In the course of the past week I participated in the BRICS Educational Expedition (BEE) in Ahmedabad, India with presentations and discussions with over 100 young leaders from dozens of regions and cities all across India. The BEE expedition included lectures, discussions, business models and cases designed to shed light on BRICS evolution and its development prospects. I was greatly impressed by the creativity of India’s young generation, and was pleased to see that a lot of the discussions focused on environmental projects and sustainability as key priorities for economic development in India and globally. The digital economy track was also termed as being crucial for India, with the nexus of high-tech and sustainability in sectors such as EVs seen as key for the country’s longer term economic success.
Apart from the many individual conversations I also conducted several polls on how India’s young generation saw the BRICS priorities and values. Overall three questions were addressed to the BEE participants, with the first one asking them to outline the main priority for BRICS economic cooperation. Among the possible answers were some of the items that so far have not received significant development within the BRICS economic agenda, most notably the BRICS common currency and trade liberalization among BRICS economies:
- What projects do you hope BRICS will implement? (need to choose only one of the below options)
- Common payment infrastructure (BRICS Bridge) – 12%
- BRICS investment platform (facilitation of investments across BRICS) – 16%
- BRICS trade platform (trade liberalization across BRICS) – 19%
- BRICS common currency – 47%
- Other – 6%
Interestingly, the BRICS currency proposal was supported by nearly half of the respondents, with the runner-up with nearly a fifth of all votes being BRICS trade liberalization. The high support for the BRICS currency project appears to be due to the fact that it was among the few in the financial sphere that the young generation in BRICS economies heard about in the past several years. Indeed, in the global social media that young people are most active in, the issue of BRICS common currency appears to be the most popular discussion theme related to BRICS.
The high degree of support for the BRICS currency project may also be due to young people’s association of this project with financial innovation that may be the key agent of change undertaken by developing economies in the global financial architecture. In fact, as our further discussions suggested innovation was seen as the most important of BRICS values.
Our second question addressed to the BEE participants focused on the more fundamental priorities for BRICS that pertain to its values and its mission in improving the world economy:
- What should be the key BRICS values?
- Equality – 13.4%
- Fair competition – 11.9%
- Innovation – 44.8%
- Support for the Global South – 22.4%
- Other – 7.5%
Of all of the possible values innovation accounted for nearly half of all answers, with support for the Global South economies coming from BRICS being second with a still appreciable 22.4% of the total vote. Values such as equality and fair competition within BRICS were accorded less importance. Based on the individual conversations with BEE participants, innovation is seen as one of the keys to higher economic growth, most notably in the services sector.
We then proceeded to discuss the economic priorities that any modern economy would need to pursue to be successful and competitive on the world stage:
- What should be the key macroeconomic priorities for a modern economy?
- More jobs – 38.6%
- Higher economic growth – 32.9%
- Lower Inflation – 10%
- Lower debt burden – 12.9%
- Other – 5.7%
The two items standing out the most are jobs and growth – an indication that the economic growth coming out of India in the eyes of the young generation needs to exhibit more job-creation. And while there was a recognition that the expansion of the high-tech sector and AI could pose risks to traditional jobs in the country’s economy there was agreement that on balance AI would bring more jobs and growth opportunities to India’s economy.
The results of a separate survey of the BEE participants on those sectors of the economy that the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) needed to prioritize (out of a total of 17) were in line with the many conversations held with India’s young leaders – these priorities were largely concentrated around sustainable development and included such areas as:
- Production of cheap and reliable energy
- Public utilities infrastructure
- Social infrastructure and healthcare
Overall, more than half of India’s population is below 30 years old and nearly two-thirds of the total is younger than 35 years[1]. These young generations are the leaders, the consumers and the innovators of India’s future – the strong preference accorded to the protection of the environment, sustainable development and the advancement of India’s digital transformation bodes well for the quality of economic growth in the coming decades. After the visit to India and the meetings with its young generation, my views on India forming part of the VIBEs vanguard of fast-growing economies in the coming decades[2] were reinforced – more on this in our forthcoming publication of India trip notes.
[1] https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/half-indias-population-under-age-30-nfhs-explained-7910458/
[2] https://brics-plus-analytics.org/the-new-breakout-nations-what-role-for-brics/
Note: the BEE event was spearheaded by Diana Kovela, Head of the BRICS Education Expedition, member of BRICS Youth Council
Yaroslav Lissovolik, Founder, BRICS+ Analytics
Image by louisredon via Pixabay