This article is one of a series of 50. Together they explore the history and culture of India from her most ancient civilisations to the nation’s ambitious space programme. All 50 articles will be collected into a digital book and published in due course. To receive a FREE copy of the book, simply register for my newsletter here.

In many ways India is a nebulous construct. 

Some think of her as a collection of countries, rather than a unified whole, held together by the fraying threads of history, the entire mass transfigured, time and again, by war, conquest, fate, and politics. The populace of this vast nation mirrors the heterogeneity of the landscape. From the fiery Punjabis in the north to the sanguine Tamilians in the south, from the Maharashtrians on the western coast, to the Assamese in the jungles of the east, Indians represent a kaleidoscope of humanity every bit as vibrant and colourful as the array of silks and spices so often associated with the country.

The challenges that India faces in the coming years are myriad.

Picture credit: Mayanksethi27 CC 4.0

In spite of a recent slowdown, India remains one of the fastest growing economies in the world. By 2027, India will have overtaken Germany and Japan to become the world’s third largest economy – behind only the US and China. 

This rampant economic growth comes at a price.

The nation’s cities are creaking beneath the sheer weight of ever-increasing populations. As fast as the government clears slums or attempts to resettle them, new slums spring up. The exodus from village to metro continues unabated. 

India’s pollution problem has reached epidemic proportions. The country is one of the world’s largest emitters of carbon dioxide. In response, the country’s political masters have announced an ambition for India to become a net zero emitter by 2070. A laudable goal, but one that relies on both political will across successive governments and an understanding that those at the lowest rungs of society still live a hand-to-mouth existence. For them, the urgency is in finding the next meal, not saving the planet from the consequences of – as many in the developing world see it – past climate evils committed by the west.

With a relatively young population, the need to create new jobs is a constant spectre for those in charge. At the same time, India’s middle class are living longer. It is only a matter of time before the country begins to feel some of the pain that western economies are experience in attempting to fund the consequences of longer life expectancies.

Modernity has made inroads into every aspect of the country. At times this has led to some suggesting that India is forgetting her roots, or, at the least, that those roots are weakening. 

And yet, there remains something stubbornly Indian about India. 

In the mind’s eye, many still picture her as a land of swamis and snake-charmers, of old-fashioned trains swaying across golden wheat fields and monsoon-drenched lowlands, of crumbling palaces and the nostalgic legacy of the Raj. 

All these things are part and parcel of the country’s DNA. 

Yet there is also a new, vibrant, and, at times, futuristic India. An India where village women are employed to enter raw data into programmes that train artificial intelligence algorithms. An India where city skylines are increasingly beginning to rival the skylines of New York, Singapore, London. An India where urban youth congregate in coffee shops, watch Netflix, and aspire to non-traditional careers.

This is a country on the verge of a cultural explosion, an entire generation released from the shackles of its own mythology. Yet this is also a nation that continues to celebrate its history, enshrining that vast provenance into the way Indian society thinks and behaves. Sometimes, that is a good thing; at other times it leads to an uncomfortable clash between past and present. 

During the course of this collection of short essays we have skated across the vastness that is the subcontinent. The truth is that another one thousand essays might have been included here and would still fail to adequately catalogue the immensity of India’s story.

Back in 2004, India promoted herself with a new slogan: ‘India Shining’, capturing her emergence onto the global stage. Will India continue to shine, despite the many issues that plague the country?

What is fact is that the Indian locomotive thunders on. Where will India be in another fifty or one hundred years? Only time will tell. But I’m betting that then, as now, her voice will be heard loud and clear across the world.

My latest novel, DEATH OF A LESSER GOD, is set in India, in the 1950s, and features India’s first female police detective, Persis Wadia, and her co-investigator, Archie Blackfinch, a forensic scientist from the Met Police in London… … Available from bookshops big and small and online. To see buying options please click here.  

This article is one of a series of 50 published on my website. Together these pieces explore the history and culture of India from her most ancient civilisations to the nation’s ambitious space programme. You can read all 50 pieces here.

All 50 articles will be collected into a digital book and published in due course. To receive a FREE copy of the book, simply register for my newsletter here. The newsletter goes out every three months and contains updates on book releases, articles, competitions, giveaways, and lots of other interesting stuff.