At the turn of the new century the India it presented itself as a reality in profound transformation where strong contradictions emerged, overwhelmingly. In fact, although it has become a world economic power, India continued to host about a quarter of the poor on the planet, and although it could boast an excellent university system and a top position in all high-tech sectors, these aspects were matched by the presence of an enormous mass of illiterate people (more than one third of the population). The changes taking place involved all aspects of national life, from politics to society, from the economy to culture to religion. First of all, secularism, one of the most qualifying features of the so-called Indian model, it had progressively entered into crisis already during the nineties of the 20th century. with the emergence of Hindu fundamentalism, represented on the political level by the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP); the reference to Hindu identity contradicted, in fact, the secular model based on the inclusive vision of citizenship as an expression of a choice independent of belonging to a particular community. The violence exerted by Hindu fundamentalists on the Muslim (and Christian) minority had on several occasions taken the form of real pogroms, with the passive, but also active, participation of those law enforcement agencies that were supposed to guarantee the safety of the victims. From a purely political point of view, the decline of the Indian national congress (commonly referred to as The violence exerted by Hindu fundamentalists on the Muslim (and Christian) minority had on several occasions taken the form of real pogroms, with the passive, but also active, participation of those law enforcement agencies that were supposed to guarantee the safety of the victims. From a purely political point of view, the decline of the Indian national congress (commonly referred to as The violence exerted by Hindu fundamentalists on the Muslim (and Christian) minority had on several occasions taken the form of real pogroms, with the passive, but also active, participation of those law enforcement agencies that were supposed to guarantee the safety of the victims. From a purely political point of view, the decline of the Indian national congress (commonly referred to as Congress) had brought about the end of the ruling party-centered system and had ushered in the era of grand coalitions and the rise of regional parties. After coming to power in 1999, the BJP was defeated in 2004 by the coalition led by the Congress, of which Sonia Ghandi had taken the reins, succeeding in renewing its moral identity, democratizing its internal structures and creating new alliances characterized by the appeal to secularism. . Faced with Gandhi’s refusal, in 2004 Manmohan Singh (v.) Assumed the office of prime minister, reconfirmed in his post after the victory of the Congress in 2009. Also in foreign policy there has been a change of direction towards the end of first decade of the 21st century. with a cooling of relations with the United States, whose strategic agreement with Pakistan was criticized, historical enemy of the India, in the fight against terrorism and a greater proximity of interests with China, manifested on several occasions by the Obama administration. In the regional context, the Indo-Pakistani conflict, whose roots were rooted in the still open question of sovereignty over Kashmir, a territory now divided and disputed between the two countries, also fed on the problems relating to the unresolved Afghan situation, of vital importance for the Indian state: I, in fact, fears having to prepare to counter the possibility that Pakistan will increase its influence in Afghanistan through the Taliban when Western forces leave the country as planned in 2014. Corruption, social imbalance and terrorism complete a not without unknowns for the most populous democracy on the planet: alongside the resumption of the Maoist armed movement of the Naxalites (from the name of the village of Naxalbari), responsible for a crescendo of violence over the first decade of the 21st century. and with the support of the poorest strata of the population in the ‘red corridor’ that goes from Andra Pradesh to West Bengal, there was an intense campaign of terrorist acts by Kashmiri independence organizations, extremist fringes of the Muslim community and also, as already mentioned, of part of the Hindu majority community. But in the face of the elements of tension and crisis, the country’s economic growth was the lever of major change at the turn of the century, opening up for the India a future of great power whose path, however, still appears very uncertain. For India economics and business, please check businesscarriers.com.

Structural reforms of the economy. -After being closed for a long time to international trade, starting from the early nineties of the last century the India it initiated a policy of structural economic reforms that abolished the licensing system for imports and foreign investments and eased the constraints on private initiative. By unhinging the old centralized system of state intervention that harnessed business activity, the reforms have given impetus to the economy by favoring an acceleration of GDP growth which in the 1990s stood at 6% on an annual average and which in the first decade of the new century it recorded increases oscillating around 8%, with peaks of 9 ÷ 10%, alternating with phases of slowdown that occurred in coincidence with the international crisis of 2008-09. Overall, cumulative GDP growth in the 2005-12 period was 66% and, globally, it was only lower than that of China (85%). In about a decade the income per capita of the population has doubled, exceeding the threshold of 1000 dollars, while in absolute terms the GDP reached in 2011 the value of 1700 billion dollars, allowing the India to position itself in ninth place among the major world economies immediately after Italy. A characteristic of the development model of the Indian economy is the rapid growth of the tertiary sector, which differentiates it from the more traditional one of emerging countries characterized by the prevailing role of the low-wage industrial component. Observing the changes in the composition of the Indian production system, it can be noted that between 1981 and 2011 the contribution of the agricultural sector to the formation of GDP fell from 40% to about 18%, that of industry remained unchanged at 24%. (but had reached 28% in 2004), while that of services jumped from 36% to 58%. In the space of thirty years, therefore, the decline in the share of value added in the economy produced by agriculture has been absorbed entirely by the tertiary sector. Furthermore, the acceleration of growth had only a partial effect on the change in the sectoral composition of employment and at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. over 50% of the active population was still employed in activities related to agriculture, while the share of employed in the tertiary sector was approximately 30%. Contrary to what happened in China, where the exodus from the countryside to the cities has fed a reservoir of manpower that has made it possible to keep wages low and make the products of the manufacturing industry competitive, in the case of India the growth of the tertiary sector has generated a demand for employment with medium-high training levels, thus addressing the most qualified components of the labor force which are quantitatively very significant in India, but decidedly contained when considered in terms of incidence on the active population. This feature, which is probably the best known aspect of thesuccess of globalization in India, is linked to the growing role assumed by innovative services with a high knowledge content, driven by the demand of large multinational companies which, starting from the 1990s, began to relocate their back office services to India (call center, personnel management, activities related to e-ticketing and e-commerce, etc.) taking advantage of the presence of a qualified workforce of native English, remunerated with wages 10 to 15 times lower than those paid in the motherland. The business service outsourcing activity (also called Business process outsourcing, BTO), has strongly evolved and today involves professional services, once excluded from the processes of globalization, such as legal services (the average annual salary of a professional who works in India is about 8000 euros compared to 130,000 for a professional US), legal-administrative consultancy for companies or medical-diagnostic services.