Mumbai:
According to the world’s leading political risk consultancy, Eurasia Group.India has emerged under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has emerged fifth biggest geopolitical risk of 2020.
The consultancy's annual top 10 geopolitical risks are:1 Rigged!: Who governs the US? 2 The Great Decoupling 3 US/China 4 MNCs not to the rescue 5 India gets Modi-fied 6 Geopolitical Europe 7 Politics vs. economics of climate change 8 Shia crescendo 9 Discontent in Latin America 10 Turkey
Authored by the Eurasia Group's president, Ian Bremmer and chairman. Cliff Kupchan. the Eurasia's list of annual top 10 geopolitical risks is considered one of the foremost geopolitical indicators among global investors, multinational firms and various financial and business consultancies.
Describing 2020 is a tipping point,the report has said, “We’ve lived with growing levels of geopolitical risk for nearly a decade, but without a true international crisis.Outside of geopolitics, global trends have been strongly favorable. That’s now changing.''
“We’ve never listed US domestic politics as the top risk, mainly because US institutions are among the world’s strongest and most resilient. This year, those institutions will be tested in unprecedented ways. “We face risks of a US election that many will view as illegitimate, uncertainty in its aftermath, and a foreign policy environment made less stable by the resulting vacuum,'' the report said
Titled as “India gets Modi-fied'' the report's India chapter has explained that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spent much of his second term promoting controversial social policies at the expense of an economic agenda. The impacts will be felt in 2020, with intensified communal and sectarian instability, as well as foreign policy and economic setbacks.
“Modi and his government have been busy in recent months. They revoked the special status for Jammu and Kashmir and implemented a system to identify illegal immigrants in the northeast, stripping 1.9 million people of citizenship. The government also passed a law that, for the first time, makes religion a criterion for migrants from neighboring countries to formally acquire Indian citizenship, said the report.
The economic spillover is also noteworthy. The social agenda has empowered a key part of Modi’s base, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)—Hindu nationalists who oppose market opening and support economic nationalism.
“The RSS influence was evident in Modi’s decision to drop out of India’s fiscal situation is also precarious, as the government faces a widening fiscal deficit, marked by the underperformance of the goods and services tax. A weakened economy will in turn feed further economic nationalism and protectionism, weighing on India’s troubled course in 2020,'' added the report.
Behind these moves is Amit Shah, the former head of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),now home minister Sectarian and religious conflict will grow accordingly, caution the report.
Kashmir is a powder keg, with political leaders still under arrest and internet access cut off.
Protests have already spread around India as many citizens fear the loss of India’s secular identity. The government’s harsh response, in turn, will provoke still more demonstrations. But Modi will not back down, and as the government pursues its new agenda, state-level opposition leaders will directly challenge the central government,said the report.
This focus on the social agenda will also have harmful effects for India’s foreign policy. Its actions on human rights will be under closer scrutiny by many nations, and its reputation will take a hit.
Painting a riskier global picture, the report has said both the economic and geopolitical trendsnow cycling downward. The global economy, after emerging from the great recession of 2008 with the longest expansion of the post-war period, is now softening. More economists expect a recession in 2020 or 2021. And the world is now entering a deepening geopolitical recession, with a lack of global leadership as a result of American unilateralism, an erosion of US-led alliances, a Russia in decline that wants to undermine the stability and cohesion of both the US and its allies, and an increasingly empowered China under consolidated leadership that’s building a competitive alternative on the global stage.
“Lastly, climate change is beginning to constrain economic growth and to matter on the global political stage as never before. That’s only going to increase over time (unlikethe cyclical economic and geopolitical trends, which sooner or later will become more favorable). In 2020, we have a combination of negative trend lines that we’ve not experienced in generations,'' said the report.