Global Trends

Two Indias. India�s current fertility rate of 2.8 children per woman masks vast differences between the low-fertility states of South India and the commercial hubs of Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata on the one hand, and the higher rates of populous states in the so-called Hindi-speaking belt across the north, where women�s status is low and services lag. Largely owing to growth in India�s densely populated northern states, its population is projected to overtake China�s around 2025�just as China�s population is projected to peak and begin a slow decline. By then, India�s demographic duality will have widened the gap between north and south. By 2025, much of India�s work force growth will come from the most poorly educated, impoverished, and crowded districts of rural northern India. Although North Indian entrepreneurial families have lived for decades in southern cities, the arrival of whole communities of Hindi-speaking unskilled laborers looking for work could rekindle dormant animosities between India's central government and ethno-nationalist parties in the South. Others, such as India, lack strategic economic and political visions and do not possess domestic grassroots support for deep economic liberalization. Many global issues require sacrifices or abrupt changes to these countries� development plans, another reason for them to prefer to be bystanders rather than leaders in a multilateral system. The future of Pakistan is a wildcard in considering the trajectory of neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistan�s Northwest Frontier Province and tribal areas probably will continue to be poorly governed and the source or supporter of cross-border instability. If Pakistan is unable to hold together until 2025, a broader coalescence of Pashtun tribes is likely to emerge and act together to erase the Durand Line,8 maximizing Pashtun space at the expense of Punjabis in Pakistan and Tajiks and others in Afghanistan. Alternatively, the Taliban and other Islamist activists might prove able to overawe at least some tribal politics.