What will India look like in 2047? What kind of changes can we expect in the next 25 years? This was the topic of discussion in the ICFAI WiseViews webinar held on December 30. Mr V Pattabhi Ram peeled the onion and helped us to visualize and understand how India will change in the next 25 years.
About Mr V Pattabhi Ram
Mr V Pattabhi Ram is a CA by qualification and founding partner of a public accounting firm. A writer, public speaker, and teacher, he has trained over 76,000 CA students. He has authored multiple books across different formats- novels, biographies, self-help books and textbooks.
In his presentation, Mr Patabhi Ram talked about some major trends which we can expect to see between now and 2047. These trends also apply to the rest of the world, not just India. 2047 is just a point of time selected to make the title catchy. What is more important is the process of evolution in the next few decades and how we must get prepared. For more details, please do read his book, India in 2047: The amazing rise of a modern nation co-authored with Dr Anbuthambi Bhojarajan.
Two time zones
By 2047, we are likely to see the emergence of two time zones for India, one for the northeast and the rest for the remaining part of the country. The optimal time gap may be 2 hours but we are more likely to see a time difference of 1 hour between the two zones. Our daily biological cycle is linked to sunrise and sunset. We should work during the most productive hours and sleep when we are tired. When the rest of India is waking up, the people in the Northeast are already awake. So it makes sense to have two time zones for India.
Airports
When we step out of a plane in 2047, we are likely to walk into airports with not many airport staff around. There will be retina driven immigration checks. Baggage tokens issued to us in the plane will tell us exactly when our baggage will arrive. (A great boon for someone like Pattabhi Ram who has often been frustrated by the late arrival of luggage during his frequent travel.) Instead of the typical back and yellow (or the green Meru) cabs, we may see driverless cars taking us to our destination.
Roads
We will have elevated roads where traffic will ply at great speed. There will be toll gates with no waiting as traffic movements will be regulated by the scanning of number plates. To keep the environment cleaner, the more the number of people inside a vehicle, the less the toll charged. Roads will be solar powered. With less interest in car ownership, we will see shared mobility. By 2047, traditional indicators of success like size of the house, the model of the car owned, etc will be less relevant.
Homes
The trend by 2047 will be to order mobile homes on Amazon and other shopping portals. Then the homes will be quickly assembled on site. Inside the home, robots will assist children while doing their homework and the elderly as they try to move around. With smart glasses controlling the flow of light, there will be no need for curtains or blinds. From inside, people will be able to see outside while the reverse will not be possible. Cameras will remember the faces of owners, thereby ensuring higher security. Rest rooms will be intelligent and will do many tests (like pregnancy) automatically and predict illnesses.
Smart cities
We will see the emergence of smart cities connected by bullet trains. Within the cities, there will be metros and driverless cars. Devices will monitor the air quality and there will be greater traffic sense.
Entrepreneurship
Historically, Indians have been criticized for not being entrepreneurial and for being happy to work for someone. But by 2047, many more people will become entrepreneurs. Academia and industry will collaborate in areas like R&D and many Silicon valleys may emerge in India.
Simultaneously, the rise of automation and AI will mean that many jobs will be lost. People keep saying that new jobs will be created but at the moment, we have little idea what those new jobs are likely to be.
A union of states
India may become a union of states with healthy competition among the states to attract investment and talent. Clusters of EVs, pharma, AI factories, industry 4.0 might emerge in different states.
Healthcare
Personalized medicine will increasingly be the order of the day. Different people may be having the same ailment but the treatment will vary from person to person. Tertiary healthcare will be transformed with the emergence of McDonald’s like small hospital chains across the length and breadth of the country. Aging will be reversed with the development of pills to replace dying brain cells with new neurons. 115-120 year life spans may be the order of the day.
Education
As a teacher, Pattabhi Ram has spent considerable part of his life teaching CA students in the mornings between 6 15 am and 8 45 am. So, he has deep insights about how education must evolve.
He visualizes that by 2047, many of the corporation/government schools will be run by CSR minded companies. Delhi has already made a start and Tamil Nādu is also moving in that direction. The best practices of these states may be replicated in other states.
The use of AR/VR will make classes more engaging and meaningful. Using VR, during history classes, students will be able to go back in time and see what happened. Using AR, subjects like anatomy may be taught more effectively.
Any time, anywhere exams will become common. This is important as going forward, lifelong learning and self-learning will become increasingly important. Indeed, educational institutions will have to focus on helping people to learn by themselves rather than try to teach them everything.
Academic qualifications and degrees will matter less. What will matter are skills. Consider a state like Tamil Nādu with some 575 engineering colleges. The joke is that it is easier to get admission into an engineering college compared to a B Com (honours) in a good college. Polytechnics will get modernized and ITIs will improve.
Banking
Physical banks will substantially disappear and many of the banking functions will be automated. Digital technologies have already taken over banking functions such as credit rating and scoring. Rather than customers approaching banks for credit, banks will approach customers at the point of purchase. Way back in 2013, Pattabhi Ram had in a national conference spoken about the death of cash. Currently, cash accounts for 40% of transactions in the country, significantly down from 50% a few years ago. Today, practically everyone accepts electronic modes of payment.
Hopefully, the Indian government will monetize its assets and get out of running businesses and limit itself to select areas like defence, law and order, foreign affairs, healthcare, primary education. We can aspire to be a $ 50 tn economy by 2047, if we keep growing at 10% per annum. A difficult task but worth aspiring for. If we play our cards well, we can develop a highly skilled, educated and cultured workforce and emerge as the destination of choice for manufacturing, services and knowledge businesses.
Q&A
On his career journey
Most of the things in Pattabhi Ram’s career have happened by accident. His advice to youngsters is that it is difficult to predict what the next 25 years will be. Instead of worrying about moving from one point to another, they would be better off building their skills. They should also focus on being socially and emotionally responsible. IQ alone does not take us far.
In fact, neither he nor his graduating class or CA batchmates could have imagined the kind of work Pattabhi Ram is doing today. As the environment evolves, opportunities also change and we must adapt. If the early 200os were the era of dotcoms, today it is the age of start-ups.
At some point in our life, we should aspire to do what we love to do and not just go with the flow. The most successful people are willing to take risks. In fact, whenever we feel too comfortable about what we are doing, we should try to make a shift. That is what prompted Pattabhi Ram to move on from what he had been doing for several years. Today, he enjoys writing and speaking.
On building a career
If Pattabhi Ram had to retrace his career as a CA, he would not enter the CA practice. He would have worked in a corporation for a few more years, gained experience and then maybe tried his hand at building a start-up. He would probably have tried to build his network. He added that given the choice he probably would not have even become a CA, and instead become a surgeon.
Careers are not written in stone. There are plenty of opportunities to change our line. One young lady, Pattabhi Ram knows, finished engineering from a top Indian college, worked with great global organizations and more recently, while in her 30s decided to study medicine.
Most young people graduating today have at least 50 years of career ahead of them. They have ample opportunities to rediscover themselves and cannot keep blaming their parents or circumstances for the career in which they currently find themselves.
On how he became a writer
Pattabhi Ram had a deep interest in writing and speaking right from his school days. In school, he would often summarize the daily news at the assembly each morning. While others were scared, he would volunteer to do this. Unlike other students, he did not even need a piece of paper to refer to. He could speak confidently without referring to anything. When teaching CA students, he would key in drafts into his mobile phone.
When he was doing his articleship, Pattabhi Ram would wake up at 7: 45 am and rush to the office. During the last several years he has been effortlessly waking up at 4: 45 am without fail and without the need for an alarm. This is a time of peak productivity as others are not awake and everything is quiet. He realizes that a lot of creative work is possible in the early mornings.
Once we are clear about what we like to do, there is no looking back. We will do it with a lot of passion and energy. Instead, if we are guided by compulsions such as making money or replicating the success of others, the intrinsic motivation will be weak and we may not enjoy what we are doing.
On higher education
There is a story of President Barack Obama telling some American children that they should learn well and do their homework regularly. Otherwise, the jobs would go to India! Much the same needs to be told to Indian students today. They should pick up the necessary skills or else they will lose out.
A lot of work is getting automated. Thus, Grammarly can edit what we write to perfection. AI can be used for creative writing (given a few bullet points, the software can churn out paragraphs) and even in movie making. So most of the mundane work is bound to get automated. Indeed because of AI based tools, our human skills are getting weaker. Consider Google Maps. We are losing our sense of direction.)
We must keep learning and upskilling ourselves to stay relevant in this kind of environment. Education is going to be critical, especially primary education. The focus should be on building skills. The demand will not be for those who know or can visualize but for those who can do things. The emphasis should be on do how rather than know how.
On how these trends will play out in rural areas
These trends are also applicable to non-urban areas. With better transportation, increasing access to healthcare and growing acceptance of work from home/hybrid models, location will become less important, and the urban rural divide may blur. Sridhar Vembu of Zoho, for example, works from Tenkasi. The more relevant divide is between people with skills and those without skills.
On rising inequality
Some people will enjoy more opportunities and there will be inequalities.
But there is little we can do about that. The government should also not try to get involved as socialist models have not really worked in the past. We also need not look at the disadvantaged in a condescending way. It is possible that they are quite satisfied with life.
Meanwhile younger people are looking at life differently and defining success in their own way. They are choosing to live life on their own terms. The traditional notion that success means getting into the IITs and IIMs may rapidly go away.
On sustainability
We have to make the earth a safer place. Global warming is leading to wildfires, rising water levels, extreme weather, flooding, etc. It costs tens of trillions of dollars to provide oxygen to people for even six months. We should also remember that some 12 Indian cities including Chennai are expected to go under water in the foreseeable future if no proper action is taken. However, we need not be pessimistic. Actions are being taken and corporations are closely involved in fighting global warming.
On religion
The book stresses the importance of pluralism. Pattabhi Ram hopes that people will be free to pursue their beliefs. There should not be any discrimination based on religion. He is not religious by orientation and hardly goes to a temple, but still sports the occasional vibhooti. He sees no contradiction as these are matters of comfort.
On space travel
When Pattabhi Ram was still a toddler, Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon (in 1969). There was a lot of hype that during our lifetime, travel to the Moon would become possible for the common man. However, even 52 years later, that has not happened. And when space travel will become affordable is still not clear. However, recent innovations by companies like SpaceX may make this possible in the near future.
On agriculture
It is likely that agriculture will become corporatized, and landholdings will become consolidated. Some feel that the cooperative model is the right one to follow. Whatever be the case, we will see the increasing use of technology and the import of ideas from countries like Israel to increase productivity and farm output.
On population
There was a time when our huge growing population was considered a liability. Today, it is an asset and the world is keen on tapping talent from India. In contrast, countries like Japan with zero or negative population growth have a bleak future. Population by itself is not the problem. The real issue is about training our young people and making them relevant to the marketplace.
On valuation
Pattabhi Ram has seen the field of valuation changing over time. Traditionally, valuation was based on how much the company was earning and would earn in future. During the dotcom boom, the paradigm changed. Little attention was paid to cash flows and valuation was linked to how much was being spent. Whatever be the case, valuation is at a point of time and depends on the valuer’s judgment. Moreover, valuation cannot be different for the buyer and the seller.
Valuation is a tricky subject. One could have dismissed Amazon off in its early days as it was making huge losses. But today, the company is everywhere. In general, these days, people tend to be overvaluing companies. Think of Paytm.
It is safer to do valuation using multiple principles, perspectives and methods and take the average rather than depend on one expert alone. During a Business School competition, he predicted that the average of the Sensex closing estimates made by the 30 odd teams taking part, would be closest to the actual closing value of that day. His prediction proved to be remarkably accurate. It only goes to show the wisdom of crowds.
