While India has achieved many milestone markers of international status, the durability, sustainability and legitimacy of its ranking are still uncertain, as one’s status is always relative to that of others. India is still the world’s most unequal rising power, with a widening disparity in per capita income and massive discrepancies in rural and urban living standards, as well as between different communities, castes, and genders. The question often arises: Despite the high economic growth for nearly three decades, why has India not achieved significant status markers of a middle-income, quasi-developed country with clean water, decent healthcare, less polluted cities, and reliable infrastructure? Can India achieve its full potential as a major power of the twenty-first century without obtaining these developmental markers of status, even if it becomes a leading military and economic power in aggregate numbers? In 2023, the answers remain tentative. Hence, most likely India will remain a “truncated-major power,” or a “partial power” in the short and medium terms and its elite at all levels-national, provincial, cities, and villages-needs to understand and appreciate this reality while taking remedial measures for inclusive growth on a war-footing. Moreover, relative status decline or stagnation due to negligence and complacency by the elite can happen, as status attainment is not a linear process. Also, similar to material decline, one can lose status quickly, especially in the competitive contexts of relative rankings.
Although great power status in the past was accorded to winners of major wars, in an era when such wars are unlikely to break out, social creativity, domestic economic and social development, and international economic presence have emerged as important pathways to achieve higher status. For both established and aspiring major powers, “spheres of influence” are not simply geopolitical constructs, but influence obtained through dynamic economic presence in different parts of the world. Although China was formally accorded the Permanent-5 (P-5) status in the UN Security Council in 1945 when its economic development was at the level of India, its recognition as a major contender for global leadership has occurred only in tandem with its massive economic progress and developmental achievements since the days of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. Since the 1980s, China has advanced far more rapidly, and today its economy is some five times larger than India’s. In 2020, India’s total foreign trade was $917 billion versus China’s $5.76 trillion. In social development indicators, tourism intake, energy consumption, and educational and scientific achievements, especially R&D, China is far ahead of India. In response to this comparison, many Indians tend to defensively retort that China is an authoritarian state and democratic India cannot match the speed with which China has been able to reach this position. The assumption is that democracies are not all that good at development, whereas the record shows that this is not accurate. There have been many authoritarian states, some in India’s neighborhood, that have not done any better than democratic India. The Chinese model is not easily replicable, and multiethnic India can never become like China. Democracy serves other functions in a diverse society, in particular giving representation and share of power to multitudes of castes, communities, and social groups. Further, an authoritarian India would be run by the same bureaucracy which shows little interest in achieving higher status through rapid economic and social development. In fact, in comparison with China, the global attractiveness of India is partially due to its democratic system, despite its flaws, and to its potential to become a key economic actor as a pluralistic and tolerant state.
On many dimensions, the future is perhaps more promising than is generally acknowledged, especially if India can hold together as a democratic country. Despite facing a multitude of challenges, India still may have much higher chances of achieving major power status in the international arena by default, compared with almost all pivotal non-great-power states in the G-20 grouping, including Brazil. While China is perceived more as a revisionist power, India is not yet viewed as such by any of the great powers (except probably China), and this is a major advantage. It is the misrecognition of the assertive foreign policy of a rising power that often produces violent conflicts involving established powers. If the opposite happens, a rising power is recognized as legitimate, as in the case of the United States in the late nineteenth century. Germany in the first half of the twentieth century represents the opposite. This is largely because raw indicators of status markers and power capabilities, as well as geostrategic location, matter for an aspiring state to fulfill its major power ambitions. Among the top of these markers is economic strength and long-term growth potential, as well as the country’s importance in the global balance of power competition involving established great powers and rising powers. The emerging international system is likely to push India to a higher status due to the simple fact that after the United States, India is perhaps the only swing state that can challenge authoritarian China’s rise in a sustained manner in the long run, especially in the Indian Ocean region. In other words, India is the pivotal state to prevent hegemony of any single state in the Indo-Pacific. Therefore, others threatened by China are likely to court India, and if it emerges as a strong, vibrant alternative power, its status will increase considerably. India, however, can become a valuable partner, if it is a tolerant, secular, and developmental state and one which can offer an alternative to the Chinese authoritarian model. In fact, India has grown out of its immediate region, South Asia, and has been modestly competing with China for influence and status in other regions, especially East and Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf, and Africa, showing that it already possesses a significant marker of a rising power, a characteristic of which is exhibiting global influence versus regional influence.
The previous rising powers, starting in the twentieth century, became accepted to their higher position by (a) following a successful war against contending great powers (e.g., Japan after winning the 1904-1905 war with Russia); (b) accommodation by dominant states for balancing purposes (e.g., China in the 1970s by the United States to balance the Soviet Union); and (c) following an intense crisis when world order, especially key international institutions, were restructured (e.g., British acceptance of the United States as a great power after the Venezuelan crisis of 1895 between the two countries was resolved through arbitration, as per the demands of Washington). In India’s case, the most probable routes are the last two, as a war in which India defeats another great power is less certain. Border skirmishes with China without a decisive victory are unlikely to produce such a systemic shift. Another military defeat at the hands of China could push back India’s status elevation. However, succumbing to China’s coercive tactics can also hurt India’s status ambitions. The most likely routes are the United States’ accommodation and acceptance of India as a consequential ally vis-à-vis China for reordering of global governing institutions. To reconfigure the world order, current international institutions have to fail massively, which in turn would create an urgent need for reform. Then rising powers like India can make a strong diplomatic push to get their positions accepted. Aligning with the United States can have favorable economic consequences, as evidenced by other U.S. allies, including Japan, Germany, South Korea, and China during the Deng era. Both Washington and New Delhi would have to be willing to open their markets further, and then India would have to adopt a viable economic and trading strategy that makes use of this structural opportunity. Geopolitical prominence need not always promote economic progress. While some allies in East Asia and Europe benefited from a U.S. geopolitical alliance, others failed to do so, including Pakistan, the Philippines, and Turkey, showing that U.S. support can have a reverse effect by creating a “geostrategic curse.” This happened as the elite squandered the geopolitical benefits by not making meaningful social, economic, and political adjustments.
Much depends on U.S.-China and U.S.-Russia relations and whether they evolve into a new cold war, and how India navigates the new structural fissures. Societal-level accommodation and acceptance are necessary for a deep-rooted relationship to emerge between the United States and India. The large-scale Indian diaspora community and the increasing trade and investment between the two countries have helped this process to an extent. However, this community is divided, and many espouse communal ideas in favor of creating a Hindu fundamentalist state back in India, despite living in liberal democracies and benefiting from the liberal freedoms offered to immigrants. They tend to forget that an intolerant and illiberal India, even if it maintains facades of electoral democracy, can lose its soft-power value for the world. The challenge for India is that a rising power needs sustained achievements in both hard and soft power in order to become a pole of attraction. In India’s case, hard power, especially in terms of economic growth and demographic advantages, is increasing, but these are yet to be fully tapped for status elevation.
The previous chapters identified the high potential of India which is unfulfilled due to certain weaknesses of the polity and the society at large, in particular in the developmental arena. A determined leadership with mobilizational capacity and an adaptive strategy can transform India and achieve a much higher status than it is accorded in the international arena today. In the third decade of the twenty-first century, the saga of India’s status quest continues.
This excerpt has been taken with permission from The Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi by TV Paul, Context/Westland Books