got the blueprint for saving the day. The optimism is honestly contagious, like the whole country’s been shot up with espresso and is ready to sprint into the future.

The strength of the book lies in its ability to consolidate a wide spectrum of policies and reforms under a single narrative. For readers interested in understanding how India’s progress is being envisioned by policymakers and aligned thinkers, it offers a panoramic account. The emphasis on innovation, digitization, and infrastructural expansion makes the text particularly relevant at a time when India’s global visibility is rapidly growing.

Yet, beneath this grand vision, certain limitations become apparent. The foreword itself highlights that the book situates India’s economic transformation firmly within the leadership of the last decade. While this situates the narrative historically, it inevitably gives the text a political tonality. The whole thing is rooted in the Modi decade. It’s like being at a party where everyone’s only allowed to talk about the host’s best moments, while the leaky roof and weird smell in the corner are politely ignored.

It praises the economic strides under the stewardship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but in doing so, sidesteps more uncomfortable realities: growing unemployment, agrarian distress, rising inequality, farmers stuck in limbo and the precarious position of minorities in contemporary India. The absence of these discussions does not necessarily weaken the statistics, but it does make the picture seem far smoother than many citizens experience in their daily lives.

For instance, the foreword asserts that “a nation cannot live off only poems, novels, and journalism, but also needs homes, water through pipes, and electricity that lights up.” This is an inspiring claim, yet it invites questioning: are such basic guarantees evenly accessible to all Indians today? Let's be real, is everyone getting their fair share of basics? Reports of uneven distribution of resources, shortages in employment opportunities, and rising debt suggest that the story is more complex than the one the book narrates.

Another point worth noting is the selective treatment of India’s international position. The book rightly celebrates India’s growing global stature, but its treatment is sometimes too neat, overlooking the ambiguity and inconsistency that citizens often perceive in foreign policy stances, particularly in relation to long-standing allies and causes. The vision of India as a moral and stabilizing global power is aspirational, but it might have benefited from greater acknowledgment of contradictions.

Equally significant is the absence of voices from the ground. The book draws extensively on data and policy papers, but far less on lived experiences. Groups that continue to face marginalization: religious minorities, Dalits, and the urban poor who are largely absent from the developmental narrative. This creates a sense of a top-down, technocratic vision, one that looks forward energetically, but perhaps without fully grappling with the fractures that remain unresolved within the present.

Finally, the sheer length and density of the book may limit its accessibility to the wider public. While its comprehensiveness is admirable, the volume often risks becoming a catalogue of achievements and projections, leaving little space for counter-arguments, debates, or alternative visions of development.

In conclusion, Viksit Bharat: India @2047 is a valuable resource for understanding one strand of India’s developmental imagination; one that is optimistic, growth-driven, and institutionally aligned. However, its omissions are as telling as its inclusions. The narrative would have gained even greater credibility had it allowed room for a more nuanced engagement with social justice, political plurality, and the uneven distribution of India’s economic “fruits.” As it stands, the book is a compelling but partial vision of the India we may inherit in 2047.  If India does hit that 2047 milestone, here’s hoping the sequel brings a little more heart and a lot more voices to the table.