Donald Trump is back in the Oval Office. And he has not imposed 60% or 100% tariffs on any country. At least so far. What will four years of his presidency entail for the global economic order? This is a question which will occupy the minds of businesses and governments, including in India in the days to come.

A little bit of digression is useful here. India, as far as its place in the global economy is concerned, has become the equivalent of a sun in perpetual dawn, which is, one day it is expected to outshine all other stars but hasn’t so far. There was a time when India and China were thought of as competitors. That era is long over. Chinese and Indian economies are worth more than $18 trillion and about $4 trillion today, a gap unlikely to be bridged in our lifetimes.

Sure, India will become the third-largest economy in a couple of years. But the only question, as far as India’s medium-term economic prospects are concerned, is how much can India boost its per capita GDP in the days to come? It is this metric which will lead to a large part of India’s population moving from subsistence levels to a mass of consumers with at least some purchasing power.

What will it take for this to happen? The short answer is moving people from agriculture to non-agricultural jobs, which pay them discernibly better than what they get on farms or construction sites. The long answer is slightly more complicated and also bitter. A large part of our workforce (and workforce in the making) does not have to skills to qualify for even relatively low-skill white-collar service sector jobs. To be sure, the absolute number of those who get........

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