View: Fast-spreading digital revolution offers a new growth path for India and others

Emerging economies struggled to grow through the 2010s, and pessimism shrouds them now. People wonder how they will pay debts rung up during the pandemic, and how they can grow rapidly as they did in the past – by exporting their way to prosperity – in an era of deglobalisation.

The freshest of many answers to this riddle is the fast spreading digital revolution. Emerging nations are adopting cutting edge technology at a lower and a lower cost, which is allowing them to fuel domestic demand and overcome traditional obstacles to growth. Over the last decade the number of smartphone owners has skyrocketed from 150 million to 4 billion worldwide. More than half the world’s population now carries the power of a supercomputer in their pockets, allowing more and more residents of the emerging world to access vital consumer and professional services for the first time.