However, even with sincere hopes, all this is unlikely to happen. Pakistan will continue to descend into a hyper-Talibanized jihadi vortex throughout the 2010s as minority independence struggles will reach a crescendo. By 2022, Pakistan will be imploding. Its nuclear assets are likely to fall in the hands of jihadis, who will use them to threaten India’s infrastructure and energy supplies from the Middle East and central Asia and eventually, through some miscalculation, launch them to penetrate Indian and possibly Israeli missile-shields, drawing in a massive Indo-American invasion.

The ensuing war will assuredly be traumatic for Indian aubcontinent. India, due to its enormous population and strategic depth will be able to absorb the after-effects of this war, which might include a limited nuclear exchange. Pakistan will dissolve into separate ethnically homogenous nations and by 2030 it is likely that there will be some strategic security, energy and economic partnership agreement between India and the southern provinces of Sindh and Balochistan. North Pakistan might continue as the successor state, but it will be difficult to prevent the ethnic domino effect in Southern Central Asia. Pashtun areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan might merge by erasing the British era Durand line to form Pashtunistan, while Uzbek and Tajik areas of Afghanistan will merge with their ethno-linguistic cousins in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. It is difficult to predict the extent of Chinese involvement in this saga, but it will not be insignificant. Russia would probably have minimal involvement.

By 2040, after a transformative reformation of entire power structure in former Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan will formally merge into a United States of India. This union might eventually include Nepal, Sri Lanka, possibly Pashtunistan and other minor political entities. It is difficult to say if Punjab and Bengal will merge just as Germany did and Korea will, but if they do, the Hindi speaking states will also merge to contain any centrifugal tendencies. Hindi, Bengali and Punjabi in that order will be the three most spoken languages in a united India.

By 2050, the USI with its 2.3 billion inhabitants, one fourth of planet’s population, will emerge as the dominant economic, technological, political and cultural power in Eurasia and hence the world. To prevent hyper centralization of power, regional ambitions and colonial parasitism, the federal power structure of the USI will be vested with minimal powers, which will include armed forces, foreign policy, minimal federal taxation, and perhaps a single currency. All other powers will be vested in the various ethno-linguistic provinces, which will chart their own independent course commensurate with their temperament and talents. There will be a high degree of individual freedom