I first heard the phrase “Inevitable India” in a speech by Navneet Munot of HDFC Mutual Funds. He used it to describe a country that draws in capital, talent and enterprise so naturally, that its long rise seems hard to stop.
The phrase captures something real, and it stayed with me.
It also carries a quiet danger that is worth taking seriously. The danger is that we will treat a likely outcome as a settled one.
To begin with, let’s separate three claims that often get bundled together in talk of the country’s future: First, that India will account for a larger share of the world economy. Second, it will become a more powerful state. Third, that ordinary Indians will become broadly prosperous and secure.
The first claim looks increasingly likely. The second is probable, but contingent on certain choices. The third is not a “tryst with destiny” at all. It is a problem of execution, which means it depends on whether India’s institutions do their jobs well, day after day, even when no one’s watching.
A dramatic infrastructure project such as the Bengaluru airport’s new Terminal 2 succinctly illustrates the gap. Inside, everything works. The glass is clean, the luggage arrives, the aesthetic is pleasing. Outside, the taxi meets a chaotic road.
Both are the real India.
The airport proves that the country can pour money, technology and attention into a bounded project and make it shine. The chaotic road (encroached by shanties and hawkers, pitted and poorly maintained, perhaps flooded depending on time of year) shows how we still fail at harnessing overlapping agencies and holding them accountable over time.
A DEADLINE, NOT A GIFT
The way our “demographic dividend” is playing out offers a prime example of the effects of this — and the risks of assuming that an outcome is inevitable.
We knew that the opportunity presented by the country’s incredibly young population came with a deadline, and with key asks. These young people had to be educated and gainfully employed, if they were to shift a massive economy into a new gear, and build an economic base that a later, aging India could count on.
How have we fared on this front?
The share of educated young people among the jobless has risen steadily.
The India Employment Report 2024, released by the independent Institute for Human Development and the UN’s International Labour Organization, found that young people (those under 29) made up nearly 83% of the unemployed.
These figures do not reflect underemployment: the graduate who cannot find a job in the livelihood of his choosing, and sits behind the counter at the family’s shop, drives a taxi or delivers food via an app. All work is important, but not all of it raises skill levels, offers income growth, or is steady enough to plan a life around.
MIXED SIGNALS
A growing economy alone isn’t enough.
This economy has grown fast in recent decades, but never fast enough, or in the right shape, to match the pace at which young Indians were graduating. Only about one in five workers is in formal, salaried employment. According to the government’s Economic Survey 2025-26, the gig workforce grew from 7.7 million in 2021 to 12 million by 2025.
India’s size makes every small gain look enormous, and it makes the unfinished work easy to miss. Several facts are true at once.
The glass is not half empty, not half full. It is just an enormous glass.
Click here for a bit on why we miss what we miss, and what it might take to change that.
MEANWHILE…
Much of the battle for India’s future will be won or lost in the cities.
That is simply how our economy is structured. Cities are where the most well-paid jobs are. They are the prime drivers of the economy.
So it says something that our cities, rather than moving into the future, have become denser, more expensive and less liveable. Long commutes, costly housing, polluted air, flooded streets, water shortages…
This is where two kinds of institutional ability in India dramatically part ways.
The country has strong mission capacity, meaning that when it reaches for a big, valuable, high-priority goal — an election, a space launch, a universal payments system — it meets it.
Routine capacity is different, less glamorous, and there simply isn’t enough focus on improvement here. Routine capacity would mean that the government school teaches effectively, the clinic has medicines (and doctors), the municipal drain is cleared before each monsoon.
MISSION CONTROL
Jobs, schools, cities, courts, health, and water look like separate problems. They meet at one point: state capacity, which is the ability to gather good data, assign responsibility, monitor performance, coordinate, act, fix mistakes and learn. In an uninterrupted cycle.
This is where the graduate should be finding work. This is where we aren’t looking, and need to.
Inevitability a risky mood, because it turns unfinished work into lost opportunity.
Gloom is just as lazy. The country has repeatedly broken through barriers that looked impossible to breach.
What India deserves today is the humble acknowledgement that governance capacity is not inherited, it is built with resolve.
A mission succeeds through intense focus.
A state succeeds when ordinary competence stops being remarkable.
That’s how we get to Inevitable India.
(Kashyap Kompella is a CFA charterholder, tech industry analyst and author of three books on AI)
