Raghav Bahl’s ‘Super Century: What India Must Do to Rise by 2050’ released

‘Super Century: What India Must Do to Rise by 2050’ penned by media entrepreneur Raghav Bahl and published by Penguin Random House India was launched in New Delhi on Friday.

The launch was followed by a panel discussion among Bahl, former RBI Governor Bimal Jalan, author Gurcharan Das, Congress MP and former IIM-Bangalore professor Rajeev Gowda and senior journalist Praveen Swami. The discussion was moderated by Menaka Doshi, managing editor, BloombergQuint.

Describing the book, Bahl said, “What is it about the Indian psyche that makes us so incapable of fulfilling our promise as a nation? Why are we so averse to risk, resigned to mediocrity and mired in a collective lack of confidence? India has so much potential but seems forever stuck on the brink of actualization, unable to muster the political will and geo-economic force to clear the final bar. The stakes are higher than ever, and India's moment is now.”

Commenting on the book, Bimal Jalan said, “Raghav has rightly analysed in the book that there are two Indias -- India at abroad and India at home. Outwardly, India is the world’s largest global economy but internally we are struggling with the problem of a colonial legacy where the power is skewed towards the Centre. You need a tremendous amount of decentralisation.”

Gurcharan Das said, “Raghav makes this point in the book very well, we had expected Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be a real reformer like UK’s Margaret Thatcher, but so far we have not seen that. However, this is his second term and he has the political capital so he can really bring about a change.”

In ‘Super Century…’, Raghav Bahl offers a cogent and candid assessment of how we got where we are and a clear blueprint of what we need to do, both at home and in the world, to fulfil our committment of moving forward.