A swansong travel destination

I WAS fortunate to have visited India a couple of times in the mid-1990s and mid-2000.

Now, under the stewardship of Narendra Modi, the prime minister, in his second term, India is fast becoming touted as one of the superpowers of the world. It is there for all to see as I quote from a recent Morgan Stanley Research Report.

In the last three years, unlike any of India's previous leaders, Modi did not borrow one dollar from the World Bank. It is anticipated that in the next 10 years, India's gross domestic product (GDP) will surpass $1 trillion (about R14.3 trillion). Forbes Magazine declared that India will rise manifold only because of Modi.

In a recent Economic Growth report of 137 countries, India moved up 31 places and is now ranked 40. It has never reached such a spot since independence.

The potential to become a superpower can be attributed to several indicators, the primary ones being its strategic demographics and a rapidly expanding army and economy.

It is strategically placed in a commanding position on the Afro-Asian sea trade route of the Indian Ocean.

While Indians are buying more cars and crude oil, the economy is currently the world's third-largest in terms of GDP after the US and China.

India is a country with many distinct pursuits, vastly different convictions, and widely divergent customs and viewpoints. There is a need to understand its democracy, the defence of its secular policies, the removal of inequalities to class, caste and gender, and their pursuit of subcontinental peace.

Modi's crowning glory could be achieving eventual peace with Pakistan.

Perhaps Arnold Toynbee, a British historian and philosopher, summed it up best when he proclaimed: "It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in self-destruction of the human race.

“At this supremely dangerous moment in human history, the only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way. Here we have the attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together into a single family."

These are prophetic words from a man who spent a lifetime studying various civilisations.

I want to feel and experience that revolutionised, hip and upmarket India, that superpower. India will always be my swansong travel destination as I soon straddle the autumn years of my life.

KEVIN GOVENDER

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