Tag Archives: India

The combined output of the three leading South economies—China, India, Brazil—will surpass the aggregate production of the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy and Canada by 2020. According to United Nations Human Development Report 2013, the rise of the South is radically reshaping the world of the 21st century, with developing nations driving economic growth, lifting hundreds of millions of people from poverty, and propelling billions more into a new global middle class. The Report shows that more than 40 developing countries have made greater human development gains in recent decades than would have been predicted. These achievements, it says, are largely attributable to sustained investment in education, health care and social programmes, and open engagement with an increasingly interconnected world. Further, report reveals that this historic progress is creating opportunities for the South and the North to collaborate in new ways to advance human development and confront shared challenges such as climate change.  Report pointed that the South as a whole is driving global economic growth and societal change for the first time in centuries, thereby providing a detailed look at fast-changing world. Some of the snapshots of report are: China and India doubled per capita economic output in less than 20 years—a rate twice as fast as that during the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America. The Report projects that by 2020, the combined output of the three leading South economies—China, India, Brazil—will surpass the aggregate production of the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy and Canada. With living standards rising in much of the South, the proportion of people living in extreme income poverty worldwide plunged from 43 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2008. Report notes that developing countries nearly doubled their share of world merchandise trade from 25%  to 47% between 1980 and 2010. Trade within the South was the biggest factor in that expansion, climbing from less than 10% to more than 25% of all world trade in the past 30 years, while trade between developed countries fell from 46% to less than 30%. However, report projects that trade between countries in the South will overtake that between developed nations.  The South is increasingly      interdependent and interconnected. Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and      Mexico now have more daily social media traffic than any country except the United States. The South’s growing global interconnections are personal as well virtual: migration between developing countries recently surpassed net migration from South to North. The world is witnessing an epochal “global rebalancing.” The tectonic shift has put developing countries on an upward curve. The Report predicts that the so-called “Rise of the South” should continue and could even accelerate as the 21st century unfolds.  Global institutions have not yet caught up to this historic change. China, with the world’s second largest economy and biggest foreign exchange reserves, has but a 3.3 percent share in the World Bank, less than France’s 4.3 percent. India, which will soon surpass China as the world’s most populous country, does not have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. And Africa, with a billion people in 54 sovereign nations, is under-represented in almost all international institutions.  The report suggests that south itself has both the expertise and the resources to be a more powerful force in global development. Developing countries now hold two-thirds of the world’s total $10.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, including more than $3 trillion in China alone, and about three-quarters of the $4.3 trillion in assets controlled by sovereign wealth funds worldwide. The rise of the South is challenging existing global institutions to change and showing new ways that countries and regions can work together to confront shared challenges. As older international institutions fail to adapt, new mechanisms are emerging. Further, the South needs greater representation in global governance, which also requires assuming greater responsibility. It urges the convening of a new “South Commission” where developing countries can take the lead in suggesting constructive new approaches to effective global governance. Hence, the report lays emphasis on
the rise of the South and its potential for accelerating progress for future generations should be seen as beneficial for all countries and regions, as living standards improve and the world as whole becomes ever more deeply interdependent.