There’s an old joke about Brazil that suggests that it’s the country of the future—and it always will be. For a while this looked to be an anachronistic, possibly racist stereotype that had been decisively overturned by Brazil’s rapid economic development and competent-looking economic management. But as the administration of Dilma Rousseff descends into chaos amid accusations of corruption and incompetence, old doubts about the country are re-emerging.
Brazil’s problems may be especially acute, but they are emblematic of the tarnished image of the other BRIC economies—Russia, India, and China—too. Great hopes and expectations are still held about India’s prospects—especially in Australia—but they are predicated on some fairly heroic assumptions about the likely trajectory of future development.
Optimists (and economists) regularly point to India’s burgeoning population as a valuable asset and source of future growth. These sorts of analyses tend to gloss over the enormous impact economic development in combination with population expansion have had on the natural environment. Delhi now has the unenviable reputation as the most polluted city in the world, having recently eclipsed Beijing for this unwanted accolade.
That India is increasingly relying on coal power to fuel further economic expansion suggests that the environment will continue to come second to the primary imperative of keeping development going at all costs if the tens of millions of new, would-be entrants to the job market are to accommodated. Given that India has the largest number of illiterate adults in the world—some 287 million or 37 percent of the adult population—the challenge is likely to prove doubly onerous.
At least India can console itself with the idea that its energy imports have become cheaper over the last few years. So can China, too, but this hasn’t translated into an unequivocal boost to the economy. On the contrary, China’s declining appetite for resource and energy imports has directly contributed to the global economic downturn that is exacerbating the stagnation in the BRICs and some of their most important trade partners.
