Uncertain times for India

Strategic and economic risks have risen to unprecedented levels

US baseball legend Yogi Berra’s unintentional quips were hilarious. One of them is “it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future”. At a briefing on February 12, 2002, referring to the situation in Iraq, the then US secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, remarked “there are known-knowns … we also know there are known-unknowns. But there are also unknown-unknowns”. The accompanying table provides a sampling of imponderables India is facing. Guesses have also been made for the third column even though the heading of this column is “unknown-unknowns”.

Given the various uncertainties listed in the table, India’s top priorities have to